| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-27 Riga
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
Friday, July 29, 2011
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
on cold showers, showers and food in Riga
We got off the boat at Riga port and walked to the tram. The tram came and we boarded, but another tourist couple, the wife walking with 2 crutches slowly were hurrying to catch the same tram, the husband tried to plea for the tram lady driver to wait 20 seconds. She shouted at him in Russian or Estonian something about holding back the transport system in the city; Welcome to Riga.
Regardless of that incident we loved Riga. The city is clean and pretty.
We left the tram at the opera house and walked a few blocks to our cinnamon sally hostel, we walk the street with all the bags and a woman approaches me and asks if I need directions, I automatically go into scam mode and protect my valuables (the pouch), we show her on the map where we want to go and she introduces herself as Cinnamon sally, our hostel owner, talk about luck. She is not a red head btw (cinnamon) but used to bake cinnamon rolls and got the nick name for that. So she walks us to the hostel and explains about Riga.
We put our bags at 11:43 or so and ask the staff in the friendly hostel of what to do in Riga, since we didn’t plan much. And she marks on the map what to do and says that there is a free Riga alternative tour at 12:00 from down town old city, its now 11:50 and we decide to go. So after having only a small not good cake on the ferry for breakfast and nothing to drink, we leave the hostel and run to the old city to st peter’s church. The initial tour introduction has begun but we made it. For the next 2 hours the guide walks us out of the old city and in to the interesting markets, passing by art galleries, the Russian quarter, explains about Latvian history, all the occupations and burning down of the city, shows us where to eat and over all gives an excellent introduction to the city. The tour focuses on Riga beyond the old city, the Real Riga. We end the tour by the KGB building (presumably not in use today, though some people say otherwise) , this building, a 3 story high is the tallest in Riga, why? Because from its basement you could already see Siberia in soviet times.
The tour ended and we went to Fabrika, a local cafeteria restaurant. We tried some turkey with honey mustard sauce which was divine! With great mash potatoes , alla had also 3 salads (tomatoes and cabbages , beet salad and cucumber and tomatoes salad) and I had a great spicy carrot salad with some sort of seeds. After sandwiches and even the ships buffet, this was the best meal for me In the whole trip.
The best thing is that it was so cheap (compared to Scandinavia). After that we walked the streets and reaching the art Nuevo district. They say Riga is the premier site for such buildings and I agree (though, have not seen the competitions) wow houses with sculptures and other stuff, really impressive, it started raining in the middle so we stopped at a local café and had good deserts. The 10 minutes downpour stopped after 9.30 minutes and we continued walking the Alberta and Elizabeth ilea (streets). We continued towards the old town passed the statue of freedom which is a woman holding 3 stars to represent the 3 areas of Latvia, the soviets didn’t tear it down cause they said it was mother Russia holding the 3 Baltic states.
The old town is very nice, full of cobble stones , shops, narrow lane, tourist and lots of restaurants. We completed the town tour quickly with a stop at the Latvian occupation museum and pass the amazing blackhead house (the house of unmarried merchants, if you are unmarried, then you are deemed to not have an interest in Riga, therefore your status is low and you get drafted sooner)
We had some ice cream by the best ice cream shop in Riga (said the guide, I tend to disagree on this one) and returned to the hostel, later we went to drinks with fellow hostellers for a fun evening with an English accent speaking Russian, a Serb chef from Norway who speaks too much about how many immigrants in Switzerland . a Polish guy who drank too much and spoke about the large amounts of drinks poles can drink, a new Yorker from Michigan who asked Alla for tips on hitting on the locals and us. I had a low quality Mai Tai and alla had a Cosmo.
We had to check out of the hostel, it was full and we didn’t book the 2nd night early enough, and the next morning we headed for the Israeli embassy.
One of us forgot a passport! And it’s not me! I call it now diplomatic samathoch (general chaos). After forgetting the passport papers in Alaska, and having to go to the ministry of the interior in Israel, one should learn to bring all passports so we can go to st Petersburg. Unlucky for us the console is out of town, it would cost a lot to ship the passport here, and also a lot to make a new one in a hurry, so it appears that st Petersburg is out.
After the embassy we tried the Russian embassy go get a crash visa, but there is over a week queue so no go. We went to lunch at Lido which is a chain serving traditional foods (and waiters dressed in traditional clothing) serving excellent simple food so we had some more chicken with fries this time, alla tried more salads and we were both very pleased.
From there we went to the markets full of smells sounds and sights, with fresh quality food. We tried krushovnik (I call it cancer grape) which is grape size, thicker peel, with whit lines on the outside, looks sickly. But alla likes it. We tried some red currents and various samples of bread, tevorek cheese, honey cake, cucumbers that actually taste like and look like cucumbers should taste and look ,and Alla tried some Kvass (local root beer). From there we saw the Jewish ghetto museum.
