Madlen Nicolaus

It was two weeks and two continents ago, but it still lingers in my imagination. So here’s my latest travel tips for the loveliest corner of England: Cornwall.

To begin, and always a good technique: share the planning! That way your trip is always varied and exciting. And at least one of you knows what’s happening.

First hotel – selection by Matt: Jamaica Inn in the civil parish of Altarnun.

“There would never be a gentle season here, thought Mary; either grim winter as it was today, or else the dry and parching heat of midsummer, with never a valley to give shade or shelter, but grass that turned yellow-brown before May had passed.”

So of course, this is where Matt thought we should stay first!

We read the novel on the way there (and actually most of weekend) and we got really excited about it, it’s a great story of pirates, smugglers, murder and moors. And we were going to stay in this hive of villainy!
When we eventually arrived, the place itself was a bit of a disappointment and completely different to our imagination. It has been done in such a tasteless way, its actually upsetting. The rooms were o.k., but the restaurant and the food itself…really not great.

They organize ghost tours there and it all felt just soo touristy…so I would not suggest for you to go there…but I definitely suggest you to read the book. In this case the fantasy was far better than the reality.

Second hotel – my selection: Scarlet hotel, an eco hotel atop the cliffs of Mawgan Porth bay.
It’s website says: “Its an escape for grown-ups to eat, dream and play in peace”
What other people say about it you can check out on Foursquare: But honestly, what an amazing place!! The rooms have bathtubs in front of the window and a large balcony where you can sit accompanied by a sea gull enjoying the stunning views over Mawgan Porth bay. I want to live there!!

So I think I won the planning competition. Matt agrees. They even have a natural pool, complete with algae and pond stuff. It’s very eco.

During our stay we did some day trips to:

Tintagel Castle
Home of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table! Home of Merlin’s cave and the Holy Grail… Lancelot, Morgan Le Fey, Guinevere. Except you know, not really. Another one of Matt’s fiction tours. A place that has taken on the magic and mystery of these great British stories, but hasn’t really got any solid connection to them. Just rumors and myth, traded down the centuries. The site lends itself to these stories, it perches on the Cornish Coast, ready to be washed away into the dreamy Atlantic. Worth a visit! And don’t forget to make your way down the cliff side to visit Merlin’s cave. It really is magical. (Just don’t do it at high tide)

The Eden Project
An amazing creation, built out of a abandoned quarry. Two and a half giant glass domes, full of Nature’s bounty, bid you to come inside. You will not be disappointed. Slightly pricey, but all for a good cause, The Eden project recreates the various Biomes of the world, my favorite being The Rainforest Biome. Imagine a rainforest without giant spiders and bugs, where you can get a smoothie. It felt like the future. Matt seems to think this is what living on Mars would be like. So long as they have smoothies there, I’m in. Definitely recommended.

Padstow

A lovely day trip to the seaside town of is always interesting. Especially when you discover the National Lobster Hatchery, where local scientists are working on ways to keep the Lobster population strong. There’s also a massive Lobster in there that will haunt your dreams… So there’s that. Also, lots of icecream, and kung fu seagulls.

Cornwall is one of those places, full of hidden pockets of magic, mystery and beaches. You can find details of my last Cornish voyage here.
Any recommendations for my next one, are very welcome!

In a cabin in the woods, we waited for spring to find out where winter was hiding it.

Word to the wise, an Easter holiday in Switzerland can contain snow. And rain, and mist and fog and of course, groans.

We didn’t come to ski. We came to visit my brother, and to marvel at the sheer beauteous scale of the Swiss Alps. The glaciated scenery, the high peaks, the clear ice water! What we got, looked like a Tuesday afternoon in London. I guess there were mountains. But they might as easily have been delusions.

But lets start at the beginning, which was actually not that grey. When we packed our bags, we had 12 degrees and sunshine in London, I was sure that this meant winter was finally over and we could leave our thick coats, hats and winter scarfs at home.

