Norway... 24 hour daylight (available in select locations)

June 7:  We made our way to Oslo by jet.  Another lovely and really expensive city.    It was warm, but the hotel had A/C, which is good, since the street outside the hotel was under heavy construction.
On our first day (Jun 8) in Oslo we took the Viking "Off the beaten path" bicycle tour.
A few of the more interesting attractions on the tour were in the Vulkan neighborhood, upriver.

The lizard by Phlegm in the Vulkan neighborhood

My favorite stall in Mathallen food court in the Vulkan neighborhood

Any wonder?   They weren't as good as Stan's in Santa Clara... 

On the bike ride along the Akerselva River

The next day we shmeied around Oslo and took a 15 minute ferry ride to Hovedoya island, a favorite thing to do for the natives.  There were lots of Norwegians picnicing and sunbathing this rare sunny warm day. 

In the evening, the sun sets around 10:45 PM, and the area around us was very much alive past midnight.

June 10 was a travel day.  We left Oslo and flew to Kirkenes, a town that's around 69.73°N latitude.  The arctic circle is at 65.8°N... so Kirkenese is 437km (262 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.  The next sunset there will be on July 28 near midnight.  For those of you who never saw Insomnia, with
Al Pacino and Robin Williams... I recommend it.  We streamed it from Amazon (it's only $3.00) and it provided a pretty groovy backdrop for our journey north.
On Monday morning, we boarded the good ship Kong Harald, part of the Hurtigruten line.

Alexandra in front of the Kong Harald.  This thing is bigger than the both of us

Hurtigruten ships sail up and down the Norwegian coast all year, and provide both transit (they stop at lots of small towns along the way) as well as tourism cruises.  You can tell who the transit passengers are, as some of them are sleeping on couches in the bar upstairs.

The "high point" in latitude of our trip was at North Cape (Nordkapp), where we had our breakfast tour.  We were let off the boat in Honningsvåg and driven by bus up to Nordkapp, for breakfast.

North Cape :  71.17° north.  The furthest point north in Europe and only 2100km from the North Pole.

Then the bus drove us through the Nordkapp tunnel to meet the boat in Hammerfest.  The tunnel is 7km long, 2 lanes wide, and goes under the sea.  It was completed in 1999.  Took only 6 years to build, at a cost of about $500M.   Contrast that with the new eastern span of the SF Bay bridge, which cost a whopping $6.5 billion, a 2,500% cost overrun from the original estimate of $250M . 
Go figure.
The next day, we went on the Eagle Safari.  An excursion that starts with a small boat pulling alongside our ship, and we transfer to that boat in mid-water while both boats are tied together and moving.  Then we pull away from the Kong Harald, and proceed down to the Trollfjord, with one of the crew cutting up fish and throwing them to the flock of seagulls who follow the boat. 

Once the crew sights an eagle approaching, the slow down and throw a whole fish into the water.  This is too big for a seagull to handle, but a happy meal for an eagle.

 So... today (Thur 6/14) is just a day to relax and enjoy the scenery.  When I woke up today, I saw a kind of strange thing outside our cabin window.  Most of the mountains that rise up from the fjords hwere have a scattering of snow that hasn't melted yet... but the scene I saw this morning was a huge field of snow going way back.  We were kind of far away, but it sure looked like a glacier to me.

Svartisen Glacier

Sure enough, some triangulation with Google Maps revealed this to be the Svartisen Glacier...

We have been steadily heading south.  The weather (it's been typically in the mid to upper 30's in the north) has been steadily getting warmer.  We are now below the arctic circle.

Arctic Circle monument on Vikingen island

so when we stopped in Brønnøysund this afternoon, it was a balmy 59°F.

After that, the ship passed Torghatten mountain... with a hole in it.

We are now on the way to Trondheim... More later.  The cruise finishes at 2:30PM on Saturday in Bergen, which was the capital of Norway from the 13th century until 1814.

After a stormy night with rough seas, we cruised into Bergen on Saturday afternoon.
One of Bergen's best attractions is the Fløibanen funicular, which goes up a mountain that overlooks the town of Bergen. 