It was dinner time by now and we went back to Fabrika which was about to close and did not have the honey mustard sauce or the mash potatoes so I tried the carrot salad and a nice desert and there went to Lido for the real dinner of chicken shishlik (very good , made like in Israel), carrot salad ( I need this recipe) and some strawberry kefir (I thing its “rivion” in Israel), not sure what in us ). I am not a fan of yogurts, but I love these kefir. It like a very thick milk, not as thick as yogurt, but when you add strawberries or other stuff to it, it’s great. Very very full later we packed our bags, relocated to the other hostel and planned to sleep for an hour to go karaoke later with the hostel gang, but we woke up in the morning.
It’s about 11 am now. We called the embassy to see if the consol is back, but we decide to skip the hassle and after having left over breakfast and cold showers (no hot water, something is wrong with the pipes) we left rainy Riga (it rained a few minutes yesterday and the day before, but today it rains all day), we couldn’t go to the beach as planned for the rain.
We reached the nearby bus station and tried to catch a Tallinn bus, it was full, instead of waiting 2 hours for the buss, we hopped on another bus, to Vilna (Vilnius), and another country , 5th in this trip!, we will be there in 3 hours, I hope it want rain, I hoped we will find a hostel quickly, we have no knowledge of the city, but worry not, I don’t (notice I didn’t say we).
Cheers from the Vilnius bus, seat number 33,34
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
We will likely leave cheap, good food and pretty Riga for Tallin, for now here are a few Stockholm pics
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-24 stockholm
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
what makes Alla tick
We are now on a nice cruise ship heading for Riga.
After 3 says with a salad for me I needed some non food food and we went to Max (the local burger joint) for exactly what I expected, round and ok burger, not more, but I had a craving, but if you can skip Max, skip Max.
We took a train, then a bus to the ship and carried are bags in. it is so different then American cruise ships, no security!! Not even a passport check, so nice, we just self checked ourselves and went in.
Since we spent last night in nature, n nights ago in the car, and a night before in nature as well and many nights with time showers (4-6 minutes each) , a shower is luxury!!, I already took 2 this evening and plan for 3 more just because I can, from now on no more tenting, it’s harder to tent in cities and its cheaper most place we go from now on, but perhaps we will tent again.
Today we saw something unusual on alla’s back that looked like a tiny tree branch, after a close examination we found it was a tick, a small one borrowing in, so we took the tick out and found another. This is one more reason why we may not be tenting any more, but that is what happens when you spend an hour in the bush squatting for blueberries, nature’s revenge.
In the ship after eating cheap mostly we splurged and went to the buffet and we pigged out like starving pigs in a pig sty buffet.
Back to Flam
On the next day we took the car to Visgody, then took the bus to Aurlandsen to start our hike. It started in a nice valley with a lake and green hills, then followed a river with many flowers. At one point the trail split and we took the high trail, the harder one and climbed up through narrow high brush to a small peak where we took some playful photos of amazing waterfalls and regular us. From there we started walking down for 5-6 hours the valley was long and the descend difficult but all in the views of waterfalls and high mountains. I don’t know if you know but alla has a fear of bridges (tall ones especially) and here we had to walk over several rivers on top of serious waterfall, the kind you don’t survive (“I will survive” is played now by the cruise band). At first she wouldn’t cross, but got some courage and slowly went to the other side. We crossed several bridges on this hike and others all the way to jumping over the bridge to the rive a few days ago. I guess this is the best way to overcome a fear, tackle it head on, she did and it feels great, now all we have to do is find a tall bridge to drive over. We kept walking passing tiny cheese making farms and reached the end with tired feet and knees but satisfied from a very beautiful hike. After the hike we left Flam , passed gudvangen again and drove in a very nice green mountain pass with awesome views passed Voss to town of Vik.
At Vik we stopped for a major nature stop and during this stop I spoke to the owner of the restaurant we pulled over by. She was sweeping up and berating her husband. She said Norwegians are the worst (they dropped food on the floor and walked on it). This was after closing time and the place was empty. But has amazing views of Vick and the fjords so I took some shots. We continued to Vick and Alla splurged on a salmon burger at a somewhat fancy place and I had a chicken burger at the gas station (surprisingly ok). Then we drove to Vangese for the car ferry crossing. We checked the prices on the bulitin boards and noticed we are about to get wallet raped, but not much choice. On the ferry we found we had to pay 101 instead of 800 (kronars.. 16$ instead of 128$) for a 20 minutes cross, so we pleased, we decided to skip balestrand as we originally planned (needed two more ferry crossings) and drove towards solvorn, we stayed the night in another camp with timed showers. The next day we reached the glacier, it was our 1st day of rain (we had amazing weather till then) and we were late for the last tour, so we walked up to the glacier but did not go on it (that day) , that was our most wasted day of the trip, but we spent time to make sure such a day does not return.