On our first day in Zurich the Schwiiiitz even decided to show itself from its best side and we enjoyed a sun-warmed lunch outside in a café.

The next morning – the sun was still with us –  and my brother recommended we visit “Bürgenstock”, a famous mountain in Switzerland in the middle of Lake Lucerne or “Vierwaldstättersee“, as we Germans like to call it.

Interestingly, if you type Bürgenstock into Google Maps, it sends you right to Hotel Villa Hoenegg. What a place!! We stopped there for lunch and enjoyed their special lunch menu of the day while being completely stunned by the view. I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

After this wonderful meal we decided to hike to the lookout point at the summit of Bürgenstock to enjoy the famous view over the lake at the Hammetschwand Elevator.

Four hours later… It was not the easiest walk, since most parts were still covered in snow, and Matt was convinced there were avalanche risks – but the view from the top made up for the hard work.

Back in Zurich we ignored our hurting legs and feet and ended this fantastic day at M4music festival at Schiffbau, a former boat-manufacturing hangar. This place also had a fantastic looking restaurant inside, which I would love to try at my next brother-visit.

And this was the last time we would see the sun in Switzerland!

When we got up the next morning our lucky spell was over. But we decided we would try to trick it into turning up through many outdoor activities. So to begin, we went to the Rheinfall, which I last visited as a little girl. It’s still a big waterfall.

Afterwards, we also stopped in Stein am Rhein. And I can really imagine how amazing these two places can be if the sun is shining but on that Saturday, I just felt cold.

The next day our “road trip” brought us to Interlaken, which we heard so much about online – and of course, when we got there, we couldn’t even see the Alps!

So we decided to come back another time and to try out something else that looked stunning on Google Images: Lauterbrunnen – the valley of dreams. But I think Winter was listening to our conversation and decided to get there before us again.

It was stunning in a way, even with the missing background – what do you think?

We were still freezing and not in the mood for a hike in the cold, so we decided to go to a spa instead. I think you’ll agree, that’s often a good choice! Spa-ing in an outdoor hot bubble making hot tub in the Solbadhotel in Sigriswil while it snows comes highly recommended! Although possibly improved if you could actually see more than 6 feet in front of your face.

It was decided then that my brother would go back and visit all these places with his motorbike once the spring has succeeded, and take photos of what it should look like.

The last two days of our Switzerland stopover we spent in Basel and on the way there we stopped at St. Beatus Caves apparently the 8^th biggest caves in the area. Also it apparently was once home to a dragon slaying Irish saint.

Our Basel time we spent mainly in little cafes and eating cheese fondue before we had to say goodbye to my brother and head into Germany.

If Swiss weather was a slight let down, the German weather fared slightly better. This second part of our trip took us to the Black Forest, the home of Brothers Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel and assorted fairytales, and a place I have never been. We had no idea where to go, so we stopped in a tourist info in Schluchsee and asked them for the most authentic place in the Black Forest – we didn’t want to go to just another town. They sent us to Menzenschwand and recommended an old traditional Hotel Gasthof Waldeck. It was as old and traditional as they promised. Perfect! The hotel owner recommended we go to St. Blasien for a nice short walk in the afternoon. So of course, not knowing much about the area, that’s what we did.

What we didn’t expect was Sankt Blasien Abbey, a stunning Benedictine monastery in the middle of the forest valley.

We initially only planned to stay one night in Menzenschwand, but we liked our little hotel so much there, that we stayed for two. That way we had a full day to hike in the snow and explore the magic of the Black Forest. We found a hidden frozen waterfall and feed some really cute deer.

The sun even decided to remind us that it still existed on our last day in the fairytale forest! Unfortunately we had to leave the Black Forest in order to be at home at my family in time for Easter Sunday.

But not before another quick stop over in Munich to see some friends from Sweden and enjoy some Bavarian hospitality!

