travels – Page 14 – today's worry

Soviet Flashback. 8/26/18

Today we are in Tallinn, Estonia. John has recuperated a little and I am only a little sick at this point. Ah, Viking cruises, on four cruises we have four units of sickness. When we travel on our own we are rarely sick. Maybe we should either stay home or only travel on our own.

Anyway, Tallinn is a lovely town with lots of medieval buildings. We do a walking tour with Eneken, a very tall Estonian. One thing we learned from listening to The History of English podcast is that Estonians are not related to Latvians or Letts who are Slavs. Estonians originated from around Siberia and split into three distinct groups after they crossed the Urals-some went to Finland, some to Hungary, and some to Estonia. So their languages are similar.

Eneken tells about the school system where children are taught four languages, Estonian, English, Russian, and German. Tallinn is about 30% Russian, a holdover from Soviet days. Russians are made up of modern Russians and Soviet Russians. The older generations still hold suspicions of each other. The Soviets (makes clear that it is not Russians) deported thousands of Estonians to Siberia due to un-Soviet thoughts. Estonia only free since 1991 and the populace seems very patriotic.

During our first free time, John stops into a bar where…

he gets a beer for the traditional picture.

During our second free time and because we are not sure there will be enough time to eat lunch we stop at the Peppersack for a snack and bathroom break.

We get back to the ship with about 45 minutes turnaround until our next outing, Soviet Flashback. We walk back down the long pier and encounter a vintage Soviet bus.

This excursion is a tongue in cheek look at life in Soviet Estonia. Our “General” lines us up and checks our passports and makes us march around the bus in an exaggerated fashion. He is quite funny.

On the bus he shows us pictures of Katyusha rockets and his beloved leaders, Stalin and Brezhnev, and we applaud. Then we all have a shot of vodka and a gherkin.

After pulling into a parking lot we de-bus and he gets serious and talks about his experiences. His grandfather was deported to Siberia and our guide had to hide in the forest to avoid being drafted by the Russian army where he would have gone to fight in Afghanistan.

After the liberation he worked with the Peace Corp. volunteers where he learned, among other things, John Denver’s Country Roads. We all sing together on the way back.

Singing Country Roads on the way back to the ship

We have a great time on our Soviet Flashback tour and now have a couple of hours until dinner. Amazingly we stay awake. I guess we are over jet lag.

Dinner tonight at the Chef’s Table is called “La Route des Indies” and is centered around spices. It is a really tasty dinner.

I am including a picture of our sesame and curry roll because I did such a good composition

Our Amuse Bouche is a carrot and cardamom cream with a Garofoli Komaros, Marche, Italy

First course is a delicious tuna tataki served with Portuguese Vinho Verde

Palate cleanser ginger and tarragon granita

Main course beef tenderloin with warm spices, mushrooms and purple potato purée with an Australian Shiraz/cabernet

Finally an apple tarte tatin with an Italian Moscato and a dollop of ice cream

Vacation vacation day. 8/25/18

John has a cold and our scheduled excursion covers a lot of the same things as yesterday so we opt to just hang around the ship. Hopefully John will be feeling better tomorrow.

There is a new menu at Chef’s Table so we go and try it. It is actually the best one so far. We plan on going again tomorrow.

The Russians are Coming. 8/24/18

Today we have a BIG day. We need to be ready to go at 8 AM for the lengthy process of getting off the boat and through immigration into Russia. The humorless border agents take a long time looking at each person’s passport and giving out provisional visas. However, after about an hour of rigamarole we are on our bus and heading into downtown St. Petersburg for our tour of the Hermitage.

Even though the museum does not open until 10:30 and it is 9:30, there are scads of people waiting on line in the huge Palace Square.

Palace Square with Alexander Column topped by an angel with a cross and surrounding Hermitage buildings

ALERT! I went to a lot of trouble putting in Cyrillic characters in this next section and now I see they have come out as question marks. I am not taking out my original text.

Nothing to do while waiting in interminable lines to get into the Hermitage? Why not have a ??? ????That’s hot dog to you non-Cyrillic readers. (At last a use for my three years of college Russian!)

??? ??? (hot dog) stand offering ????? ??? (French dog) or even a ??????? ??? ??? (Bolshoi hot dog)

We have tickets that let us in early. But lots of people also have these tickets and we are shuttled from one line to the next.