That is it , I think we are all caught up
Now I am busy booking my Riga hostel, we already know where to go to see Riga in 2 days, then off to Tallinn, st Petersburg and Helsinki, or perhaps our plans will changes J
Cheers from the music lounge on the ship Romantika
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
Our top of Norway hike
Cheers from back in Stockholm
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-21 gladpikken
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
Our top of Norway hike
Cheers from back in Stockholm
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-21 gladpikken
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-20 hole diving, rafting, bridge jumping and lom
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
on sven, goran and ericson
We got off the boat yesterday and went with our somewhat too many bags to the isle of Gallno, the island is green and wooded with wildflowers, and we walked up the path through the village feeling like a 100 years ago. We passed via the tiny youth hostel with the closed office, but it also had a kitchen , so we went in and cooked a bag of pasta we have been carrying for several days, we made sure to clean and tidy up (we are not rude thieves, but polite burglars). We continued on dragging our trolley behind for 3k to the camp site. We pitched the tent and went for an island stroll through the woods. We spotted blueberries and alla began a picking operation (which included me), and for close to an hour we picked the tiny blue\purple berries to a bag. Than we strolled for an hour or two more while alla ate the berries and then we passed by a boat, so we took it (it’s permitted to take this boat) to a nearby island (50 meters away), it took us a while to get there, since the boat did not respond well to our amateur attempts of rowing. We hiked a bit on the other island than rowed back poorly as well, went back to camp and went to sleep early on the Baltic coast.
We woke up early at 5:30 , packed up and walked the 3k back carrying the trolley and backpacks to the boat and took a short ride to Grinda island. We walked about on the island (we left our bags at the harbor) and Alla picked wild flowers and had a Samarkand which is a Swedish sandwich with some cream, crab meat, shrimp, lettuce and caviar. Now we wait for the boat back to Stockholm.
Back in time, a week ago we left Oslo and headed north through the pretty country side passing amazing lake that we would consider lame to what comes up next, but in the beginning they were impressively blue and calm with nice green surrounding. We passed a bear park and didn’t stop, but we did stop at a little crater (500 meters diameter meteor) and got a nice meteor lecture with a short crater hike. We continued north and reach Flam which would be our fjord base came for the next few days. We built our tent and figured out our plans.
In the morning we went on the famous fjord cruise to Aurland, Undrehal and Gudanven, all cute towns on the fjord with the tall cliffy mountains next to them. I developed a seagull frenzy and took many shots of them and the amazing views.
At gudenvagen a special treat waited for us, a Viking camp. This is a real movement, people returning to nature, live like Viking (minus the raiding), dress like Viking, eat home grown food, live in tents, make they own tools and you can join them and live for a week or a month and learn Viking games, various Viking trade etc.. we just did the Viking sneak peak, and watched the various crafts. They also made tools in ancient smithy ways including the hammer and rock underneath , did things with Yarn, leather and cloth, and also made bows and arrows, and authentic looking armor and shields. They played games, one was to stick a knife on a poll, place a rod between your legs, while grabbing it from behind your back underneath your **, jump up and known the knife off, the game was accompanied with wisecrack comments. Another game was a race where you have to run with the next leg behind the other, very uncoordinated sort of race, they also displayed some sword play and archery. I tried some honey dipped Viking bread and we continued walking the ground, tents and Vikings. They also had a Viking ship which you could sail on (we did not). A tooth less Viking was a juggler, juggling swords, lit torches , apples and was also spitting fires with a very cool display. We finished our Viking tour and returned to Flam only to find out that one of the credit cards is lost, so we went back to Gudanven, by car this time through the 11k tunnel and tried to find it, it wasn’t there, since it was in a pocket in a vest belonging to Lost who forgot it on the bus. So we tried heading back, but the 11k tunnel was closed(not sure why) so we went the other way to find something to do and found a camp. We pulled over and met bjorn (or whatever his name was). Bjorn worked with disabled kids during the year and shows them horses and all sort of cool natural things and in the summer he hikes a lot, winter ski’s and misses his daughter, in this month he works at this camp, and now waits for parts to fix a water problem (no water currently), so we sit and talk to Ulaf (a.k.a bjorn) who tells about his life and all the Fantastik things he does, and everything thing with him is Fantastik, and he says it in a funny way, so gustav is known as Mr Fantastik. He tried to light a fire with wet wood and is unable, but he speaks with glee about Norway and its nature and we eat our evening meal of bread and cheese. After a while his friends comes back with part and odin runs away to help only to return 3 minutes later and sit back with us, he has time, not many people right now in the camp. We sit on and gundar tells us about this unique crevice. This hole is full of icicle, even if it’s warm outside, this long tunnel goes all the way to the glacier and continuously blows freezing cold air, nonstop all throughout the year, Gunderson says there is no scientific explanation to this hole, and he shows it to us and its indeed freezing, like an air conditioner, he says he camps here on warmer days.
