A weekend in Oslo

I just returned late last night from a whirlwind trip to Oslo, Norway. I have a personal goal to try to see the major Scandanavian cities before the end of the year - not sure if I will make it before it gets too cold and dark, but we shall see.

I was not sure what I expected out of Oslo, but I have to say I was quite pleased overall. It is a very clean, well planned and vibrant city. They especially seem to be into art, literature and coffee, all which score high with me. The seafood, even at the airport, was fantastic. The only drawback is the high standard of living - good for norwegians but not for tourists. A simple dinner at a restaurant on the waterfront set me back the equivalent about 42 pounds, or approximately 81 dollars - without coffee and dessert! Pretty much everything is expensive - I find it hard to believe that Oslo is not higher up on the most expensive cities list - but perhaps they make more money there.

I got to see lots of cool artwork - in a day and a half I hit four different art museums. A favorite son of Oslo and a favorite of mine is Edvard Munch, so I went to both the Munch museum and the National Gallery, which has some of his most famous works. My timing couldn't have been better - both The Scream and Madonna have recently been recovered and put back on display at the National Gallery, under what looks like bullet proof glass, less than two weeks ago. The security was really tight at the Munch museum, with metal detectors, bag screeners and a very conspicous camera over their rough version of the scream.

I have to say, Mr Munch had some serious issues. The Scream is probably one of the least disturbing of his paintings (well, except for the landscapes). There were some pretty grim looking murder scenes and some haunting self portraits, but all in all it is pretty original and certainly thought provoking.

I also hit the modern art museum and the Astrup Fearnley museum, where i saw a cow and calf sliced in half and preserved. Mmmm.

Norwegians are also obviously big seafarers. There were a couple really cool museums in Bygdøy, which is a 10 minute ferry ride across the Oslo Fjord. The Viking museum has two big ships from the 900s, well preserved because some important vikings were buried in them. The nearby Kon Tiki museum has some more modern (in time) but more ancient boats built and sailed under the vision of Thor Heyerdahl. He wanted to prove that the ancient civilisations of South American and Africa could have sailed on balsa and reed rafts, so he built a few and went on these crazy voyages. He and his crew sailed the balsa Kon Tiki from Peru across the Pacific for 101 days, with only a radio. I guess the documentary won an oscar in the early 50s.

I also wandered around the open-air Norwegian Folk Museum - where they have collected dozens of original Norwegian buildings and assembled them in different areas to show what life would have been like, including folks in the appropriate outfits.

Finally, I saw the Nobel Peace Prize museum, the newest in town, which has lots of neat exhibits on world peace and nobel prize winners. The award is presented in Oslo every December.

My favorite site by far was the Vigeland Sculpture Park, with more than 200 sculptures by Oslo sculptor Gustav Vigeland. The sculptures were all amazing - from the bronze models on the bridge to the stone ones at the other end - I could have taken thousands of pictures there. The monolith in the center is a huge obelisk like sculpture made up entirely of human figures in various stages of life.

All the photos from the weekend, including one of a particularly good latte, are posted here.

Andorra

After we left the Dali triangle, we drove up into the Pyrennees, through France and a big tunnel into Andorra, one of the most intriguing places we visited.

Before we decided to go on this trip, I had never even heard of Andorra. It is a small principality nestled in the mountains, in between Spain and France. One of our friends here recommended it to us because it has a reputation for being a tax haven and shopping mecca. It is an odd place, I guess it was closed off to the outside world really until the 50s, and recently it has started undergoing a tourist boom. You can see why, the mountains are gorgeous, prices are cheap and it is still relatively undiscovered. People speak mostly Catalan Spanish, which makes sense since Spaniards outnumber native Andorrans, and they use the Euro for currency, even though they are not really in the EU. Another odd stat (thanks wikipedia!) is that they have the highest average life expectancy of 83.51 years. Must be all the clean mountain air and exercise.