One of a small herd of well-fed goats that are on the top of the mountain

Norway has a thing about trolls that I don't quite understand

On Sunday (6/17) we took a train to Mydal, to connect to the Flam railroad.  The train from Bergen to Mydal (which is a town no one lives in... just a train depot), starts with a 7km tunnel and climbs 866m (2800ft) . 

In Myrdal, we transferred to the Flam train , which drops back down to sea level.  The train stops by a waterfall about 10 min out of Myrdal on the way down (one of many) where there is also music and a strange dance by 3 women on the cliff near the waterfall.

Flam is a small town on a beautiful fjord.   We rented electric carts to drive up a road that climbs the fjord wall.  The electric carts are very small, and poor Alexandra was crammed into the back of the cart.   The view was lovely, though, and the fjord that Flam is on is very long and magnificent.

Then, back to Oslo by train.  Arriving around 10:30PM.. Still light outside!
Another 3 days in Oslo, starting with a visit to Holmenkollbakken, a ski jump built for the 1956 olympics. 

Holmenkollbakken ski jump

View from the top

The ski jump from the top

Deli de Luca is an Oslo version of 7-11 on steroids.  They bake croissants, scoop ice cream, and have an array of goodies, sandwiches, hot dogs etc.  I had been eyeing this brownie thing for some time, so on our last night in town... I finally had to go for it.

Deli de Luca brownie with caramel

So ends our adventures in Oslo, on a sugar high note.  At 5:56 AM on Wed 6/20 we were on the train to Stockholm.

Wonderful Copenhagen

6/3 :  Copenhagen
Vigil went back home to Turkenfeld, and we proceeded onward to Copenhagen where we arrived at our hotel around 10:30.  Explored a little in Nyhavn before meeting Laura (Danish AFS student from 2017) and her dad, Peter for a Copenhagen bike tour starting at Norreport station.

Everyone bikes in Copenhagen

A shout out to Laura and Peter for a great time seeing the town by bike and helping us get oriented.  In addition, we had great hot dogs for late lunch followed by ice cream.  Who could ask for more?
The next day, while Alexandra was resting up, I went out exploring and stumbled upon  Caritasbrønden and Frederiksberggade, one of many pedestrian only shopping areas. 

It was so nice to walk around it, and so easy to get to (everything is a 10-minute bike ride) that I went back to get Alexandra and came back for lunch.
On Tuesday, we went over to Christiana, known for its open cannabis market.  Christiana is an area of Copenhagen founded by a bunch of hippies that seceded from the city in the 1970's.  It's a little run down, but has the feeling of a big commune. 
Wednesday evening, at lunch, we were next to the royal palaces at Amalie restaurant and heard the theme from Monty Python coming towards us. 

The costumes remind me of the wicked witch of the west's army in Wizard of Oz. 

Wednesday night, our last night in Copenhagen, we had a lovely dinner at the Olive Kitchen (no... it's not Olive Garden), and then went to the Opera House

to watch The Barber of Seville, in Italian with Danish subtitles.  It's a convoluted plot to begin with, but in Italian, it's pretty incomprehensible.   By intermission, I figured I would at least need to read the plot synopsis in English, so I coughed up the $5 for the program.  The opera house is across the water from the royal palace and the statue of King Frederick, opera house and Amalienborg castle are all in a straight line

. 



Near the Grünerløkka neighborhood.. lots of street art / graffiti.

Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown

Title of this blog post, Holiday in Berlin, Full Blown is a Frank Zappa cut from "Burnt Weeny Sandwich".

After 2 nights in Turkenfeld and a day in Munich, Alexandra, Vigil (Alexandra's sister) and I all flew out on June 1 for our Holiday in Berlin.  Even though the train is comfortable and easy, it's over twice the price of flying... so we flew.   Berlin was very warm (in the low 90's) .   While waiting to check into our apartment, we were entertained by a violent thunderstorm including hail.  Our apartment, while spacious and nicely furnished, had no A/C, and there was a construction site right outside the windows.  Keep the windows open... very noisy.  Windows closed, very hot.  But.. we had a refrigerator, so the chocolate didn't melt. 