We say goodbye to Osmond who goes back to fix the water and we head back to the tunnel which opened by now, return to flam and find the missing vest and credit card. After that we head by car to undrehal, a remote goat cheese making village for a shirt tour on the smallest still in use church in Europe and more views, then head back to Flam to drive up to amazing view point over the fjord.
Right now we are heading back to Stockholm on the boat (and I still have few more days to catch up, but closing in)
Monday, July 25, 2011
on ice , seals and royals
We are now on a small ship heading for Gallno, which is one of the islands of the Stockholm Archipelego.
A cute seal just appeared moments ago.
I forgot to mention 2 days ago in Gamla Stan, on the main square we heard some music and went to check it out and the Swedish army orchestra of pipes and drums played (in full uniform) in the square next to the Nobel center. So we sat listening to them playing Michael Jackson! (bad and other songs), not what you expect to hear from an army orchestra. Between each section, the conductor saluted the crowed, a very nice performance.
2 nights ago we reached camp at 1 am, found our tent in the dark and crashed, we woke up and got to work.
We started with the royal armory which had a floor of fashion and old dresses for Alla and armor and weapons for me with splendid craftsmanship (I am sure Alla thought the same on the dresses, though I don’t know why) and a floor of the amazing royal chariots for both of us. From there we went to see the royal changing of the gourds, a fun display of shouts, helmets, swords and foot soldiers hopping around, this was accompanied by the same band playing marching tunes and followed by pirates of the Caribbean’s tune and the look by Roxette (Swedish band) . after that we toured the magnificent royal apartments with its impressive art and watched the royal crown jewels (less impressive than the Norwegian ones). We went after to check on our future plans (unexpected destinations…) then went to Skansen the 1st and largest open air museum; we went a bit after and some of the displays were closed but we still got to experience a lot of it and spent time in the zoo part of it watching foxes and fun climbing brown bears, but also elk, rain dear, wolverine, wolves (finally got to see some), seals and the ferocious peacock.
We walked more in the gardens then after yet another salad for dinner (I must be going mad) we went to the ice bar. A very cool placeJ. So you get to wear these big coats and go in to a world of ice with ice sculpture (1 or 2) and light blue lights for the ambiance, ok music and 1 free drink (that comes with the overpriced entry fee) so I got an icemopolitan and Alla tried a snow leaf. All the drinks are vodka based since this is the absolute vodka bar.
The ship is now having a moment of silence for the terror attacks in Norway. Shhh…
Minute later… we sent some photos later, then returned to camp
We left the camp this morning and now heading for the archipelago, we will be on gallon and grinda islands then tomorrow we head back through waxholm.
Then we catch a night ferry to… a new unplanned country…
Cheers from the waxholm pier
Ok, the ship just left waxholm with its big fort so I will continue (I owe some past events), so a week ago
We drove north on the malmo oslo highway passing green hills and argircultural lands and listening to radio music, we drove till the evening than arrived at our camp on the outskirts of Oslo,
We went down town and tried a secondary self tour the book told us about but we didn’t like it, too many foreigners and we felt unsafe, but we walked around for a while and returned to camp.
Next morning we got our Oslo card (awesome thing, all the museums included so you don’t have to debate yourself what to do and how much to spend you just do everything, and we did)
We started with a city hall tour with its impressive fresco’s and nice flowery gardens followed by a visit to the Nobel museum. From there we hopped on the ferry to the museums area and seen the raft that went from Africa to Barbados (to proof than ancient Egyptians could have discovered America, they didn’t, but could have) and the 1st ship that reached both poles, followed by the maritime museum.
From there we walked to the Viking ship museum to see some ancient relics and the lovely Norwegian open air museum where we walked around the woods filled with 155 actual homes taken from all over Norway displaying various ancient times (farm houses, smithies, manor house, old banks, old pharmacies, pottery work display and various crafts) we also watched an old game displayed by locals, all performers are wearing attire from the period they display so it’s very authentic looking, and you can speak to the performers and ask questions and learn about the old world.
After that we hopped on the bus to the train where we asked a lady where is the next bus; she didn’t just point us, she actually walked out of the station all the way out and showed us which bus to take (very friendly folks) and we seen our bus leave , we missed it by a few seconds. Lucky the bus behind it (another line) told us to hop onboard, we did and after 10 minutes of shared line he passed the other bus and we swapped, after a few more minutes, we walked up a steep hill to the Oslo ski jump center for amazing Oslo and fjord views and the new impressive ski jump (you will see it next winter in action for the upcoming ski jump world championship). We took the elevator to the top of the ski jump for better views, and looked down. We visited the ski museum and did a ski-simulator of a ski jump and ski slalom (total stomach churn, but fun).