Inside the interior courtyard waiting in another line

It is now 10 AM but even this half hour head start means that there will be fewer people angling for a look at the masterpieces. As someone who has been here when there is no advantage, it is much less crowded.

So we have about an hour and forty-five minutes to look with time out for bathroom breaks. Our guide tells us that if you went to the Hermitage every day and looked at each piece of art for one minute during opening hours it would take eight years to look at everything. So you get an idea of how few items we can look at for less than a minute. It is a little frustrating.

Here are some things that we see –

First we walk down a hall full of czars and czarinas and wives of czars. Then there is a hall with famous generals. Next are fancy reception and throne rooms. One room has a gold peacock clock which has mechanical movement and opens its tail (but not today.) You can click through for bigger renditions if czars are your thing.

Duke of Wellington and a bunch of generals

We are hurried through the medieval and early Renaissance paintings because we must get to the da Vinci paintings. I am sad that we cannot tarry at the art that I love. The Madonna and Child Enthroned reminds me of the Maesta at the Uffizi. I take a quick detour and snap a few pictures.

Madonna and Child Enthroned, Sienese artist, 1320-1325

The two da Vinci paintings are lovely Madonna and Child works. The early one has the BVM looking barely old enough to have a child. It is very crowded and the light from the windows reflects off the glass covering the paintings. Our guide says we should not try to take pictures and just get the image from the internet later but there is something about taking your own pictures.

Madonna Benois (Madonna and Child with Flowers) Leonardo da Vinci

Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, Madonna Litta, 1490

Next we hurry by a Michelangelo sculpture, The Crouching Boy, 1530-1534. Perhaps my picture should be titled Boy Crouching While Americans Don’t Look at Him.

Now if we can just wait another ten minutes until the bathroom break we can see a Caravaggio and then the Rembrandts.

The Hermitage has a fabulous collection of Rembrandts. While the guide talks I walk around looking for a couple of my favorites.

Rembrandt’s painting of his wife as the goddess, Flora, 1634

It is around noon and after our promised bathroom break we walk across Palace Square to the new section of the Hermitage holding Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings. People are beginning to ask when we will have a little sit down and lunch. Not until 2 PM says our guide.

I ask John if he is having trouble with allergies because he has been sneezing a lot. No, he says, I have a cold. DANGER! DANGER! Not only do I not want John to be sick but I got pneumonia on a Viking River Cruise. I do not dare get sick. Right now, though, it is just my knee that is troubling me. It has been hurting since I fell in Oslo. We have been going up and down a lot of stairs today. I am having trouble bending it.

Nevertheless we soldier on. The Hermitage has a large collection of Impressionist paintings. There were two citizens of Imperial Russia that had large collections starting from the beginning of the movement. When the Revolution came in 1917 the Soviet government kindly expropriated the collections and put them in the Hermitage. So most of the art they have was created before 1917.

Here are a few I liked –

Camille Pissarro, Boulevard Montmartre in Paris, 1897

So now it is 1:30 PM and we finally get back on the bus to ride to the Storage Facility for the Hermitage. Only about 10% of the entire collection is in the display rooms of the Hermitage the rest of it is in this state-of-the-art storage and restoration facility. But first we have lunch in the canteen.

At this point my phone punks out because it has been surreptitiously updating itself and I cannot get back to taking photos until I go through some protocol that needs WiFi. So I cannot show you our delicious (sarcasm) lunch which was done in color-blocking that Mondrian would be proud of. We had dark red borscht, a plate of white meat chicken in a white sauce with white rice, and a dark brown chocolate muffin with chocolate chips. It was the reddest, brownest, whitest meal I have ever had.

We are not allowed to take pictures at the facility so let it suffice for me to say that we saw some old frescoes, fabulous antique clothing, a bunch of old furniture, and restored royal carriages.

Imperial carriages in the storage facility (photo from internet)

We are pretty tired out by the time we get off the bus, go through immigration again, and head up to our room. We decide on room service and an early bed time tonight.

Finland, Finland. 8/23/18

Today we have a lovely day in Helsinki. I think I am going to have to put some of my pictures in a smaller format because I have so many pictures of food!!! Our excursion is a Taste of Finland! Unlike yesterday’s tour this one was much better with a personable docent and lots of great information.