The location was fine, though.  A short walk to the U (metro) station with grocery and restaurants nearby.  On our first day, we did the hop-on-hop-off bus tour.  Berlin is big... young and hip.  Way more to see and do than we could hope to do in the 3 days we were there.   But... we did get

Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin... where the wall was.

to Checkpoint Charlie, and the Jewish Museum.  The Checkpoint Charlie museum was small, hot, stuffy and poorly organized... but somewhat interesting.  If you had no memory of the cold war, it was pretty hard to follow..

Checkpoint Charlie - Berlin crossing between East and West

In the course of our travels I was able to replenish my supply of Swiss chocolate, as Läderach had a store in Berlin.

Alexandra and Vigil went to church one night at Saint Ludwig.   followed by beer and good German food :

                

I Fell into a vat of Chocolate and paid the price

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb4qJ5Za6zY

Geneva:
Getting there was quite an experience.  The French unions have been on strike for several months, disrupting train service.   Additionally, the air traffic controllers strike on various days.   We were supposed to take the 2 hour train ride from Lyon to Geneva, to arrive in Geneva at 2:00 PM. Instead, we got this:  5 1/2 hot hours of bus ride which took us within 10 km of Geneva, only to turn south another 25km so we could change buses and arrive in a remote bus stop about 3 km from the central station in Geneva around 6:30 PM.  A really nice Geneva resident was on the same bus with his and accompanied a group of fellow passengers to the central train station.  Road weary, we arrived at our hotel around 7:30... then went out for dinner at Bistro de Beouf.  Geneva's version of French.  Pretty good.

One of the many cool things about Geneva is that all hotel guests get free passes to all public transit during their stay.  That said, it's a very expensive place

Re-energized the next morning, we headed out for a ride across the lake to the old town.

Flower Clock with Alexandra

Me and my fountain

Läderach  Best chocolate ever!!  But it's about $50 / kilo.

Botanical Gardens

Natural History Museum - 2 headed turtle
The only live animal in the place

Didn't take pictures of this one... but we inadvertently stumbled upon Geneva's red light district while strolling around one evening.  One establishment had ladies in the window, like a Macy's 34th street display, only tackier with colored neon lights.

French Unions strike again!!!
We had tickets to Munich to visit Alexandra's sister for May 24.  We got to the airport to find out that the Easy Jet flight was cancelled.   Later discovered that we weren't the only one.  To their credit, EasyJet gave us lunch vouchers for airport food, put us up at the Airport Crown Plaza for the night, fed us dinner and breakfast, and got us out on the same flight about 24 hrs later.  Got to go into town in the morning to replenish the chocolate supply etc.  A nice relaxing day on EasyJet's nickel.  The customer service agent who arranged all of this for us (Fanny) took good care of us.  It took a long time for the hotel to confirm, so she gave us 30e in vouchers to get lunch upstairs, and even came to find us when the confirmation was finished.  Pretty remarkable service considering that a whole slew of their flights were cancelled and they had about a 1 hour queue (fortunately for us, we were one of the first in line).
Finally got to Munich a day late and a few euros short.

Lyon - Food, Rivers, and Churches

We arrived in Lyon to find that our apartment was on the 4th floor.  No elevator.  Fortunately, the owner, Corrinne was kind enough to help us schlep our luggage up there.  It was 77 stairs in all, so we tried to limit the number of excursions / day.  The location of the place was excellent.  Really close to most attractions, restaurants, and, importantly, a short walk to some very good bakeries.
Our first sightseeing trip was an excursion to La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière .  On the way, we, of course, stopped for croissants and accidentally stumbled on The Lyon Cathedral, a.k.a. Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Lyon, which began constructions in 1180 and was finished in 1476 on the ruins of the original 6th century church.

 

 

Enjoying lunch between churches

Then up to the big Lyon attraction, La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière an over-the-top massive and ornate church that overlooks the entire city.