We arrived fresh out of the tunnel at Soldeu, and we were stunned by a bunch of large, and very nice looking hotels. I was exhausted after a long stressful drive and determined not to go any further, so we stayed at the first place we stopped to rest. That hotel was okay, but a bit too crowded with children and questionable food, so we moved to a different spot the next night, the Sport Hotel Village, which was amazing. It had a three story spa, amazing food, and a great location right in front of the mountains. I bet it is a great place to visit in the winter to ski. We would have stayed another night if they hadn't been full - which we thought was odd given it was off-season and pretty quiet in town - but there were still tons of families as well as a bunch of mountain bikers around so I guess it makes sense. We did get to do a bit of hiking, even though it was cold, and the views were spectacular all around. Photos from Andorra are here - towards the end of the set.

After we left Soldeu we headed across tiny Andorra and through Andorra La Vella, where we thought we would have lunch and maybe do a bit of shopping. Yuck! What a mistake. This is the kind of place that makes me shudder - tacky shops all over, totally unplanned, horrible traffic, and trashy people swarming all over trying to get a good deal. Kind of like a low-rent outlet mall in the US, the ones in San Ysidro near the border with Mexico come to mind. In sort of an ironic protest, we ate at McDonalds...where M got beer with his value meal.

Catalonia and the Dali Triangle

We began our Pyrenees trip by flying into Barcelona and spending two nights at the Mas Pau, in Catalonia, near Figueres. Once we found the hotel it was quite beautiful and pleasant, a nice restoration of a historic farmhouse. The restaurant there was fantastic and I had possibly one of the best meals I have had in my life, in a beautiful setting, half inside and half out, looking over the gardens.

What I didn't really realize until we got there was that this area is in the heart of the Dali Triangle, where Salvador Dali was born, returned to live with his wife and eventually died. Figueres is the home to an amazing Dali museum, that he designed himself and is also his final resting place in the basement. We tried to visit it during the day, but the queue was so long we decided to come back for the late night opening at 10. It was still crowded then, but it was worth it - the experience of seeing it at night was so unique and almost magical at times. I did not take nearly enough pictures there, mostly because it was dark. We were not able to make it to Cadaques, where Dali and his wife Gala lived and where their old home is now also a museum. I guess it is so small you have to book far in advance and we would have had to stay at least two more days for us to get in for a tour. The third part of the triangle is Gala's Castle in Pubol, which we did not see either. I did get a nice book though at the Dalicatessan and I am pleased I did get to visit the home of one of my favorite artists, a nice surprise.

Another very memorable part of Catalonia for me were the Caganers, a very odd Catholic tradition in the region. You have to read the link to believe it - I didn't believe it when I read it in the guidebook - but we did see some of these for sale in Figueres, in many different incarnations - George Bush, Saddam Hussein, Jesus, you name it. I wanted to buy one or two, but the ones we saw were very expensive, and I couldn't see myself paying 50 or 100 euro for a tiny squatting statue. I guess another thing I should have taken a picture of...

I guess this region and the nearby beaches on the Costa Brava were some of the first in Spain to be overrun with British tourists, and you can tell by the city of Roses (which doesn't smell so good, incidently) that we drove to one evening. It might have been beautiful once, the ocean still is anyway, but the town itself was an overcrowded dump with a number of shops and restaurants that rival my nearby Holloway Road.

Holiday in the Pyrenees

It has been a couple of weeks since I returned from my holiday in the Pyrenees and I still haven't gotten around to writing about it. Unfortunately I came down with a nasty cold/sinus infection that is just starting to subside in the last few days, and I haven't really had energy for much since then.

Anyway, we did spend the last two weeks of August in the Pyrenees, a beautiful stretch of mountains straddling Spain and France, with a funny little country called Andorra in the middle. It was quite an adventure - we flew into Barcelona and picked up our rental car with just two nights booked in a hotel and almost two weeks to fill. There are quite a few places to mention, so I will do them in separate entries.

A few overarching comments though - Spain is booming! Almost every little town we passed through in Spain had cranes building more and more hotels, vacation homes, etc. It was a bit strange, but considering the number of tourists, I guess not surprising. I did get a sinking feeling that maybe they are going a bit too fast too soon, but hopefully not. I was pretty impressed with the construction too - they are building a lot of neat stone covered buildings that kind of blend into the older stuff, and it looks like really good quality - not like those slapped up condos that seem to be so prevalent in the US. France, well not so much. The smaller towns we drove through in France seemed to be more desolate and sparse of restaurants and accomodations - and driving through France one evening was the only time we had difficulty finding a place to stay.