We start at the Old Market which is full of wooden stalls with lots of Finlandish taste treats. There are pastries, canned game, reindeer, and all sorts of fish.

We get to have a taste of smoked reindeer and this is followed by a sit down tasting of delicate gravlax and crawfish and chili mayonnaise on Swedish rye.

Crawfish in chili mayo and gravlax on rye

We have some time to look around on our own. John and I take the time to walk around the market but also have a little sit down with a cup of cappuccino.

Story is a coffee chain like our Starbucks

Then we venture to the outdoor market. There is lots for sale here. All sorts of fruit and vegetables, prepared foods, and items for the home. It is hard to imagine holding this fresh air market when the temperature is way below zero. Our guide tells us that sometimes when visiting dignitaries visit their president whose palace is right across the street he takes them to the outdoor market to sit and have a cup of coffee and a treat.

right across the street from

The outdoor market is a wonderland of berries and mushrooms plus cooked items, clothing, and housewares.

Finland is 70% forest and 20% lakes. The Finnish people are allowed to go foraging and fishing for no fee everywhere.

We now have some free time to look around the market and the surrounding area. We go to the Town Hall (free bathrooms!), the Presidential Palace, and the Uspenski church which used to be Orthodox when the Russians were in control here.

After meeting up again with our party we walk to Senate Square and either the square is so big or the population of Helsinki so small that everyone can fit in it. There is a statue to Czar Alexander II because he was nice to the Finns and let them have some autonomy. The Helsinki Lutheran Cathedral is also here.

We board our mini-bus and take off for a short tour of the city when our guide realizes she has left two people behind. This is the second day in a row that our tour has lost people. After a while they are found and we hurry back to the boat.

Dinner tonight is at the Chef’s Table where we further ingratiate ourselves by talking about Croatia with the Croatian manager. John actually hints that he may be a distant cousin of the owners of Pilato Winery. We have no shame but now we do have a standing invitation to eat at Chef’s Table. Mission accomplished.

Dinner tonight is Asian Panorama. Here are some of the dishes –

Chilled King Crab with coconut foam paired with a Ponte Prosecco Trevino

Lobster and Chicken Shu Mai plus a Tuscan La Pettegola

Peking duck wrapped in an egg pancake. We change their suggested wine to a Villa Santera Primitivo

On to Russia tomorrow!

Viking Life. 8/22/18

We start today with some breakfast room service which allows us to avoid the crowded early morning food scene. The food come like a big puzzle all fit into a large tray.

Today is our first excursion and we are supposed to learn about Viking life. One thing I notice here in Scandinavia is that they try very hard to paint Vikings as explorers and adventurers rather than marauders. We get on our bus and fight through a lot of morning traffic to Viking Aliv! which is kind of a hokey Viking theme attraction.

At Viking Aliv we see mock ups of Vikings, Viking houses, Viking food, etc.

Guide pointing out a (not real) rune stone

A few things we do learn are that the word “window” comes from the Vikings. Their homes had no chimneys, just a triangular eye at each end for the wind to pass through or “wind eye” which morphed into window.

Two other factoids are that Viking sails were woven of wool and that Viking helmets had nose pieces but no horns. The German composer, Wagner, was the inventor of horned Viking helmets.

We also go on a ride through a Viking story, Ragnfrid’s Saga, which tries to be Disneyesque but fails.

From there we go to an actual Swedish history museum where we see real rune stones, burial sites, and gold ornamentation of the Vikings.

We would have liked to stay longer but our time is shortened due to the fact that our leader has miscounted heads and left someone behind at Viking Aliv! and we have to go back and pick her up.

Finally we go to a restaurant, Sjatte Tunnan, in Gamla Stan, the old town, which is kind of a pretend Viking dining hall. We have a glass of mead and a pate that is made in the shape of a pear with a lingonberry sauce. It is pretty tasty!

Meat pate in the shape of a pear and lingonberry sauce

We get back in time for the mandatory safety drill and a quick lunch before we head off through the Stockholm archipelago.

The archipelago is quite lovely with small islands with summer homes upon them. We do some relaxing on our deck and watch the world go by. Until tomorrow morning we will be steaming our way to Helsinki, Finland.

