Travelog for: Florence

After I was picked up at the airport in Orlando I finally got to fly on a real airplane.  I had been hanging around the airport for some time but had never been on a plane. 
We flew on Southwest Airlines to Albuquerque, New Mexico and from sea level to over a mile high by the time we drove to Farmington.
Its a lot different here than in Florida.  Its pretty dry and the birds here are funny little things with long tails that run very fast.  My friend told me they are called roadrunners.  I have a picture taken of me in the garden with a roadrunner but he's already gone so he's not really in the picture.

The Road Runner is a flightless Cuckoo and more info on it can be found here.

Today we drove around a little and I got to see Farmington. We live up on a mesa above the town and this picture is of me sitting on the mailbox at the road.  You can see part of the town in the valley down below. If you click here you can see a video of the area.  It shows quite a bit of water around but there isn't any up here on the mesa.  For a flamingo thats not a good thing.

I got to go on a road trip to Durango, Colorado.  While we were there we went out to the Bar D ranch for a chuckwagon dinner and cowboy sing-a-long show. 

I'm back home in Farmington and have been lazing around in the backyard.  This is a picture of me hiding in the roses.  They were a little prickly but not half as bed as the cactus I sat on last week. 
While I was in the yard I met Morado, who also stays here, and we both thought it would be good to see more of the world.

Florence has left Farmington and is on her way to Austria.

Hello!

What a great day! I arrived in Vienna today and finally came out of my narrow dark envelope! I had a warm welcome from Taro the bear from Japan, Alfie Langer and CK the 2 Australian guys and Pooh from Taiwan as well as from my hosts. I'm really looking forward to my stay here in Austria. As far as I know they have alot of water here - hope to see some soon because it is really hot here, about 35 °C!

Hugs, Florence

Hello! Sorry you had to wait sooo long for my first pictures here from Austria - but I did such a lot of sightseeing that I hardly had any time to update my travellog...

Here you can see the pictures of our trip to Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. It was the summer residence of the Habsburg family and has a really beautiful huge park with many fountains. I tried to have a swim everywhere but the "park police" was very strict with me and didn't allow me to bath there...

The previous week I spent in the countryside. My host's grandparents have a flat at lake Attersee (situated in Upper Austria between Linz and Salzburg) so we spent a wonderful time there. The scenery with all the mountains (Alps), lakes and forrests is really beautiful and the water was warm enough for me to go swimming and surfing

One day we made a trip to Gmunden at lake Traunsee (only about 30 km from there). Imagine - they have a castle there located IN the lake (on a little island). Very special... And one more interesting thing there was the city hall: There are many bells at the front of the city hall and every hour they play a little melody... I made friends with some swans (well, at least they accepted me although I'm pink!!).
Nice place!

One day we did a big mountain hiking to a mountain called "Hochlecken". It is almost 1600 m high and it was really exhausting to get there (at least for my hosts...) but the view from up there to lake Attersee was really amazing. We had delicious food in the restaurant there and enjoyed it alot. On the first photo you can see the mountain in the background - on the last one it's just the opposite.

Finally I saw the river Danube yesterday! Very impressing, I must say... It was a bit rainy - otherwise I would really have taken a bath there

My host also showed me the Danubetower nearby and the building of the UNO here in Vienna. We also passed by the famous Big Wheel (it was raining alot there so the photo came out a bit dark...) and the colourful house created by Friedensreich Hundertwasser - beautiful, isn't it? I was told that there is nothing special inside, just normal flats. Would be nice to live there, hm? All the people who live there have the right to create the wall around their windows as they like - but only as far as they can reach with their arms. So the building changes a bit from time to time. It is said that there is no right angle in the whole building. Can't believe that - but it sounds interesting anyway.

We also went up a hill from where we had a beautiful view over the city. Vienna is such a beautiful place and my host promised me to show me some more nice places this afternoon.

Oh, how many fountains there are in Vienna!! I had a bath in the most beautiful ones - and I enjoyed it alot!! Such a lot of water, that's always great for a sweating flamingo like me! One thing I really appreciate here in Vienna is that there are such kind of small fountains everywhere where the people just can take water to drink. Well, I also used them for having a bath... but nobody complained about that!

We did alot of sightseeing during the past days. Have a look which beautiful places I visited:

*the City Hall
*the old imperial theatre
*Hofburg, that's the castle where the emperors lived. Nowadays it hosts some museums and the national library as well as the president's office
*St. Stephen's Cathedral

I also played "hide and seek" with the other toys in the rosarium where we had alot of fun... We almost didn't find Cute Knut anymore but finally Paz discovered him...

I loved the horses with their carriages we saw everywhere in the city. They are called "Fiaker" and nowadays they are only used as a tourist attraction, but before the "car age" people really used them to get around.

I also saw St. Stephen's cathedral which was really impressing, and the Opera house. Then we had a rest in the park in front of the museum for historical arts with the ball-shaped bushes. We also passed by the Austrian parliament but since all the politicians are on holiday right now we just saw tourists there.

Well, I have really seen alot here in Austria, so I think it's time now to continue my journey. My next stop will be Prague and I'm really looking forward to get there. Good bye, Vienna!

Hi!
I arrived to Prague a few days ago, but my host was on a summer camp, so I had to wait till I could update my travelog. Unfortunately, he is leaving for another week now, but after that he will surely show me the city and take some pictures.

Today I finally visited the city center. Behind me you can see the Petřín hill, the National Theatre and the Prague Castle.







Then I went on Smetana's Embankment, where I saw Krammer's fountain - a monument dedicated to Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor.



In front of Charles Bridge, I looked up to statue of Charles IV, another Holy Roman Emperor and Bohemian King. Czech people usually call him "Otec vlasti" ("Father of the homeland") and consider him the best sovereign ever.



You can meet lot of musicians on the Charles Bridge.



From the Charles Bridge I saw the Straka's Academy, seat of Czech government. It was named after John Peter Straka, who estabilished an academy for needy young noblemen. It's a play on words - "straka" means "magpie" in Czech, so many people say that "Straka's Academy" is an appropriate name for the seat of government.



When I was going over the Charles Bridge, two girls suddenly came to me and wanted to take picture of me and their penguin. I asked them if they have something in common with ToyVoyagers.com, but they said that not - they are just travelling through Europe and photographing their penguin.





The Lesser Town Bridge Towers are one of the most photographed buildings in Prague. The smaller one is older than the Charles Bridge, because it originally belonged to former Judith Bridge, destroyed by flood.

I found a map of Prague, so I could precisely plan my tommorow's visit of city center.