After that we hopped on the bus again after seeing 2 crazy guys going head first on a skateboard on a hill too steep to walk on (with traffic, and they also had helmet cameras , so maybe it’s on YouTube) , we reach a restaurant at the top of the hill and had some desert, then took the bus down, walked by the royal castle , then went back to camp.
On the train station back (same station as before) we asked a guy how to get somewhere, so again he took us under the bride, to the other side, to the street nearby to point us the way, so kind! We proceeded to the Oslo sculpture park with its many many nude sculptures , flowers and trees for an hour of more of quite, this park is very impressive and it’s the life’s work of this one nude loving artist
A nice relaxing day ended
Next morning we headed north for the fjords
Cheers from Grinda isle
Sunday, July 24, 2011
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
Ok, last for tonight
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-19 glacier kayaking and walk
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
Photos from hike to fjord’s over look
p.s we just exited the ice bar…cool
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-18 hike to molden
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-18 water canyoning
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
from lom to stockholm
We continued our stroll through Lom and found the best bakery in Norway (according to the local guide, which is unbiased I am sure, so we stood in the line! For a bakery and instead of the usual supermarket rolls , we got some yummy walnut bread, nicer rolls and small deserts (brownie for me and some sweet strawberry thing for alla, both very good), after a super market stop to resupply we packed up the tent and headed up to galdapiggen’s (highest mountain in northern Europe (and Norway)) base camp and after many tenting days we took the basic bunk bed room, charged our devices and had a short rest cause at 4:30 we woke up and got ready for the mountain. We packed some sandwiches with great walnut bread and started up the steep hil for an hour, then came the steeper part for another hour and a half including patches of icy snow where we had to tread carefully. Te weather was excellent in the beginning , then got a bit cloudy and cold, we were walking in the cloud itself. The trail is hard, full of rock steps but not slips. We stopped after that when we reached the view point overlooking a glacier just beneath us. Then came the harder parts, this mountain has 3 peaks and you have to climb all 3, so we slowly went up the 1st and longest climb up sharp edgy rocks and barely visible trail (the way is clear with the cairns, but the actual ideal trail is not there for the most part) we reached the peak tired and made our way down to the 1st shoulder with great views of glacier on the one side and valleys on the other with snow patches, mountains and rivers. The fog descended on us for many parts of the peak, making it colder and viewless. We started for the shorter but steeper 2nd peak where we almost gave up, we were already over 4.5 hours into the hike, muscles aching and cramping and the prospect of rain in the horizon unpleasant. But we made it up the 2nd peak and from there nothing would stop us from reaching the top (not even ourselves). The 3rd peak was the easiest but not easy, we crossed another field of snow then the shelter at the top loomed closer. One thing that pulled us was the promise of hot chocolate at the top, but when we finally made it , it sold out! Dam other tourists. We took some peak shots and rested at the shelter for a while happy and satisfied from our major achievement, and looking at the 8 year old kids, dogs and others making the same route. It took us 5:45 to the peak, and then the sun came for a bit and we took more photos and made our way down, which took close to 5 hours for us very slow walkers (its suppose to be a 7 hours walk, these Norwegians walk fast with young kids, they start early, we believe the youngest we have seen was 6) so they are in shape for life. The way down was easier somewhat but killer for the knees. Now on the ice patches instead of easy walking down we slid , which was faster, Alla was a snow rabbit gliding down with glee and I was more like a snow camel, slowly walking down careful with each step, I prefer the solid ground. The long descend ended and we were dead. We took a blessed shower at the base camp and headed towards bessegen for one of Norway’s most famous hike, we didn’t find a hostel where it was supposed to be so we decided to camp in the wild, we pitched our tent next to a river and had a free night, we slept for 12 hours! Then slowly and painfully emerged after a rainy night to a fogy mountain view all around, the rain did not stop so we decided to skip the hike and head for Stockholm.
We drove most of the day, being very very low on gas at some point , enjoying the great radio stations here (80 mostly, lots of one hit wonders), crossed the border to Sweden and trusted our GPS to guide us to a tenting sight in Stockholm, after few detours it told us while we were on a big bridge, “you have reached your destination” we decided to go to another site, we arrived at midnight and couldn’t find a spot without waking other campers with the car head light, it was too late to go elsewhere, so we stopped the car at the parking lot and slept in the car (another free night , but not recommended for the back). We woke up cranky, found a site in the morning light, refreshed and went to Stockholm, first to return the car and then to see the city.