Tonight for dinner we are going to the other of the Viking Seas’s premium restaurants, Manfredi’s. We have a mostly bad meal. The positive things I can say are that the bread is very good, once he got past the errant bones John’s sea bass is good, and the dessert we make for ourselves, Parmesan with honey, are all good. Here are some pictures –

Tough calamari and shrimp with shells (I tried eating a bite with the shell on, not good)

John’s semi-boneless sea bass with fregola

Mary’s very Marsala veal Marsala with tired asparagus and not crispy potatoes

Dessert we made up for ourselves – slivers of Parmesan cheese and honey plus grappa!

Slow train ride to Stockholm. 8/20/18

Our train this morning leaves at 5:56 AM but it is no problem because John and I have been up since 2:30 AM. Oh, jet lag (shaking my fist!) We leave the hotel in plenty of time (5:10 AM) to find our train at the station which is just across a plaza from our hotel. We arrive on the platform at 5:20. Better early than late! Around 5:30 the train rolls in.

Finally at about 10 minutes to 6:00 they allow us on the train. It is pretty packed. The train takes a little over 5 hours to get to Stockholm. Oslo and Stockholm are only 250 miles apart so the train averages less than 50 mph. However the train is equipped with WiFi so I finish my blog and do some puzzles. We also get a little boxed breakfast with wooden utensils.

Bread, kefir, muesli, apple juice and ham and cheese in the train breakfast box

Shortly after 11:00 AM we are in Stockholm. Our hotel is very near to the train station and they have a room that we can have right away.

Our very Scandinavian room at the Radisson Blu Waterfront Hotel

After getting ourselves settled and trying not to fall asleep we head out to Gamla Stan, the oldest section of Stockholm (the island pictured on the left above.) John is super vigilant that I not fall down today.

We have chosen Matgatan for lunch today. It is highly rated on Yelp! Even though there is zero ambiance and the stools we sit on are super-uncomfortable, the food is quite good. We each order the pulled pork “burger” that comes with cole slaw and crispy potatoes. It is quite a bit of food. We should have split one order. Even John cannot eat it all. He must still be full from our train box.

Pulled pork, cole slaw, and crispy new potatoes

After lunch we walk around for a while but it is Monday and as is typical in Europe almost all museums and attractions are closed. We try to find a church to look at but strike out. Since we are both really tired we head back to the hotel around 3:00 PM.

As we enter the hotel we notice that their restaurant is the RBG Bar and Grill. Any restaurant named after the Notorious RBG will be our landing spot for a drink later today.

As it turns out we are really tired since we got up so early and not hungry so we make coffee and tea in the room and have an early night. Here is hoping that we will sleep better tonight.

Boarding the ship tomorrow!

Europe hurts. 8/19/18

When we traveled to Europe with our kids in 1998, Jonathan was victimized by a culture that made things too small, too stick out-y, just too foreign! He was constantly bumping into or tripping over small pieces of Europe. On that trip he coined our family phrase, “Europe hurts!” The tradition continues. But more on that later.

Since John and I are still in backwards land sleeping-wise, we are up with the early bird breakfast eaters today and are on the subway to our first destination before 8 am. Luckily we are going to see a park and it is open 24/7.

The Vigeland section of Frogner Park features 212 bronze and granite sculptures designed by Gustav Vigeland. These sculptures, all naked, are mostly of people expressing various human emotions. An over 300 foot bridge lined with sculptures, a sculptural fountain, and a sculptural monolith are the main features.

It is a beautiful Sunday and even before 9 AM Norwegians and tourists are out in force. We are glad we have come early. Here are some of the sculptures we especially like.

There are many of these tall columns topped by humans struggling with serpents

I stop for a photo with my favorites, yellow roses!

Next is a fountain held up by burly men and surrounded with bronze trees with children playing within them. In the distance is the monolith.

The Monolith is up a hill with a lot of steps. I look from a distance while John climbs up for a closer look. It is composed of interlocking human figures.

Statuary by the Monolith include a mother playing horsey…

Vigeland Park is getting very crowded and we decide it is time to go. We walk back to the subway stop and head in towards the city to the King’s Palace. The current king is King Harald V and he lives here with Queen Sonja. We can tell that they are home because the flag is flying above the palace.

