Summer starts here...

I just spent the first weekend of summer in Donegal with friends, some of whom feature below. Donegal is a beautiful, somewhat secluded part of Ireland with poor signal and no wi-fi, great for fun in the sea (wetsuits recommended), games on the beach, guitar sing-a-longs, good conversation and lots and lots of laughing. I can't remember the last time I sat with no tv on a Sunday night telling jokes! Here's a few snippets...

Warsawa

Two posts in one weekend...can you tell that summertime is here? These are my picks from my trip to Warsaw in March. My parents live there so it was a very relaxed trip with a little sight-seeing and lots of shopping. There were also a few days inside due to crazy snow fall. At Easter! Enjoy.

Outside the Chopin museum. We actually didn't go inside but Polish residents love this guy.

A burst of colour in a very run down part of town. Many of my favorite photo's are of city artwork. I'm wondering if the two halves represent the old and new parts of the city?

A hint of spring time. 

Coloured eggs everywhere to celebrate Easter. It's a nice touch but there's no chocolate inside!

A lone duck. (There's actually hundreds of them!)

This park is like Narnia, especially in the snow. We went for a stroll at dusk and it felt like the eyes of the fawn statues were following you and the trees were listening. Magical!

Before this trip I had never seen a peacock fly. We waited for  ages to capture this.

In this photo, this may look like a derelict, abandoned stage but in the summer, it's used for concerts and plays every night. 

Little friends in strange places

Mum likes to feed the red squirrels in the park by her apartment building and they are so friendly. They will take the nut from your hand and eat away. It's sad that they're extinct in the UK. When I was putting together my photo's from my trip to Warsaw a few months ago, I found that half my photo's were of this little guy. So here's a post just for him. The rest of my Warsaw picks are coming this weekend too.

What can I say...

....I haven't really been out with the SLR for months. Hence the lack of photo's. I will, however, be bringing my SLR to Warsaw with me next week so expect more updates soon. But I thought I would share some photo's I have been taking with you anyway. Yes, they are from my phone. Phone-ography seems to be an art-form in itself nowadays and I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy Instagram alot. If any of you use any phone photo editing apps that you think are good, please do let me know. 

I spent NYE in Disneyland, Paris. This was the first photo I took and my favorite.

Hollywood Tower Hotel/Twilight Zone Tower of Terror

A Chemistry lesson on Acids and Alkalis

A derelict Polish building close to where Dad works. Lots of squatters apparently.

Brown paper CHRISTMAS packages, tied up with string!

Warsaw Old Town

Grafitti near where my brother lives in Dublin

Hungarian F1 GP

If I didn't love Formula 1 enough before I went to Hungary, I certainly do now. The atmosphere, the noise, the speed, everything! Worth the money, worth the hike to get to the track and even the chaos getting home on race day couldn't take away from the experience. And getting to spend the time with my dad made it even better. I don't think the photo's are too bad considering how confined you are to one area and one stand. Imagine the possibilities with an all-areas pass...

Vienna

Vienna is yet another wonderful European city. It's so clean and combines beautiful, historic architecture with modern, cosmopolitan hustle and bustle. We shopped a little, tried some Sacher Tart, stayed in a very luxurious city centre apartment and visited the Schonbrunn Palace where we found a swimming pool complex which won us over. After a week of hot weather and sight seeing this was where we wanted to be. And this is where we stayed! So not as many photo's were taken but here's a peek.

Breakfast before the train. A summer is holiday is no holiday without the continental breakfast.

And this was the perfect cafe for it. Literally right outside our apartment, it had the greatest scrambled eggs and served both coffee and fresh OJ as part of it's breakfast deal. 

This was original. Took us a minute to work out how he was doing it. 

The most impressive palace I've ever seen, probably because it's the biggest.

The grounds were so huge, there were lots of horse drawn carriages on hand to take you round.

These 2 really liked each other. I have 24 other shots to prove it!

I told you the grounds were big. And very symmetrical.

The evening light walking through the grounds on the way home was beautiful. I couldn't believe that all of this was the mere summer home for one family.

I pinched this from my Instagram (@debsmaylena). I knew schnitzel and strudel were Austrian, but I hadn't heard of Sacher tart before.