A trip to the Isle of Mainau/Blumeninsel Mainau

On Tuesday, which was a holiday here, my mom and I went on a trip to visit the Isle of Mainau. Mainau is a small island in the Lake Constance (funny, I didn't know that was its name in English till I looked it up now, the German name is Bodensee. Also in German the name of the isle is Blumeninsel Mainau, the flower isle Mainau, but in English it's just Isle of Mainau) and famous for its beautiful garden and park. It belongs to the aristrocratic family Bernadotte and as far as I understood is actually not German property, as I had always thought, but Swedish.

Right now is a good time to take a stroll there and admire the flowers. It was a four hour trip with the bus, which also included a short ride with a ferry (I love water and boats, so that was a definite bonus to this awesome day), but it was absolutely worth it. We were also very lucky with the weather, not too hot, not too cold (although it had been very cold in the morning and I had cursed myself for my carelessness), and a lot of sunshine.

I found it hard to believe that the ferry would be able to take up a whole bus, but I found it even more amazing when on the way home I saw that the ferry was loaded with four buses (!) and a couple of cars.




That picture was taken on the way home, but we won't be too picky with the timeline, will we? :D


Here's a plan of the garden (only click on the picture if your connection can handle 4 MB images :D )


At the entrance we were greeted by a giant flower.


We had to get up very early, but it was worth it, less visitors and the light was just fabulous for taking pictures. I'm not really a fan of my camera, but it was doing a decent job this day. Here are some daisies.


I'm in love with magnolias. I like the ones with big tulip-shaped blossoms in white and pink and a little bit of brownish pink, but these here were also quite beautiful.






The whole ground was covered with pink blossoms, there were still plenty of them on the trees though.




Here's panoramic view of the garden.




A peacock.


I started to feel like I was on vacation in some mediterranean country (of which I'm very fond). Lake Constance is just a lake, albeit the second largest in Europe, but it felt like I was on a beach. You could see little waves on the shore.




The name of the artist who created all these sculptures is Stefan Szczesny and while I find these to be very charming and joyful I don't find his paintings very attractive (there is an exhibition inside the castle right now). A wild mix of colors that don't go well together and a lot of nude women, which is not the shocking thing, it's that he draws them in various revealing positions and with very clear details, so that, in my humble opinion at least, he crosses the border of sensual and gets rather close to crude.














Looks a lot like lace.




Stairs with flowers.






Allium








Now to pictures of some of my favorite flowers - tulips. There were masses of them there. The light was fantastic and in fact, maybe too much as some of the pictures look a bit artificial. In any case, after getting into the mood again for traveling because of the whole atmosphere and because of taking so many pictures, I think I really really want a new camera. If you bother to go to new places, you should make sure that you can take nice memories and souvenirs home. I used to have a Canon Prima Super 120, which was such a lovely camera, nothing very fancy, but I liked the pictures I took. I probably lost it one day at the airport (I was really really late and in such a hurry not to miss my flight. I guess, I forgot to put it back into my backpack after taking it out to look for my passport :( ).




















Dogwood (Cornus, Hartriegel). It's the state tree of Missouri and Virginia.




A hanky tree, I kid you not. :D With a lot of kids, too.






A very big maple (?) tree.


Rhododendron


More Allium.




Another field of tulips.








In the butterfly house. They're feasting on orange slices. Usually butterflies do not really get close to people, these here though seemed to like showing off. I was able to get really really close to them and make makro shots and they just didn't care. As if they were enjoying people's attention. :)




Suddenly they did not look that charming anymore... :D




Bamboo


View from the top.