Sherry nice

The friend of ours who rented the villa has a friend who imports sherry, and this friend of a friend very kindly arranged for us to have a tour of the Gonzalez-Ayess distillery. Really fascinating to see the history of the place - more photos to come when I have a better connection.

Ahoy Cadiz!

Today we headed out by ourselves to have a look ariund Cadiz, which was full of welcome shady, narrow roads under a blazing blue sky.

Ooh

Found some herbal teas I've never seen before.

View

The villa is gorgeous. Looking forward to a week of doing as little as possible...

Room at the top

It wass a blazing hot day in Jerez, we had a walk around the town centre and discovered that storks really like nesting on top of churches. There were plastic storks on top of some roofs as well, whether to attract or scare off the real thing we're not sure...

All the chocolate

Panorama

On our last day in Interlaken, we went up the Hardkulm - Interlaken's "home mountain" with a great view of the other peaks. And great weather for it!

The joys of summer

Not even the miserable spring followed by a summer that can't seem to decide if it's winter or not has put off the rhubarb - the local shops are full of it and Austa very kindly sent me a recipe for a rhubarb and yoghurt parfait! One for now, one for when I finish work some time tonight...

From on high

It's a steep climb to the St. Beatus caves, but the view is its own reward.

Double rainbow!

Visited the amazing glacial runoff waterfalls at Trummelbach, complete with (barely visible here) double rainbows in the spray. Definitely recommended on a hot day!

Mind the glass

Last Sunday I went to the flat of a friend who is very into making things with glass - you know it's serious when someone has their own portable hospital oxygen generator to super-heat propane. 

We donned safety glasses and got started melting glass rods and winding them around mandrels, which was actually much easier than I had thought although there were so many factors to keep in mind that it was mentally exhausting after a while - keeping the mandrel parallel to the floor and rotating it constantly to keep the bead even, keeping only the edge of the bead in the flame to avoid it melting and running (I did that a lot, as you cans see from the turnip-shaped ones), and just telling where the flame was through the safety glasses! The easiest thing to do was was to watch the glass bead like a hawk and guess from the incandescence of the glass.

Some colours of glass were easier to work with others, and once I had an idea of the basics we went on to dots and stripes, twisting and poking the hot glass, making thin "stringers" from the large canes and coating in clear glass.

The glass loses all colour when it's heated, so it involves a certain amount of guesswork. As soon as the bead starts to cool and the colours starts to return, it's time to bury it in a pan of hot vermiculite so it can cool down slowly and not crack.

It was a huge amount of fun, and much more manageable than I had thought. I might have to get rid of another hobby before taking this one on though...

I know this one is distinctly turnip-shaped, but I do like it.