We came to the city at 1:20 so we had to hurry to see the sights with our Stockholm card. We started with the Nordic museum where we gave an hour and I think Alla can stay a week checking sweetish interior design, a very nice museum, then we went to the impressive Vasa ship, which is an ancient titanic. This huge war ship was too top heavy and sank on its maiden voyage 20 minutes after setting sail (fine craftsmanship). The ship was hauled up 50 years ago and it is now a museum, the ship is very impressive with impressive wood carving, cannons and sculptures (this was to be the flag ship to conquer northern Europe), after that we stopped for a quick tour in the aquarium for some sea horses and a duck that washed itself nonstop (impressive neck limberness). After that we headed for Gamla Stan, the old city and walked around its charming lanes. Stockholm is similar to Copenhagen in 1st view, but it has much more of Paris in it and lots of canals and the Baltic coasts and it is a most beautiful city, that with a sunny day after the chill the previous day made it perfect. We ate some salad at the supermarket (yes, salad for me) then climbed a view point to see the city from above, then walked around the neighborhoods taking the guided tour from our guide book and leaning all sorts of nice but useless facts. We walked further passed the royal castle and nice gardens and headed back to camp.
Now we are about to have day 2 in Stockholm
Cheers from another sunny day.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
Hey all, these photos are from 6 days ago (we are getting delays with photo updates, more should come tomorrow (there is wifi at MAX , local burger chain) here at stockholm
Cheers from a sunny beautiful city
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-17 north of the fjord and the glacier
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
on wearing skirts and jumping off a bridge
We are driving south now heading for Lillehammer and Stockholm, it’s time to say goodbye to exciting Norway.
3 days ago we went again to the glacier for a kayak trip + glacier walk.
We put on rubber booties and life vests and walked awhile to the kayaks which are on a glacier lake; then we put on our skirts (kayaking skirts that is, that covers from the spray) and hand spray protectors and kayaked for 2 hours in a strenuous pace, it was raining most of the way and our rain gear is not good enough (leaky ponchos) so we were quite wet and miserable, but we had small icebergs next to us on the lake. We parked the kayaks , had some lunch and walked up to the glacier , put on our crampons (spiked shoes thingies), harness and were tied together on ropes. We were 10 in our group and I was the last in the row. We started walking up on the glacier, walking slowly on narrow passages of ice along narrow passages of snow; rule number 1 is don’t step on the rope, but rule #2 is don’t step on the snow (you don’t know what’s underneath) in the beginning we saw snow, but later we saw the huge crevices and cracks in the snow; the sun started to shine and the rain stopped and suddenly the mood was cheerful once more, so we took the camera out and started taking shot of the glacier and the nearby lake. The glacier is in layers of ice and snow all the way up, the layers are formed because of the pressure on the ice due to the variance of depth from the ground below, we learned some glacier facts, walked over crevices, and at one point I touched the ice with my hand and got a glacier cut, small one but I barely touched the ice. We walked for 2 hours back and forth on the glacier. At one point we came across a big crevice and the guide chose not to risk our lives (any further) and we had to walk back a bit, and since I was the last in the row, I was in the lead; its true we only back tracked but you still have to chose your next step carefully and for a brief period I was very excited and felt extra adventurous, a minute later or so, the guide took the lead and my short reign as glacier guide was over. Hot chocolate waited for us when we descended from the glacier walked back to our kayaks and rowed 2 hours more to the starting point, it rained a bit on the way back but spirits were higher now, this was our most expensive activity but definitely irregular and memorable.
With all our clothes wet (we didn’t bring that many with us) we drove back to the glacier center to pick up our little fridge where we keep alla’s medicine, we arrived 30 minutes after closing time and the center was closed, we went to the nearby hotel and the very courteous front desk dude tracked down the caretaker, it took him a while to perform the tracking and next to him stood a chocolate cake and after a full day in cold wet conditions its looked promising , he finally got the guy to come in, and after asking to pay for the cake, he told me that I can just take it, so I did, simple basic cake but a great timing. We waited 30 minutes at the parking lot and suddenly a bmw comes racing in ( I assumed the caretaker would come in a crappy car) and the guy from the hotel ran to the center parking lot to tell us that the caretaker arrived (Supper commitment) and let us in. we drove on in the valley back to gaupne then headed north towards europes highest mountain pass. It was late (we started at 9 pm), we were dead tired but the pass was amazing, green mountains, waterfalls, snow patches, more glaciers and deep valleys below, the road was curvy and slow, we considered camping at the top but it was cold, we crossed the pass and arrived ant bovander which has a hostel, that was full of course so we camped outside close to midnight, put our clothes in the dry room (they have no driers, but a but a very dry room instead that does the job well and quickly fell asleep.