Our final stop was back north towards another abbey, the Cistercian nunnery “Kloster St. Marienstern” to celebrate Easter with my family and see my uncle being one of the 1700 Sorbian Osterreiter, who ride through Lusatia on Easter Sunday to celebrate Jesus Christ rising from the dead. It’s one of my favorite traditions – how many other towns have hundreds of horses and men in top hats?! If you ever in the Eastern part of Germany around Easter Sunday, that’s where you should go!

So what did we learn from our Easter vacation?

Well firstly, winter has overstayed his welcome, and he’s hiding in Switzerland.

Secondly, the Black Forest is a magical place that Germans don’t often visit.

And lastly, if there’s a moment in a day where you can close your eyes and put your nose up in the sun. It makes everything better.

Bring on the summer! Or at least the Spring! So long as there’s sun!

There are few things I love more than grapes

… possibly wine, maybe horses, and quite probably spending time with friends.

This last weekend I had them all in abundance. And I even learnt a thing or two about wine harvesting – you know, for when I have my own wine farm… I have to say after all that effort I really appreciate every drop of the Reserva I’m drinking while I write this!

But anyway, back to the beginning… Having a friend who is a sommelier is amazing. She is even more amazing when she takes me to new wine places, where you can eat grapes all weekend, drink new wine and handpick Pino Noir from the vine. Apparently they’ve been doing this for over 1000 years in this beautiful little village named Duttweiler. You can find it nestled joyously in the Palatinate, a well-known German wine-growing region in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse. Tell them I sent you.

In keeping with tradition, we were joined by Herr Müller; a rather large grape-carrying horse. He is currently banned from joining in with the grape eating though.

The lovely owners of the winery Bergdolt-Reif&Nett who organized this festive day of grape grabbing have only been doing it with the public (and a horse) for a harvest or two, so get there before it gets on the tourist map!

Now onto some photos of this wonderful day…

The Lake District, at the top of the map. Hours in the car. Traffic jamming across the horizon.

Lunch by a river. Ducks. More traffic. Tired heads.

Worth it. Every second.

P.S. two warm recommendations for your next trip to Windermere:

• Enjoy a cake at Lucy’s on a Plate in Ambleside.

• Stop for a pint and free WiFi at The Mortal Man in Troutbeck.

They say that The Olympics is a once in a lifetime experience. They say that if it comes to your city you should greet it with open arms and an open heart. It will fill your nation with pride, and will present your city to the world.  

What they don’t say is that it’s easier to grow wings and fly than it is to get any sort of ticket worth getting! We went through three rounds of a ticket lottery in order to get our £100 tickets for Diving on a Thursday morning!

For any other event, on any other occasion, we would cry foul and possibly growl. But for this, the one and only London Olympics I expect to see in my lifetime, we did what the British do best; we kept a stiff upper lip, and enjoyed the long distance splashes as the Divers hit the water. (luckily we had our binoculars and some zoom lenses with us)

And when I say we kept a stiff upper lip, what I mean is we eventually kept a stiff upper lip, but only after trying to claim some better seats twice. (The efficient German way) What I learnt was that the British don’t do that, and their lips get extra stiff if anyone tries. 

It was well worth taking the day off for, and just seeing this amazing whale-like Aquatics Centre doing what it was built to do. The atmosphere was electric, so many smiling faces! 

I really got into the spirit of the Olympics and can now say that I own the full Team GB running kit. (I plan to trick people into thinking I’m an Olympian on my morning runs.)

You could say the Olympics are not all flowers and rainbows, however they are actually all flowers! The Olympia Park in London should win awards as bee-ing the most bee-friendly Olympics ever!

The Games Makers (volunteers) were all so helpful and the whole experience left me with an even greater love for this fine city of London. GO TEAM GB!

I love taking photos of absolutely everything and share a lot of them online.

However, tens of thousands of new images are posted on social networks and blogs every minute, so how you make yours stand out?!

At yesterday’s London Bloggers Meetup – The Photography Edition – I presented eight photography tips and learnings from my most popular shots. They went down quite well, so I thought I’d share them here, too. 