And now for the Europe hurts part…

After leaving the palace park and crossing a small street I go to step up onto the sidewalk and my evil left knee crumples and down I go. This comes as quite a shock to me and I lie on the sidewalk for a moment. People in passing cars stop. They want to help. I do not want help. I just want to wallow in my pain on the sidewalk. I get into a sitting position and try to wave them away. “I am okay!” I shout. The word okay is understood in all languages. Finally they move on. But I cannot get up. John tries to pull me up but my knee is not taking any weight at the moment.

Norwegian Home Health Aides to the rescue! Two young women carrying backpacks arrive on the scene. They ask if we need help. I explain that I have fallen and I cannot get up. (I say this literally.) But I will be okay and sooner or later I will find a way to get up. They say we are strong Norwegian Home Health Aides and we help people get up all the time. With this each grabs a hand and I am on my feet! Or at least one foot. I am a little hesitant to try out my knee. Turns out the knee is fine and they lead me over to a place to sit down. They ask me again if I am okay, not in any severe pain? I answer I am okay and they say adios and go on their backpacking way. (Actually, they just say goodbye in their perfect English.)

I can see the headlines in tomorrow’s paper, “Plucky Yank shakes off tumble with the help of strong Norwegian Home Health Aides! International incident averted!!”

Not ones to let a little falling down stop us, we continue on to the National Gallery to look at some art. This is the museum which houses Munch’s The Scream as well as a bunch of other stuff. There are a lot of stairs here and the kindly staff lets me ride up in the freight elevator. I am not oblivious to the irony.

Here are some works that we liked –

Hey look what we found, a Saint! This is in the Russian icon section. The informational plaque says it is Saint Nicholas of Zaraysk but we can see from the little pictures surrounding the Saint that it is actually our old friend, St. Nicholas of Bari.

Edouard Manet (1832-1883). French painter. View of the 1867 Exposition Universelle, 1867

And finally Edvard Munch’s famous painting, The Scream, or how I felt after I fell down.

When we finish up at the National Gallery we decide to take the subway back to the hotel and have a little re-grouping time. However, Europe hurts is not done with me yet. As I go to step onto the subway car the doors close and I am smashed between them. Ow! I actually make an audible noise. The doors, having figured out that perhaps not all the passengers are completely on board release and reopen. (Thank God) So now both of my forearms are totally bruised.

Around 3 PM we walk over to the train station again and have lunch at Bella Bambino in the fancy food hall.

John wants to go out again and visit the Opera House but I am done. I lie down and go to sleep instead. Here are his pictures from his adventure.

Oslo Opera House is also home to the National Ballet

Several art projects were commissioned for the interior and exterior of the Opera House. The most notable is She Lies, a sculpture constructed of stainless steel and glass panels. It is permanently installed on a concrete platform in the fjord adjacent to Opera House and floats on the water moving in response to tides and wind to create an ever-changing face to viewers. (Wikipedia)

John comes back and we both sleep some more. We know that it is not the right thing to do and that we will pay for it later but we cannot help ourselves. Around 9 PM we get up and go downstairs and have a comforting burger and fries with a beer at the hotel bar.

Surprisingly good burger and fries at the Eufemia Bar

It is now Monday morning and we are on the train to Stockholm. Just want to report that I am a little sore but really none the worse from the fall I took yesterday.

Munch, lunch, and more – Oslo. 8/18/18

After a really abysmal night’s sleep we are excited to start our first full day in Oslo. We start with the hotel’s very large and free breakfast buffet. While John eats herring of all sorts and drinks copious amounts of coffee, I settle for a more traditional European breakfast known to us as lunch for breakfast.

Little hot dogs, salami, bread with delicious butter and salad with beets

After breakfast we walk about outside to test the weather (upper 50’s and threatening rain) and see some sculptures that are nearby.

John asking a jolly looking man for directions but only gets a stony gaze

I help out a very tall man by holding his hand to cross the street (everyone here is VERY tall, btw)

We don’t know what this is but John needs his picture taken next to it

A sculpture from the hotel lobby is of a naked woman embracing a man who appears to be floating in a coat and hat

We walk over to the train station and buy a 24-hour pass for all transportation modes. Being senior citizens gets us almost half off! We take the T-bane to the Munch Museet where we see an all-Munch exhibition that has been shown recently in San Francisco and NYC.

