Prowling my world, camera in hand

The first few pictures this week are from my neighbourhood, as usual. But the bulk are from a trip to Switzerland which began on Thursday morning with a 1350 km drive from Alicante to Orbe, near Lausanne, where my son has been living for the past year. It was a very picture-rich trip. The main gallery is on main travel site. What I show here are mainly pictures of people in the streets of Lausanne, Bern and Montreux. The pictures are presented chronologically.

First a few Alicante pics from the early part of the week.

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Spain is a country with many laws and rules. Some are respected, some are ignored. This is a construction site in my neighbourhood. Like every such site, it has a sign outlining all the safety rules that must be followed. As shown by the guy working in the background, such rules are almost universally ignored here:

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Early morning light, noticed while walking my dog:

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On the same walk, a black kitten noticed my dog and tried to make himself look threatening:

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If this were a painting, I suppose I would call it “Alicante sky with lamppost and bird”:

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A scene which holds deep meaning for me. A man is waiting outside a clothing shop while his woman is shopping inside. Initially he was standing outside, but finally he entered the shop, just slightly, to avoid the afternoon heat. I have been in this position many, many times during my marriage:

The remaining pictures are from Switzerland. No pictures from the drive, we covered the 1350 km in about 12 hours, so there was little time left for stopping and taking pictures along the Spanish and French motorways that constituted the bulk of the drive.

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On Friday morning, we stopped at a café near Lake Geneva between Lausanne and Vevey. We were going to look at the vineyards in the area. My children were happy to be re-united:

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Every self-respecting bar or café must have its cat:

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View of Lake Geneva near the café:

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There was some gymnastics event taking place in Lausanne, and although these British visitors do not look particularly athletic, they had some part in it:

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It was a warm day, so we ate lunch outside. Of course, I checked out the other guests at neighbouring tables:

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The table on the other side:

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Lausanne is very hilly, and there are many nice lookout points like this one:

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My daughter bought some organic cosmetics at the Lush shop in the centre of Lausanne. The woman serving her turned out to be a vegan too, although you wound not think so when looking at her:

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While my daughter was shopping, I hung around outside:

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Despite the heat, these two men were impeccably dressed. They carried on an animated conversation for several minutes:

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Creative transport solution:

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Colour-coordinated transport:

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Skateboarding and rollerskating are popular in Lausanne. Here in the lakeside neighbourhood Ouchy:

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Urban fauna, Ouchy café:

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Ouchy is also the part of town where seedier establishments are located:

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In the evening we had dinner at an excellent Ethiopian restaurant in Lausanne:

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On Saturday morning we drove to Bern to have a look at Switzerland’s federal capital. On the way, we stopped in the town of Murten, on the banks of the Murtensee. We were planning to rent bicycles there the next day and cycle around the lake (about 30 km). Here, a group of beginning windsurfers are getting their first lesson:

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Couple in Bern looking down on the river:

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This is what they were looking at, Bern’s famous bear park by the river:

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On the edge of Bern’s main shopping district, a little girl is fascinated by the loaded scooter:

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Wife is shopping, husband taking pictures. Sounds familiar…:

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Big Mac being loaded for the trip home:

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Saturday afternoon, back in Lausanne, we were going to Montreux for the last evening of the jazz festival. In fact, the festival has always interpreted the word “jazz” extremely liberally, and we were going there for a Deep Purple concert. Because we anticipated that parking in Montreux would be impossible, we took the train from Lausanne instead. A lot of other festival-goers did the same:

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In Montreux, people were relaxing on the lawn next to the festival venues:

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We sat down for a drink and looked at the traffic passing by:

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We walked around the festival grounds a bit before going to our concert venue. We met this smiling DJ with a blue face:

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The lakeside bars were crowded:

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Two angels talking. “Angel” is the expression used for designated driver. The local police had a campaign going, quite understandably:

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Now inside the concert hall. It was standing room, so like many others, my son and I sat down on the floor during the half-hour changeover between the opening act and Deep Purple:

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Deep Purple on stage, but too far away to get pictures of the musicians. DSLRs and the like were not allowed inside the concert hall, but my little Fuji X100 was not considered a “serious” camera by the doormen and so was let in:

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Instead, I tried to capture the mood by focusing on the audience:

The above picture was taken just before midnight on Saturday, and so ended a very nice week.