Number 1: Be Prepared For Photo Taking Opportunities.

No matter which device you prefer, have it handy and charged as you never know when a photo taking opportunity might occur. And of course your mobile phone means you can share them straight away!

Lately I find myself taking most of my photos with my iPhone as it’s always with me. It fits in every handbag and there are many software filters and apps available that help me take great photos even without my DSLR.

My all time favorite iPhone Photo Apps are Instagram, Best Camera, Adobe Photoshop Express, Hipstamatic, Autostitch Panorama and IncrediBooth.

If software filters aren’t quite good enough for your smartphone and you, I recommend you to get one of these ‘One-Size-Fits-All Lenses’ – like the olloclip. It will expand your photo-taking repertoire by at least 3 lenses: Macro, Fisheye and Wide Angle!

Number 4: Change The Perspective.

The difference between a good photo and a great photo is perspective.

Are you photographing your subject in a unique and interesting way?

Play with your environment and make something worth sharing.

Number 5: Play With The Rules.

I recommend you to learn the rules of photography, but don’t be afraid to break them: Shoot directly into the sun, shoot while throwing your camera, take photos from underwater, through magnifying glasses, plastic lenses, at night, with long exposure or light writing! You never know how a perfect photo might be captured.

Number 6: Sum It Up With Your Images. 

Have you been on a holiday, at a concert, to a party or an exhibition? Try and express the situation, the feeling, the atmosphere in one photo that sums up what you will remember best about the event.

Number 7: Share Wisely.

Share only a few photographs rather than 50, otherwise people might get bored and turn away. Make sure you add value to the conversation.

Think about yourself: Which images get your attention?

Do you like taking photos of your food, too? Use them to recommend restaurants or dishes to others via Foursquare or Foodspotting.

The more you interact and engage with other people’s photography, the more they’ll engage with yours. Join a community, do photo challenges, and build a following on Instagram.

If you tag your Instagram photos with a specific #hashtag you can use Instagrid or Gramfeed to instantly create galleries and keep track and share sets of photos for yourself, your holiday, a conference or event.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Guess that means a thousand pictures are worth a million words. Now that’s a conversation.

However, the quality of your conversation depends on the quality of your pictures!  

Now get ready and start experimenting with your photos and don’t forget to share the best ones!

I am a fan of B&Bs. So whenever I am not on a business trip, I always choose B&Bs over hotels as they make me feel at home. I like the individual style; that you get to know the owners, who usually have some helpful advice, and that you often meet new people at the breakfast table.

Last weekend I had a stop over in Montreal on my way back from our team meeting in Fredericton, and I stayed in a particular cute one with the lovely name “Couette et Chocolat”.

It was my first trip to this side of Canada, so when choosing the B&B I based my decision purely on Tripadvisor and Bookings.com reviews. I usually compare at least two sites, that way I can make sure the reviews are accurate. This strategy has never let me down. I also never choose the top rated ones – as often these owners are just very clever marketers and have their ways to get on top of the rankings. I try to choose one out of the top 50 and always make sure that there are some recent reviews by real people with real sounding names.

For my eventual choice, Couette et Chocolat, the reviews didn’t promise too much. It was in the best location one could find for a first time visit in a city, in walkable distance to all the tourist highlights: The historic City Centre “Old Montreal“, the Old Port, the shopping street Sainte Catherine Ouest, Boulevard Saint Laurent, Rue Saint Denis and even Mont Royal. And I walked it all. Twice.

I got to Montreal without having done any research apart from getting the advice of my lovely colleagues. They suggested a precise walking route that proved to be the best way to get to know all tastes of the city: English, French, Multi-Ethnic! It was perfect.

My very favorite part: Rue Saint Denis in the evening sun.

They also sent me a great YouTube video about a local delicacy, a Schwartz’s, which proved to be so popular, I couldn’t even get a bite!

Thanks again @Jenn_Seeley!