Toto, I think we're not in Kansas anymore!

The view from the top is pretty impressive.

Then, a short walk down the hill leads us to the Ancient Theatre of Fourvière which was built starting in 15BC and expanded in the 2nd century AD.

On Saturday, we took it easy, and walked north from our apartment about 10 minutes to Place des Terreaux, which has the Bartholdi Fountain, the The Lyon Museum of Fine Arts and some nice cafes.

Sunday we took the city bus tour.  We got off at the Musée des Confluences which has an interesting architecture and a number of exhibits including natural history, African culture etc.

Most of the rest of our week was spent schmeing around and checking out various restaurants.    

Sand sculpture street art on Rue de la République

Alexandra went to mass a couple of times at the St. Nizier Church, a massive structure about a 3 minute walk from our apartment.

On Wednesday (5/23) there was a massive labor march on the street 1/2 block from the apartment:

And on Thursday, our trip to Geneva was screwed up by yet another train strike.  Our train to Geneva (a 2 hr ride) turned into a 6 hour ordeal involving 2 buses on windy secondary roads.  At one point the first bus was only 12km away from Geneva, but he wouldn't let anyone off, as his next stop was a town 40 km south.  That was where we transferred to the bus that finally took us to Geneva... but that bus let us off pretty far from the central station and our hotel, so a friendly fellow passenger led us to the central station, where our train would've delivered us to 4 hours earlier.

I hope they were striking for something important!

Adventures in Provence

On May 10, we went to Fou de Fafa for my birthday.  Lovely restaurant owned by Antonia and Russell, who settled here from England 14 years ago.  It's a small quiet place.  Antonia runs the dining room, and Russell runs the kitchen... so there are only 3 employees including the owner, and it appears that they limit their business to what they can handle.   That said, they do an excellent job.

On May 11, we took our landlord's (Philippe's) advice and did a tour of the Luberon.  This is the hilly area or Provence northeast of Avignon that has a number of charming hillside villages.  We spent a fair amount of time in Gordes (pronounced gord), had a lovely lunch, walked around, admired views, discovered a wonderful bakery (of course) .

Then, onward to the town of Saignon.  It's most striking feature is a huge rock that rises at the top of the hill the town is on.  Adventurous sorts with good kneew can climb up to the top for a spectacular view.

Rock of Saignon stage left

Or climb partway up... knees permitting

Alexandra on the rock's first landing

The view from the top of the rock

On Monday morning we returned the car we'd had for the past 5 days, and got on the TGV for Marseille.  We had a nice lunch downtown, then took the tourist train up to Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde.  It was windy and cold that day, so we didn't spend much time there.  Sami, a colleague from my working days at Fairchild, lives near Marseille, and he drove down to show us around.  He insisted on driving us back to Avignon after driving us around Cassis (lovely place, out of my price range, and much of the area is owned by the government as a nature preserve).  

Sami and me on the rocks in Cassis

So, we set off to Avignon, but we were so engrossed in conversation that we missed the freeway exit and we were about 30 miles north of Avignon... almost in Montelimar (a town mentioned in Savoy Truffle, a Beatle's song on the White Album) before we realized it and turned on Google Maps to get us pointed back in the right direction.   No sooner were we heading south on the freeway when BANG!  we hit something.  Sami pulled over.  There was extensive damage to the front of the car.  He called for roadside assistance.  The highway is a toll road run by a private company that has its own crew that responded fairly quickly.   They called a tow truck that drove us, and 2 of the 4 cars that hit the stuff on the road to a garage in Mornas where a taxi picked all 3 of us up and dropped Alexandra and I at our place in Avignon, then proceeded to drive Sami back home.  We were back around midnight.  Sami didn't make it back until around 2:00 AM.  Apparently Sami's insurance paid for the cab (it was e125 just to Avignon, which was only 1/3 of the way to Aix-en-Provence, where Sami lives).  

Quite the adventure.  Fortunately, no one was injured.  4 cars were damaged by the debris left behind by the truck tire that came apart.   The gendarmes found the truck responsible for the debris, so I'm guessing that will help all of the people whose cars were damaged recover their losses.