Also, we saw almost no Americans on this trip and hardly any English speakers, until we got to Bilbao. We did meet a Scottish couple in Andorra who seemed to be doing a similar trip to ours, but for the most part the tourists were Spanish or French families. There were many times where it was almost impossible to communicate - in the nicest hotels they spoke good English, but for the most part I had to stumble out my few words of Spanish or French. Even though I studied French in high school, I think I did much better speaking Spanish - I was getting fairly confident towards the end of the trip. But it was quite different from most of my recent travels, when you can usually get by with English (or at least pointing). In Spain you can't even get food at McDonalds in English. Although it was challenging, I did enjoy the vacation from Americans and English. It made for a very different experience.

Funny though, even with the lack of Americans, American culture certainly pervades even these areas. From American shops to pop songs to Nike shirts and trainers- it is everywhere. Even at the festival in Bilbao, a very Basque event, there was American music blaring all the time.

Another challenge was food. Dining was certainly a challenge for us during the entire trip. Most of the time we had breakfast included with our rooms, so at least that was one meal taken care of, but it was really hard to adjust to eating other than that. Not only was there a communication barrier, there were the odd eating times. Restaurants don't really open for lunch until after 1 or 2 p.m. or so, and people don't eat dinner, especially in Spain, til 9 p.m. or later. Once we got to the Basque country, it was just hard to find restaurants in general, and when we found them, they were closed or full. There were these places where you could go and get snacks and sandwiches, which were fine in the early evening before they got too crowded, but later they were full of people smoking with their cigarretes hanging over the food - which tends to not make it so appetizing. I have always enjoyed Basque food and culture, especially growing up in Nevada with all the Basque restuarants, so I was disappointed. Embarassingly we ate at McDonalds a few times - though I have to say, McDonalds did taste much better there - not sure if it was because we were desperate or their quality was better - maybe a bit of both. Bilbao in particular is known for its fine restaurants, so I hope I get to go back there someday without 100,000 people in town for a festival, so we would have a chance at getting in to try some local dining. We did have a few excellent meals though and we certainly didn't starve.

And then, there was the driving. Lots of it and at times quite scary. One time in particular, going around a tight curve with a big truck coming at us, I thought we were dead for sure. I had to pull closer to the mountain on the tiny shoulder to avoid it. There was one point in the trip where my right arm and shoulder just gave up and demanded to be rested. It could have been much worse though - one thing they have done is build a number of different tunnels, one 7 miles or so long, that cut through the mountains and spit you out on the other side. Without that and what definitely looked like brand new roads in a few places, it might have been a much more grueling trip. Because of insurance, I was the only one who could drive the car - ironically when we turned it in it turned out they had put it on the wrong credit card - so thankfully I did not get hit by the truck or anything else during the trip.

All the pictures are here, and I will continue blogging on about some of the more interesting places we saw during our trip.

Film Four is Free

That is what the adverts say. I had never watched film four before it was free, so I don't know if I ever paid for it.

Anyway, I digress. I was just watching Four Weddings and a Funeral on Film Four, which was much better than I remember, even if I do not like Andie McDowell.

Irritatingly, there were commercials on during the programming - I guess that is why it is now free. They have to pay for those fancy commercials with Ewan McGregor, Judy Dench and Willem Dafoe after all. Those of you who do not live in the UK (which is likely all of you who read my blog) are probably very confused by now, so I will try to get to the point.

Many of the advertisements were promoting the next feature, A Clockwork Orange, which they billed as another in their series of films to see before you die. I thought to myself, well, not sure I fully agree with that, but I would like to see a list of other movies I should see before I kick it.

Unfortunately, no such list exists. But I did find this site instead. It is really interesting to see what Brits fancy versus Americans. If you look at the list of comedies, the AFI list doesn't have any Monty Python in their top 20; yet the British one has two in the top ten. And only the English would have Shaun of the Dead make such a list. Ok, it is very funny - but number 3 of all time? The list of the ultimate film is particularly puzzling to me. The first four are relatively expected, but Spring in Park Lane? Has anyone outside of Britain heard of that?

It's definitely amusing - though the 100 sexiest moments is a bit disappointing. I think it needs visuals.