So if you ever have the chance for a stop over in Montreal, remember this B&B, and the walking route. I also recommend adding:

• A walk up to Parc du Mont-Royal.

•  A brunch in one of the lovely restaurants in Mont Royal Avenue and in Rue Saint Denis.

• And a visit at Marche Jean-Talon

These additions to your trip will make sure you fall in love with this city, too!

Here are some more photo impressions. I particularly love the street art culture:

This is a quick account of our first trip to Southeast Asia – and to Thailand specifically, where we had quite an adventure. A lot of it was underwater, but some of it was above water, too. There were amazingly pretty waters, beaches, bamboo huts and breathtaking sunsets.

But lets start at the beginning. Our initial reason to spend 15 days on the famous Diving Mecca of Koh Tao, was to get our passports to the underwater world, also known as an Open Water license. We booked the course with Master Divers as they have been recommended to us by many online sources and were a lovely bunch of people, with a smelly old dog and two cats.  

We had two days to settle in, in our little beach hut at Bow Thong on the Turtle Island, before our diving course started.

So we spent one of those days on a traditional long boat with a massive outboard motor going around the entire island and testing the best snorkeling sites.

This was memorable for two reasons: We can now officially say we swam with sharks, and not in a business sense – more precisely with black reef sharks. And the second reason involved my foot and some sharp coral. 

After the diving course, we moved a kilometer to the north, to a tiny island called Koh Nang Yuan. It’s known as one of the loveliest island getaways in the whole world…

And this is its biggest problem. Do not go to the beach between the hours of 11 and 2pm as you will find every tourist, who ever lived, and half the population of Japan, plus their tablet cameras. However, if you actually stay on the island and wait for them all to leave, you will find a paradise where the world stops and takes a deep breath. And we enjoyed these moments for three blissful days.

You can see some of the ant-like tourists arrive here: 

Also real ants! And the whole of the adventure in handy video form with a cool soundtrack that sings about sunshine: (My second favorite thing)

Koh Tao Underwater Chillaxing from matthew snyman on Vimeo.

After the half-day paradise island of Koh Nang Yuan, we decided to get a new place to stay, where the paradise lasted 24/7. We found a local boat captain who took us to just the spot.

We got a bamboo hut on the rocks by the beach.

There was only electricity for 8 hours a day, an open bathroom with a tree growing in it, and no real windows. But there was a hammock and this view:

 What more could you want? Well the neighbors had a python in the shower, but we can’t all be so lucky! The best we got was some big spiders, bats and multi-colored geckos. They were especially welcome as they feasted on those horrible mosquitos.

Remember earlier when I said the coral attacked me? Well literary that is what happened and by this point in the adventure I needed medical treatment. Warning! If you ever cut yourself on coral, go to the chemist or doctor immediately. Don’t wait for your foot to get an infection and grow twice as large. This is a lesson I learned the hard way and it prevented me from going into the water for 3 entire days! Not easy when you’re staying on a beach in 35 degree heat. So we went hiking instead and found some amazing remote corners of the island…

All in all our trip had all the recipes of a really good holiday: turquoise waters with sharks, Japanese tourists, island getaways, hammocks, hundreds of fruit shakes, and some amazing Thai food. 

So if you decide to have your own adventure there, please remember this paradise has some rules to keep it special for the next adventurer:

I grew up with Kodak. I took my first photographs with an analogue camera and Kodak film. The brand was stamped all over the world on every convenience store, on every bus stop, and in every shopping street. Kodak was photography. And to me the brand always had something more, something magical. Kodak meant memory keeping.

It let me remember my childhood; helped me relive my first trip to the United States, which I spent most of the time looking through a viewfinder! And I will never forget the joy in my grandmother’s eyes as she held her first Kodak Digital Camera, which I gave her on her 70^th birthday.

Sure, there were always other brands; more recently, but Kodak was the first, and only photography brand for me. Working for Kodak was always a big dream.

