Vorher (Before)

And Nachher (After) is in the extras.

We had a day out - as you do on holiday.  We sailed to the little island of Mainau because it is a huge garden on an island, and if you know me at all, you  know that I always look for gardens to visit, even though I have no horticultural talents whatsoever.

And it was fantastic.  The gardens are really good (although the Palm House is more of a television studio with seats) and they have a Butterfly House.

Who can remember the German for "the butterfly"?  10 points if you said "der Schmetterling".

This lovely example was sitting on a leaf (no idea what it is) and opened its wings - that's my extra for today.  It was such a knock-out surprise to see that colour hidden.  And it is not a small butterfly, about 10cm (4 inches) top to bottom of that wing.

Suffice to say that many pictures of butterflies were taken.

And then as we went further round the garden we discovered they were having a Dahlia Exhibition-cum-Competition.  Choose your favourite from over 250 varieties of Dahlia - and it was bed after bed of dahlias, a complete sensory overlaod.  Absolutely beautiful and another 40 pictures taken.

I can recommend the island but we were disappointed that we found nowhere to have a glass of Sekt.

And so we took a boat to Konstanz where ZDF were filming a horrible music show.  We ignored that and eventually found a lovely Hinterhof where we could enjoy a glass of bubbles.  That was really good.

Then another boat back to base.  And as we arrived back the sun started to shine and so we scuttled along the sea front to blag a table next to the lake and to enjoy another glass of Sekt in the sun.

Home now before heading out to eat something.  Holidays are ace.