I think this is the Bow Bridge in Central Park, New York. There was a bit too much vegetation for my taste in this puzzle, what I enjoyed most was the water 🙂
Romantic Bridge, 2020-05-24
Tag: 2020
The Enchanted Wood, 2020-05-24
Fantasy image with waterfall and two unicorns. You can hardly see them in the photo, but I could see them clearly, I just couldn’t get a better photo. Not my favourite image of all time, but I’ll do pretty much any 500-piece Ravensburger and enjoy it 🙂
Taj Mahal, 2020-05-23
Nice enough 500-pieces Ravensburger with an image of the Taj Mahal. One piece missing, unfortunately. I can’t find much to say about this one 🙂
The Dolomites, 2020-05-23
An Alpine landscape, one of the most typical puzzle images in Europe since at least the ’70s, probably longer. I enjoyed the sky and the rock, but, as usual, I wasn’t crazy about the vegetation. This puzzle has been done many times before, it was pretty worn, as you can see.
Map of Germany, 2020-04-19
So, guess where I am? That’s right, I’m finally back in Dortmund. I flew in yesterday, on a flight with only about 20 people and walked through two ghostly airports. I’ll return to Helsinki in a week, and then I’ll have to quarantine for 14 days. I already prepared by buying plenty of supplies, and I’ll bring fresh fruit and vegetables from Germany. When I did this puzzle in April I had no idea when I would be able to get to Dortmund, and I was feeling rather wistful.
Anyway, the puzzle was easier than I expected, and so much fun.
I did the border first, then the water in the north (there’s not much of it, compared to Finland) and the neighbouring countries (all white). I was expecting the rest to be difficult, but the background colour helped quite a lot, it was green in the lower regions in the north and more brown/yellow in the mountains in the south.
Along the border, there are the coats of arms of the states with size and the state capital. Below is the coat of arms of North Rhine-Westphalia, not the biggest state but by far the most populous. The capital is Düsseldorf, although the biggest city (and the only one with over a million inhabitants) is Cologne (Köln in German). Dortmund is the third-largest city in NRW.
There’s also a small map with the states and capitals.
Here’s a close-up of the area I know best. Many times I have flown to Düsseldorf and taken a train that first goes north to Duisburg, then turns east towards Dortmund over Essen and Bochum. I did this yesterday, for the first time in four months.
I loved this puzzle and will definitely keep it to do again.
Elephant’s Life, 2020-03-29
Another instalment in Marino Degano’s Life-series. I’ve done the dog, and have the cat still to do.
There were many funny details as usual. Here some young birds are reading about elephants. I know Barbar, there are both books and animations, but I’ve not heard about Elmar before.
Some of the stuff was a bit too gruesome for my taste, though. The hacked off leg was definitely in this category. Perhaps I’m just in the wrong mood.
Birds campaign against ebony trade.
This was one of the releases from this year, and I was very happy to see that the quality was excellent and the pieces thick. I had a bad experience with a Heye from 2016 recently.
Danger Mouse: Cripes!, 2020-04-05
Danger Mouse was (apparently) a British animated series, originally from 1981. From the puzzle, Danger Mouse looks like a James Bond for children, but I don’t really know the series.
The image was fun, but, unfortunately, the quality of the puzzle was not that great. The pieces are sturdy enough, but they will fit where they don’t belong so that I had to be really careful while placing pieces. Sometimes I had two candidates and wasn’t sure what piece was the correct one. The brand, Paul Lamond Games, was new to me and I wouldn’t want to do a puzzle with large monochrome areas by them, but with a good image, it’s OK. Not great, but acceptable.
[The Dogs of Winter], 2020-03-07
I was not exactly looking forward to this (I got it with a lot of other puzzles), and it turned out to be quite difficult. It wasn’t helped by the fact that the quality of Peliko puzzles isn’t all that great, but mostly, the problem was the image. After I had spread out the pieces only the pink tongue jumped out at me, but after I had connected those four pieces I was a bit like “Now what?”.
The snow on the bottom half was pretty easy, but the final 200-250 pieces, the blurry trees in the background, turned out to be quite difficult. I ended up sorting according to shape but there were still variations in colouring, so it wasn’t like I had to resort to brute force. There was no title for the puzzle, as happens a lot with Peliko.
Dry Cleaning, 2020-03-22
A lovely Mordillo image on a ’90s Heye puzzle. It’s less busy than many Modrillo images, but there were enough variations even in the grey areas so that it was pretty easy. Fun!
The Mischief, 2020-03-21
This was the last from a lot of 500-piece puzzles that I got very cheap. There was one Heye that I particularly wanted, but it turned out that I actually enjoyed all those other puzzles more, especially the Clementonis with images that I would never have chosen myself. That’s the way it always goes 🙂 The only thing I didn’t like was the long, blond hairs that I found in every box.
This was so much fun. The image is a bit unusual, but it was nowhere near as difficult as I expected. The desk, the flowers and the water were the easiest parts, the rest might have been difficult in a larger piece count, but this was just right.
Puzzler1909 