The next few days we just spent hanging out and enjoying good food and scenery in Avignon including a walk across the bridge to nowhere (Pont Saint-Bénézet, also known as the Pont d'Avignon) which is a reconstruction of a bridge built in 12th century.

On Wed. night, our last night in Avignon, we returned to Fou de Fafa for our last dinner in town.  Then left Avignon on Thursday morning (May 17) for Lyon.   Philippe drove us to the TGV, bless his heart!

First week in France

Wow.  It's a low cost airline... but if our flight is any indication, you get what you pay for.  No in flight entertainment, no food or drink unless you pay, even for water ($3.50).  However, you do get to go through the Reykjavik airport.

Navigating the train system in Paris was fairly straightforward.   We finally arrived at our one night stand Hotel near Gare du Lyon around 2 o'clock Wednesday afternoon.   Morning in Paris require is an excellent croissant... which we managed to find with a combination of Google Search and dumb luck, Blé Sucré, about a 10-minute walk from our hotel.  

The 4 hour drive from Paris to Avignon is done in less than two and a half hours on the TGV train.  Unlike Bart,  Caltrain and Amtrak, TGV is both quiet and fast.

Philippe, our landlord in Avignon, met us at the Avignon TGV and drove us to the apartment that were staying in for a total of two weeks.  It's located inside the walled city and everything of interest is in walking distance.  

The Avignon street where our apartment is.  No big cars here! 

The main attraction here is the Popes Palace, perched high on a cliff overlooking the Rhone river.  

After walking and climbing so much, our knees and feet needed some rest, so we spent the next day in Aix-de-Provence.  Aix is pronounced like the letter "x" in English.  It's a lovely, expensive town.  Nice town for lunch.  La Table des Saisons .  

The next day was a double-whammy... train strike and national holiday (Victory in Europe day).  We rented a car and drove up to Pont-du-Gard.  An amazing feat of Roman engineering and construction.  Read facts here:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard.

By the time we got to Nimes for lunch, all the good places were closed.  Most restaurants open for lunch from noon to 14:00, so we ended up at a not-so-great lebanese place.  But we did get to see the the Nimes ampitheater, which is still used for soccer matches and bull fights.

Strawberries from roadside stand near Nimes

To try to make up our pathetic lunch, I booked dinner at a Le Pre Gourmand in the small town of Eyragues.   A little too fuffy for us.  The only other diners was a trio of teenagers (1 well dressed teenage girl and her two less well dressed teenage companions).  The dishes had foams and flowers.  I think I'm swearing off Michelin-starred restaurants.   The red wine was very nice (Persia Fondreche 2013) , but Alexandra, not wanting me to drink too much before driving back, finished her glass and mine...so spent some time driving the porcelain bus back at the apartment.

Our next excursion was to Caverne du Pont d'Arc, which is a cave, discovered in 1994, which contains the earliest known expression of human art.  The cave's paintings and engraving date back 36,000 years.   The cave itself is closed to tourists to preserve it, but it has been painstakingly replicated from a digitization of the original.  It took 8 years to build it.  You can marvel at the sophistication of our 36000 year prior ancestors, or marvel at the skill with which the cave was replicated in this century... or you can marvel at the fresh strawberry tart we had for dessert at lunch.

On the way back from the Caverne du Pont d'Arc, we took back roads, and stopped in the lovely little town of Pont-Saint-Espirit for ice cream (quite nice)

 and bathrooms (necessary, but unremarkable):   https://goo.gl/maps/kNLSXW5f3j32

     

And so... it begins. The great European Adventure

We've cleared out the house, settled Ivy (Kitty) in her new home (Thanks, Kevin!!) and are now currently in Reykjavik en route to Paris.  We spend only 1 night in Paris before catching a TGV (fast train) to Avignon, where we'll stay for 2 weeks at Philippe's apartment.  The map for the first half of our European stay is at:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1sIH2-ISZQn2K6CWUWS3VI8-7cdfsz0Gk&usp=sharing