I am currently writing this at my desk in Hemel Hempstead, the company’s sales and marketing headquarters in Europe. I just took the sticker ‘Kodak Girl’ off my laptop because like all great things, there has to be an end.

My draws are empty. My bags are packed. It’s my last day here. This will be the last thing I write on this particular laptop. As I look out across our open plan office, I see some wonderful people that I have been really privileged to get to know and work with. And I think of all the great people not here, at our other offices around the world and at our agencies. 

I am proud to say I worked for Kodak. My big dream came true.

I want to thank everyone who made these last years very special, everyone who supported me, and especially those who believed in Kodak.

For me it is time for a new chapter in my working life, for new adventures, and for new dreams. In two weeks time I will start at Salesforce’s Radian6 as their Marketing and Community Manager for Europe. But before that, I plan to go exploring the underwater worlds in the Gulf of Thailand with my Kodak PlaySport.

From the bottom of my heart, I wish you well Kodak!

Thanks for all the memories. 

I love travelling and so does Matt, but recently we had a really hard time deciding where to go for our next holiday (actually leaving next Wednesday).  

There are just too many places on our “have to visit” list. So we started writing down our top 3 places each and evaluated the pros and cons. We wanted to go to a really special, even ‘surreal’ place, but we also wanted summer sun and heat and sea… 

We spent many Saturday evenings looking at inspiring Vimeo videos like this “IN ASIA” series, and looking through Quora answers. 

My favorite Quora question is “What are the most surreal places one can ever visit?“. So far people have collected 48 of the most surreal places on earth and have shared some truly amazing photographs. Stunning photos of all the places I also found on 500px and I included the links below.

It turned out that my friend Emiel (@vandenboomen on Twitter) is also a great fan of that Quora list. 

So we decided to each choose our Top 10 Most Surreal Places and share it with you. 

Here is Emiel’s list and below is mine – lets compare! And BTW, we have not seen each other’s lists, before our posts went live. 

 1. Maya Bay, Thailand – a stunningly beautiful bay that’s sheltered by 100-metre high cliffs on the sides. The famous movie “The Beach” was filmed here. Doesn’t it just look unreal?!

 2. Angkor Wat, Cambodia – a gigantic breathtaking complex of 12th century temples in Cambodia with crazy and surreal trees that are growing over the buidlings.

3. Cappadocia, Turkey – apparently it feels like you enter a Dali painting. Yes, I would agree looking at this photo.

4. The white Desert, Egypt – according to the Quora post it is the most lunar place you can find and it looks like there are patches of snow in the desert.  

5. The Socotra Island - an island south of the Arabian Peninsula, part of the Yemeni Republic. Its plant life is unique to the island and it is commonly regarded as the most alien place on earth.

6. Petra, Jordan – the historical and archaeological city in the Jordanian governorate of Ma’an with its surreal rock cut architecture and water conduit system. 

7. The Pinnacles (Cervantes), Australia – surreal limestone Pinnacles that came from seashells in an earlier epoch rich marine life. 

8. Machu Picchu, Peru – a pre-Columbian 15th-century Inca site located surreal 2,430 metres above sea level.

9. Crystals Cave, Naica, Mexico – it was only discovered in 2000 while doing excavations on a minelt. It contains some of the biggest crystals in the world. The selenite crystals can reach 1.2 meters of diameter and 15 meters long. 

10. Mono Lake, California, USA – a lake with very odd rock formations, about 100 miles South of Lake Tahoe. 

And of course we want to hear your Top 10 List of surreal places, too. If you can decide, or if you have other surreal places you are missing on this list, don’t forget to add them to the Quora list. You are probably curious which holiday destination we chose in the end. Well it is not exactly Maya Bay, Thailand, but very close, just at the other side of the country – Koh Tao, and Nang Yuan, little diving islands. If you look at some of the pictures on 500px you might understand why. It was amazing to find how many people seem to have the same desire: To go to really special places, ideally the most surreal places on the planet. 

I have a feeling this Quora list has actually sorted out my holiday plans for the next few years!