On the morning we went rafting close to Lom. This trip was short but awesome, I rafted in many places (Canadian Rockies, green river Utah, ohiopile PA, new Zealand, Israel, sorry I love to list things) but this river was by far the best. The rapids were level 3 (levels mean risk of death if you fall) but the river was gushing, with lots and lots of high waves. We started with the usual practice, right. Left right back, forward and stop, then went to a couple of awesome rapids, the raft was jumping high on the waves and waves hit us left and right, then we pulled a short, walked up to a rock on the river and from there we could jump in directly to the waves and swim to a pick up point on the shore. This was an awesome wave to jump to and the river was deep at this point, so I jumped head first(this activity is called hole diving) into the river and for 2-3 seconds saw nothing but water, then I emerged and began swimming in the waves to the shore, alla did the same thing, it was so great that I did it again. One of the guys on the raft chose not to swim to shore (finish guys don’t listen) and missed the ropes and was carried by the river downstream, the guides slowly reacted to go after him on the shore and in the rescue kayak, but this was a wavy but safe river, the guy made it ashore just fine. We took the raft to another point on the river for the final rapid with the highest waves and a deep hole. At this point we swapped places and Alla and I took point, we quickly hit the rapid and the raft plunged down the hole and emerged high on the wave after it, only to hit two more huge soaking waves, it was awesome. They call this rapid the big push, after that we hosted the kayak up the steep bank to the waiting car (I called it the big pull) , then we walked to the bridge just at the end of this rapid, the bridge was 8 meters high above the river and all we had to do was jumpJ that was scary as heel but we jumped in and swam ashore, what a rush!!
This was out day of relaxation so we went back to Lom, took a little tour in the town with its stave church, old granary from the 1600’s and a nice open air museum, which is a very nice way to display ancient life
Sorry , don’t have much time to finish blogs, I owe you 2 completions now, but I have not sent anything for 3 days, consider this a life signJ
Cheers from stockholm
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
Photos from 3 days ago
Good night
Going to sleep , tomorrow we hike the highest mountain in NorwayJ
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-16 aurland valley hike
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
river canyoning
See the link
It was taken by someone else, we are in the back, though the pictures don’t show that part, we jump in too J
Both of us
http://www.mijnalbum.nl/Album=LRVHE8O8
cheers from Norway’s highest mountain (tomorrow we hike it)
Monday, July 18, 2011
on kind strangers at the train station and why did the chicken climb a mountain
We are driving next to a beautiful lake headed for the famous Sognefjord, a few days earlier…
We left new ark at 5 Something pm for the night flight which is too early to be a night flight; I watch Paul and 2 other movies instead of sleeping and Alla didn’t sleep either and chose to study the new camera features (no more complaints of faded out photos), we took some aerial photos of Copenhagen at around 7 on a Sunday and tiredly went through the shortest security ever. We hopped on the train to the central station and walked to our hotel and crashed for a few hours.
Woke up and started seeing the city from the city hall where I climbed an elephant (various cities have various painted status ( cows, guitars, bulls etc.. Copenhagen has elephants (didn’t ask why)). We also climbed on the knee of Hans Christian Andersen.
Sorry, don’t stop me now is playing and it fits the ambiance perfectly , ok back. We walked in the main street of strogt (I think). This is the last day of a Jazz festival and various bands are playing everywhere. In every plaza live music is heard and its not real jazz, it more rock/jazz and some classical music and we join the crowd and enjoy good music while passing street entertainers, fountains , cathedrals and simple and lovely ancient streets. We passed by the canals close to the parliament and the status of bishop Absalom (the city founder and the name sake of our cheap hotel) where Alla took a shnuch on the bank and I read the guide. We continued on the strogt , arrived and the new haven port for more live music and the best ice cream around (according to the guide…but he did not specify how far is around…it could be the best in this store), but it was not bad, we passed by the theater overlooking the Opera house on the other side through ameilnburg gardens to the royal house of the queen , her consort and prince. We toured the big plaza and took some photos with the Danish guard and were told by a gourd to move away (these gourds did not tell woman tourist to move away, so several options; I smell, the gourd was a homophobe, the guy was homophile but was afraid to show the love in public, discrimination in the royal court) we walked to the castellat garden which is an old fortress with grass everywhere , pond with ducks and the famous statue of the little mermaid. We walked all the way back to our hotel stopping for low quality shwarma (we try to eat cheap and tasty).
The next morning we rented bikes and drove to the main palace (forgot the name) and walked the many lovely rooms, we tried the smorsbrod, the Dansih open faced sandwich , mine with fish and Alla’s with lax .. ok jump to the present, the part above was written 4 days ago
Today we woke up at the eppel bed and apple hostel in a tipi tent, had a relaxed morning trying to figure out where to go next after Stockholm (though we are still in Norway) and enjoyed our super market bought breakfast of bread cheese and pastrami or nuggati (a local brand of nugat/chocolate spread, very good) then we headed for adventure.