One of the first paintings we see is Puberty. It is a touching painting of a young girl entering puberty looking afraid and vulnerable. The bed plays a large part in many of Munch’s paintings. It is a transitional piece between life and death, health and sickness, and in the following painting childhood and adulthood. Other themes are smell and shadows.

Here in Death Struggle the bed plays a significant role again. The colors behind the mourners’ heads turn from wallpaper into their own emanations. The blanket covering the dying person is red or is it blood?

This next painting shows a weeping mother with a deformed and sickly baby. The baby has inherited syphilis. This painting crossed the line with critics of the day. Mostly, though, we take this photo because the baby looks like an alien.

In Red Virginia Creeper we see a house mostly in red. Is it fire, blood, the vine or just a nightmarish vision seen through the eyes of the man in the foreground?

Munch’s painting, Despair, is reminiscent of his most famous work, The Scream, which is not part of this exhibition but we will see it tomorrow at the National Gallery.

Finally, the exhibition’s eponymous work, Self Portrait. Between the Clock and the Bed, is from the end of Munch’s life. It is filled with the symbols of his work-the bed which is a transition to his death, a clock symbolizing the passage of time, the nude depicting sensuality and vulnerability, the bold colors, and Munch himself. (As an aside we now understand why our room at the hotel is decorated in turquoise and chartreuse.)

Self-Portrait. Between the Clock and the Bed, 1940-1943

It is getting late for lunch and it has started raining when we emerge from the T-bane. John gets turned around and we head off in the wrong direction which leads to a little unhappiness. But we finally make it to Bacchus Spiseri & Vinhus for lunch. It is in old quarters, built in a bazaar which surrounds the Oslo Cathedral.

Quaint interior of Bacchus (from internet)

John has a favorite of his, mussels in cream and white wine with fennel

I opt for a Scandinavian style open-faced sandwich of shrimp, too much mayonnaise, and dill

Next we take a gander at the Oslo Cathedral, home to the Church of Norway which is an evangelical Lutheran sect.

After the intensely decorated Italian churches we have seen, the Oslo Cathedral seems bare in comparison. Although there has been a church on this site since the 12th century the current one hails from the 17th century. There are some 19th century paintings on the ceiling and a Last Supper carving on the altar featuring a very large cooked lamb.

Ceiling paintings of the Nativity and the Flagellation

After the cathedral we stand outside in the spitting rain which is getting stronger and try to decide what to do. Should we head back to the hotel and collapse or soldier on. I am achy and sleepy (not to mention the other dwarfs) and say I would like to go back to the hotel. John says in a relieved voice, I do too. It is late in the afternoon and we are very tired. No one is going to present us with a gold medal for sightseeing excellence so we head back to the hotel and promptly fall asleep.

Dinner tonight is in the bar again. It seems easiest. Tonight we have halibut ceviche and two scallops wrapped in bacon off the small plates menu. It is very tasty and bettter than last night’s selections.

Scallops wrapped in bacon and halibut ceviche

We will have plenty of time tomorrow when the weather is supposed to be very nice to see more of Oslo.

P.S. Munch and lunch do not rhyme.

Happy times traveling to Oslo. 8/16 and 17/2018

Leaving late in the day on Thursday means we do not arrive in Oslo until late Friday afternoon. We are flying SAS for the first time and it turns out to be pretty nice. We start out by being sent to the wrong security area so we have to backtrack and go through security twice! It is the first error of the journey to Oslo but I am resolved to allow ourselves some being stupid time. We just smile as both of us are selected for additional random scanning on our second pass through.

The next error is that the check-in person has written the wrong gate on our boarding pass. We arrive at a deserted waiting area. But no problem. We find the right gate before the doors close. Still smiling! The flight takes about ten hours during which we watch movies and eat mediocre airline food. The airline staff is unfailingly pleasant so that is a real plus!

John enjoying his welcome aboard champagne

We fly to Copenhagen first. On our second flight we are held up briefly on the tarmac due to thunderstorms in Oslo. We are crammed like sardines into the plane. I am trying not to touch my seating partner (who is not John!) We just grin and bear it.

Yay, touch-down in Oslo. We go to reclaim our luggage and manage to lose each other. John thinks I am in a restroom on the opposite side of the cavernous hall and stands patiently waiting for me to come out. I, in the meantime, come out cannot find him, pick up our luggage from the carousel, and finally find him still waiting patiently outside of the wrong restroom. He says he thought there was a really, really long line in the ladies room. Still smiling!

