The Great Dune of Pyla

 Today is another day of rest and sightseeing. The organizers of EGC are arranging a trip to a vineyard and another one to la dune du Pyla. We already went to the vineyard and Saint Emilion so this time we chose the great dune.

The dune is now 107 meters high but not so long ago it was 117 meters high. There was a storm in 2009 that damaged the dune quite a lot.

The dune is made entirely of really fine beach sand and it is a tough job to climb the dune by foot. The sand is flowing away almost like heavy water and every step you take only takes you half a step ahead. But of course we had to climb all the way to the top, then down to the sea to wet our feet and then climb all the way to the top again.

If you have good legs you must try to run/jump down the steepest parts of the dune. It is almost like flying or jumping on clouds. A really nice feeling!

And another thing... when you climb up again, use your toes like claws to get a good grip. If you let the sand flow between your toes it will take you much more work to climb up.

The path from the parking to the dune is crowded with small shops packed with souvenirs. The most interesting stuff are decorations made of the sand from the dune, but I didn't buy any.

Nice shadows from the trees on the path to the dune.

There we first see the dune!

The stairs were easier to use than to climb the dune. It is quite a steep angle. Some people walked on the side where the angle is less.

A view from the top of the stairs.

The dune is 3 km long and 500 meters wide.

There is a lot of sand here... About 60,000,000 m³.

Most of the people gathered along the top.

It is a popular place for paragliding.

The beach. The dark things in the water are rocks.

You can not see the top of the dune from the water.

After the dune we went to a small cute city named Arcachon. Mostly so the Japanese players could taste the local oysters. Girlwing ate as well but I went for a walk along the beach.

A view of the beach.

On the base of a pier they have this carousel.

The beach from one of the piers.

Another view of the beach.

The local casino.

They have cute houses all around the small city.

Mobile blogging test

I have had this blogger applet in my Sony Ericsson mobile phone for quite some time now. So it is about time to test it out.

The picture is taken with the phone camera not so long ago this autumn. Cold in the air and the poor bug have problems moving. I helped him off my path to the grass on the side and then kept walking home.

Blåbär is not Blueberry

Yesterday I was reading about a tasty dessert including bilberry. I like berries and I have never heard of bilberry before so I started to google for it. At the top of the search there was a link to my favourite source of knowledge Wikipedia.

I was quite surprised to see that bilberry is the same as what we in Sweden call blueberry. But we call it the Swedish name blåbär, which directly translated and literally becomes blueberry. This has lead most of us to use the word blueberry when we talk about our blåbär in english. This seem to be very wrong of us.

I asked several of my colleges what they call blåbär in english and all of them said blueberry and none of them knew what bilberry is. This topic covered most of our lunch time. :)

The truth seem to be that we don't have any blueberries in Sweden or any wild blueberries anywhere in Europe. They only exist in North America. What a surprise!

There are some similarities and some differences between the berries.

Bilberry have a dark blue skin and dark red or purple meat with a very juicy sweet taste. They break easily and stains your fingers and the stains are very hard to wash of. The berries are grouped one by one on the plant. They are very hard to cultivate and therefore you only find them in the wild were they usually grow up to 10-40 cm low bushes.

Blueberry have a blue skin and white or light green meat. The meat is firmer and not as sweet as bilberry. The firm meat makes them not as easy to break and are easier to transport. The berries are a little bigger than bilberries and have a "crown at the end". The plants are higher than the low bilberry plants and the cultivated ones are up to 4 meters tall. The berries are grouped together in clusters of several berries.

Here you can see the bilberry at the top and the blueberry at the bottom. As you can see, they are quite different from each others.

Maybe we should use the name bilberry or maybe "European blueberry" if we want English speaking people to understand what we mean.

Shanghai old town

After checking in to the hotel we started our mini vacation in Shanghai. Of course we start with the old town or City God Temple as it also is called which is what the Chinese name 城隍庙 (Chénghuángmiào) means.

Famous house in the water

Famous red fish in the water

A house in the famous Yuyuan garden

End mountain end road. This is an old saying in China and means something like, when you come to the end of the mountain there will be an end of the road, but if you turn around you will see that the road continues on the other side of the mountain. That can be described further with if you have a problem, turn around and look at the problem with a different view and you will see how to solve your problem. Wow... you see how effective the Chinese characters are. Just four characters to fill all this meaning.

This path are two! Actually on the other side of the thin wall there is a similar path. One is for men and the other is for women.

Then there are small holes or windows in the wall for the two to steal looks at each others and maybe stay for a quick talk or a kiss.

Detail of a plant in the garden

A small house on a fake mountain

Chinese grass

A beautiful view. Maybe my future summer house on the Swedish north east coast.

A fish with a huge brain?

Calligraphy master

The result

Shanghai park

We went to a public park in the northern parts of Shanghai. It is supposed to be the largest and most popular park in Shanghai. Usually it costs a couple of yuan to enter buy now it was free for everyone. Maybe because it is in the middle of the winter and not as nice as in the spring time.

But still it was quite a lot of people, especially if you compare with a Swedish park in december. It was mostly older retired people doing stuff to make the time fly. There were people singing Chinese opera karaoke, playing ancient instruments, playing games, dancing lessons, flying with dragon kites and just regular socializing with talk among old and new friends.

Too bad that I don't have pictures of this but above you can see something else I found in the park. Amazing what you can find in the middle of the winter. :)

On my path to work

This morning I took my digital camera with me to work and these are some of the pictures that I took on my way.

The path through the forrest

The young cow Ferdina

A view in to cow land

A view in to cow land

The cows water supply

You get bored of grass so you eat some trees

This used to be a farmers backyard

Now it cow land

A cold morning for the flowers

The spring flowers will soon die...

Spring time?

Every day I walk to and from work. It takes me about 20-25 minutes depending on my mood for the moment. Quite often it takes me a bit longer because I find something interesting on the way. Maybe I stop and talk to the cute cows or I see some beautiful flower that I want to take a closer look at. It is so nice not to have to walk in the city with its bad air and stressed people.

In the middle of September we usually don't have so many flowers left and the ones that still exist are not the pretty ones. Instead we have a lot of fruit and berries everywhere. But as you can see on the picture, we have some new spring flowers here and there.

We had an early and wonderfully warm spring and the summer continued to be nice. So I guess it has been warm for such a long time so some flowers now have energy enough to bloom for a second time. But I am not so sure if the plants will be able to have fruit for a second time before the weather is too cold. Anyway, it is nice to see the spring flowers in the middle of September.