River canyoning- we wore wet suits life vests and helmets and headed for a freaking freezing river. The first splash in the water was a cold rush, but after that we got used to the water and used ropes to climb along waterfalls then slid down the waterfalls or jumped in from way up high. It was a difficult but amazing activity, climbing the ropes on the slippery stones, avoiding sharp stones, and trying to keep warm was hard, we had about 6 parts of sliding down or jumping in, then we headed back down the river and did all the slides again and in the end had a final jump from 8 meters to a black pool and if you are not careful, you will hit rocks, you have to jump in the right way, luckily we had a guide (a student of outdoor activities, yes, it’s a degree here…awesome) who helped us along. We were six, a german couple with lots of studs, tatoo’s and more piercing, but very nice and a dutch family who will be sending us photos I hope (the mom stayed to take shots and did not participate). Alla was climbing like a water spider and made the last jump (did I mention 8 meters high) easily. After the jump my legs were shaking from the adrenalin , the cold, the rush and the fear (if it doesn’t scare you, don’t bother), after that we were hungry and went to the market again and got some more cheese, bread and pastrami and other things but also a grilled chicken. We eat sandwiches most of the time, store chicken Is a treat. We packed out packs with most of the food we have and headed for a mountain hike, 2 hours up a steep hill. It started raining right away and we walked slowly up the wooded path with our ponchos; when we crossed the timberline, the rain stopped and we hiked on with spectacular views of the fjords and green valleys, we took more photos of views that kept getting better and better. We reach a sunny summit of mt molden and enjoyed our dinner on top, relaxed for a while, marked the territory (Alla developed a new thing, and that is peeing next to and on every major Norway attraction, next to the glacier, on the top of mount molden and just before the final jump in the river) so when in Norway, don’t drink the water…). Nearly forgot, the chicken. So alla puts the chicken in a bag, and with a full backpack she carries the poor chicken in hand up the mountain, she eats a drumstick (pulke) at a nice view point, and that’s it, I didn’t try it either, but the poor grilled chicken made it to the top on the mountain and is probably the highest place a grilled chicken ever got, if it only knew how special it was, I will tell it tomorrow while I eat it. after an hour on top we hiked down and it began raining again as we crossed the tree line. After that we returned to out hostel for a well deserved shower and blogging.
Ok, back to Copenhagen
We toured the palace then rode on passed the spiral tower of the stock exchange towards Christiana. Christiana is a free town, the residents do not follow Danish law, but their own, of course it’s full of drugs ,but this unique colony has rules (no hard drugs, no weapons, no violence….etc ) and its full of hippies and artist. Copenhagen has no plants, and here there are plenty of (none drugs) plants. It’s a lovely green forested area situated on an old army barracks partly sourounded by water (not sure if canal or river or whatever) but with ducks, swans and herons). We walked around the neighborhood seeing all the drug sellers, great ambiance and irregular setting. It started pouring (or was it just a drug smoked induced hallucination?) , don’t worry, we don’t touch the stuff, but it’s fun to watch. Alla cant keep her hands to herself when we went into a store selling wood art and touched an object despite the ‘don’t touch me’ notice next to it. The artist, an old hippy looking guy told her not to touch anything else (the wood was covered with some liquid, he didn’t want her to pass it to the other pieces), it rained hard so we stuck around , and this artist is working on some amazing wood piece for years and hopes to never finish, he also smoked hash next to us, we wished him to never finish his work and I agreed to his plan of “if I become prime minister, my first low is to ban cigarettes filters”, because the street is full of them, has is better since all of it burns… I like that low, but don’t think this guy will be prime minister in the next election. He told us about the place and then we left. We were there for a few hours then after tasting some Danish Danish, we took the bikes and rode to Rosenburg castle and view some amazing paintings, very unique clocks ( no photos from this place, we had to pay extra for that, we should have…) various swords and the crown jewels of Denmark, a most impressive place with very nice gardens, then we went to Tivoli gardens, the 1st amusement park in Europe for a potentially fun evening. We paid for entrance (not cheap) but didn’t take the all inclusive package, which would mean I would drag alla to every single ride, twice. But instead we were to pay extra per ride, so we ended up cruising the gardens, taking flowers photos, watching pantomime shows with clowns, but not paying extra, thus not really having as much fun as we could have, for me the gardens are nice but somewhat disappointing(true, we didn’t do any ride), after that we hunted for food in the closed store and ended up with a salmon sandwich for alla, then rode the bikes more and returned to the hotel.
Next morning we took the train after a bakery stop to Malmo, then took a bus to the Malmo air port, took our rented car and headed for Oslo
Good night folks , need some sleep, glacier kayaking tomorrow
FW: gil.even shared an album with you.
We gave you 12 hours to see the previous batch J
This is from the sognefjord (we are still trigger happy on the camera)
Cheers from the eplet bed & apple hostel
| You are invited to view gil.even's photo album: 2011-07-15 SogneFjord
Message from gil.even: These pictures were sent with Picasa, from Google. If you are having problems viewing this email, copy and paste the following into your browser: To share your photos or receive notification when your friends share photos, get your own free Picasa Web Albums account.
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)