We catch the super convenient and reasonably priced train to Oslo center and head for our hotel which we can see from the train station. Luckily it is merely sprinkling rain for the short walk. Here is our comfortable although color-challenged home for the next three nights. It has a view of the harbor.

Turquoise and chartreuse room at the Thon Opera Hotel

We take showers and do what you are not supposed to do to beat jet lag, fall into a dead sleep. Neither of us have slept for about 25 hours. We are awakened after two hours by John getting a phone call. Caller unknown. Ha, ha!

It is going on 9pm so we head downstairs, take a quick look around outside (it is quite chilly,) then we settle for a couple of small plates in the hotel bar with a beer.

Some calamari and a small minced lamb stuffed cabbage leaf

So now you would think we would be so tired that we would sleep well. Hah! First time up 11:30 pm then again at 3:30am. I have been up since then. It is now 5:30 am. But I am happy to have this time to write my blog. Still smiling!

Visit to Utah. 4/14-4/29/18

We enjoy a quiet couple of weeks in Utah. The first week is windy and rainy and limits what we can do but the second week the weather is beautiful.

Our first event is the battle with the geese. Since more of the houses around the pond are occupied full time, the geese have fewer choices to use as their bathroom facilities. Ours has become a favorite. We strike back with our Patriotic Goose Guard! This turns out to be a good deterrent but since we will have to take it down when we depart, we are hoping that the geese will be imprinted with “this is a bad place to go.”

Once John has cleaned off the goose poo from the patio and washed the windows we are all set to enjoy the view out the windows.

But what is this I espy? A giant swan in the pond! I am impressed with how enormous this bird is. I look up information on swans. They are the second largest migratory bird in North America (after some sort of pelican) with a wing span of 10 feet across. They are also nasty tempered and I decide not to go out and try to shoo it away.

The swan swims closer to check out the goose guard

Many of the plants in our yard are blooming. The cacti all around the neighborhood are putting on quite the show this year.

Coreopsis, flowering cactus, and some sort of succulent by our driveway

We have done A LOT of cooking while we are here including two “fancy” dinners. Fried scallops is always a favorite of mine and the shrimp in saffron Pernod sauce is especially delicious.

Fried scallops with new potatoes and broccoli salad

Shrimp in saffron Pernod sauce served with brown rice and collards and corn

While we are outside cleaning and setting up our goose guard we meet our new next door neighbors Shaleace and Rocky Price. They suggest that we come to dinner the following Sunday. With some trepidation we accept and I make snickerdoodle cookies to take along. We figure that they are LDS so the simple solution of a bottle of wine is a no-go.

They stop by on Sunday to arrange a time and catch us in our sweaty tennis clothes with the house in mild disarray. It is rather embarrassing. They say to come at 5 PM and when we do, we all sit down and eat immediately. We chat with them and their children, Shantay, and Clayton, over chicken and ribs. When dinner is done it is obvious that it is time for us to leave. It’s 6:45. It is a little weird. We go home and have a post-dinner happy hour.

While we are in St. George our nephew Andy’s wife, Brittany, has her baby. They name him Harrison but he goes by Harry. Now there are two new babies. Mike and Becca’s Jack will be the slightly older cousin. They have a little get-together to introduce the babies to each other.

New members of the family, Jack and Harry. Jack is about two months older than Harry.

The rest of the second week is spent playing tennis and doing shopping. It seems like there is always another thing we need from some store. St. George is notorious for not having everything you want in one place. At the end of the week we manage to make a dish that uses up mostly everything left in the refrigerator, Mediterranean Seafood Soup.

On Sunday we make the long journey home. Recently I decided it is better to do the whole trip in one day. Now I am not so sure. We end up being pretty exhausted afterwards. One bright spot on the trip is a stop at Mojave Thai Cuisine where we enjoy Spicy Thai Basil Eggplant with Tofu. Yum, spicy and delicious! (And enough to bring some home for lunch.)

Mojave Thai Cuisine’s Spicy Thai Basil Eggpllant with Tofu

We will only be home for a few weeks before heading back to St. George. Jonathan, Nathan, and Sam are flying in on June 3rd for a week+ visit. Looking forward to it.