Life’s an ocean with too much commotion

Yeah, this summer I managed to visit my favorite city in South-Europe again: Barcelona! It almost feels as coming home.. This time we brought some company, the parents of my girlfriend. It was the first time they visited the city, so it was our duty to make it a pleasant visit.

We did the usual things: Parc Guell, Sagrade Familia, Mont Juic, and walking around at the Mare Magnum and the coast.

After that, we went to L’Escala, at the Costa Brava in Spain. We visited Girona, which actually surprised me of being so interesting and beautiful. We also went to Roses and Perelada. The latter is a city that is famous for it’s cava and legendary wine (from Castillo Perelada).

It has become a sort of tradition to fill our wine and cava stock every time we’re near (or someone else is near). It was good to have a place where we could relax after some very tiresome days in Barcelona.

Once we were loaded with energy again, we went off to Pertuis, It’s a city at the border of the Vaucluse (a region on Sout-France) and the Provence (about 20 kilometers above Aix-En-Provence). We didn’t do any preparation, so we didn’t really know where we were heading at.

The only thing we really wanted to see and experience, was the Gorges du Verdon and Lac de Saint-Croix (I’ve visited this also 10 years ago, but it’s not the same).

Gorges du Verdon is the Gran Canyon of Europe. You can drive by the cliffs on two sides (Rive Gauche and Rive Droit).

We did both of them (about 120 kilometers) and ended at a hidden place (very calm, not much people) at Lac de Saint Croix where we took a swim. After that we’ve visited some cities such as Gordes

(very famous for its restaurants, we had dinner there in a small italian restaurant), L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue (well-known for it’s flea and little antique shops), Lourmarin (a small city on a hill with a castle, but cool narrow streets, nice to walk), Fontaine-De-Vaucluse (very touristic, there’s a lake embedded in a cave, and

a castle on the hills which used to be the vacation residence of the bishops of the Provence). And last but not least: Aix-En-Provence, a small but vivid city and lots to see.

Some weeks before our visit, I bought a new lens: Tokina 11-16/2.8 ATX DX. I always felt I was missing something in my collection. I had numereous situations where I wanted to take a picture of a landscape, big building, or a group of people that were standing very close. This lens has an ultra-wide field of view. As I already have a lot of pictures of Barcelona, I decided to only take pictures with this new lens there .