68° North 18° East

This is North. This is 200 km above the arctic circle. This is Riksgränsen!

Believe it or not, Robin, myself, Steve and Kim went skiing/snowboarding up there. It was awesome, we more or less had the mountain to ourselves.

We had a great time checking out the town of Kiruna. Not to mention our fantastic snowmobile tour to the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi led by a great guy by the name of Lief. I think the best part of that trip was Lief, an incredibly hospitable guy and host for our tour.

Our second night in Kiruna was a bit of a mess up as we got kicked out of our hotel. But lief was there to save the day and put us up in a cottage just out of Kiruna. We got to see the northern lights that night.... truly amazing.

Spain is so Gaudi

This year, Robin and I decided to spend Christmas and New Years in Spain. It's December 23, the time is 3:30am. Time to wake up and catch our 6:30am Ryan Air flight to Barcelona. I don't think we have anything good to say about Ryan Air, and we don't have anything bad to say about it either. It's what you expect from a no frills, discount airline, it's a flying bus.

Upon our arrival at the Girona airport (100kms from Barcelona), we basically followed a herd of people to a ticket booth, purchased a bus ticket to Barcelona, and then followed the herd to buses . We really had no idea what we were doing as there were no signs, we were just going with the flow. As luck would have it, everything worked out just perfectly. We arrived in the city at some non-discript bus terminal, consulted a map and decided to take a cab to the hotel, the Villa Emilia, our home for the next few days.

Barcelona
Full of life, full of people, and oh so Gaudi. Who or what is Gaudi, click here to find out more. Gaudi had a significant impact on the city's architecture's. It is clear that he catered to rich, by renovating and creating masterpieces for the well todo of Barcelona. We visited a number of his works, Casa Batlló, Casa Milà, Park Güell, and the Sagrada Família. After seeing his works, we now understand where that old saying "that so gaudi" comes from. You either love it or you hate it, but one thing is for sure his work was revolutionary and bold for the time, even today his work stands apart from the rather bland architect we consider modern. What's even more interesting is the Sagrada Família is still under construction. Construction began in 1882, and it is scheduled to be completed in 2026.
la Rambla is a curious strech of pedestrian walkway connecting Plaça Catalunya in the center with the Christopher Columbus monument on the harbour and the Mediterranean. You can get anything imaginable on this street, food, jewlery, clothing, art, pick-pocketed (didn't happen to us), a live rooster, what ever your heart desires. This is a fantastic walk day or night.

We made a couple of day trips from Barcelona. One trip was to Tarragona to see some ancient roman ruins. Besides the ruins we had a great lunch, a nice stroll on the beach, and enjoyed fantastic weather. After we stuck our hand in the water we laughed to ourself with thought of if this place were in Canada right now, it would be crowed with people tanning and playing in the water, since it was that warm. The other day trip was to Monestir de Montserrat a Benedictine abby tucked high in the mountains. We had to take a cable car to reach the top, it's crazy that they built such a thing so high in the mountains when it was founded in 1025.

Three is so much to see and do in Barcelona, it feels as though we only scratched the surface. One thing we did have a hard time with, was dinner. It was so late, restaurants only open at 8:30pm, and things don't really start moving until 10:00pm.

Madrid:
uuuhhhhmmm... Madrid is a big city. Dirty, loud, but has a great treasure chest of art by the name of Museo Nacional Del Prado. This place houses some of Europe's greatest masterpieces, like the "Garden of Earthly Delights" by El Bosco. Actually another awesome place was the palace, not only did it look cool, there was some guy dressed up as Zorro. A sort-of chubby Zorro . That made my day. To be honest, the best part of Madrid was the train ride to Segovia.


Segovia:
Ever see a Roman aquaduct before? I hadn't until we rolled into Segovia. This thing is spectacular, built of unmortared, brick-like granite blocks during the second half of the 1st Century AD. Those Romans knew how to build stuff that lasts. After a stroll through the old city, you stumble upon what many consider to be Europe's last great Gothic cathedral, the aptly named the Cathedral of Segovia. Stroll a bit further and you will find the Alcázar of Segovia, probably built sometime around the year 1120. Segovia's has another claim to fame, the Roasted suckling pig. No thanks, not for me.

This is also the city where we met Clio. A nice girl, red, about a year old maybe less, low mileage. That's right, our rental car, a Renault Clio. Luckily I brought along our hand held Garmin GPS to help with navigation. Robin was skeptical about the power of the GPS, but I think in the end she learned to love it. More on this later...







Sevilla:
The GPS navigated us to straight from Segovia directly to our Hotel in Sevilla, with out a problem. The bad thing about the GPS is we put almost complete faith in the device's routing capabilities after this successful journey.

In Sevilla we spent New Years eve and New Years day. Good luck trying to find a restaurant on new years eve with out a reservation. We opted for the hotel restaurant, not a bad choice.

The following day was another sunny warm day. Plenty of things to see in Sevilla, if it were summer we could have seen a bull fight in the fancy looking bull ring downtown. An interesting factoid, the city's cathedral is built over the site of the city's mosque from back in the Moor days. After exploring some of the Moorish remains, like the Alcázar, and the old city streets lined with orange trees, we booked ourselves into a Flamenco show. After all Sevilla is the Flamenco capital of Spain. The flamenco show was great, it was very intimate and consisted of a guitarist, singer, male and female dancer. The dancing was very expressive, and the male dancer had so much energy. The intricate hand and footwork of both dancers was very impressive. Even though I couldn't understand a word of the cante (song), it was still beautiful.

Gibraltar:
Leaving Sevillia in Clio with the handy GPS to guide our way to Gibraltar, we also left the nice weather behind us. It began to rain, gentle in Sevilla, but as we approached Gibraltar the wind picked up and the rain began to pour down heavy. We were almost on top of it when suddenly the massive limestone rock showed itself through the clouds. Both Robin and I knew that we must go to Gibraltar. We drove all this way, so where we going to let some bad weather stop us? HELL NO! We parked Clio, put on our rain jackets and marched across the border. We flashed our passports (i literally mean flashed), and the border guy barely batted an eye and didn't even get off the phone. We made it, we were in little Britain. Now what? By this time we are getting soaked, so hopped on a city bus which took us from the border to the "city center". The bus drove across the air strip of the Gibraltar airport, yes there is that much space here. The bus let us out, we thanked our driver in English and proceeded to find something to eat. We found ourselves in some pub call 'The Aragon'. I couldn't have asked for a better place. The air was blue with smoke, the woman behind the bar had a horrible blond dye job, the other waitress had bad teeth, the guys at the bar were overweight and smoking, but everyone was friendly and speaking English. I ordered Shepard's pie, Robin got the quiche (not very British). It was great to listen to people speaking English, even if it was the Queen's English. While there, a French couple walks in and the man starts snapping off pictures like it's his job, and says to some British couple, "we are tourist from France", the British man pipes up immediately and says, "that's your problem". The entire pub proceeds to laugh! Thank god the French guy was a good sport. We completed our meals, looked around Gibraltar a bit, but the weather was so bad, so we left. No monkeys, no WWII tunnels, no fantastic views from the top, that was Gibraltar.

That night we found our way to the Mediterranean port city of Málaga, the birth place of Pablo Picasso, and Antonio Banderas. We had a great dinner at a Moroccan restaurant, yum!

Valencia:
From Málaga, we stopped off at Granada before continuing on to Valencia. In Granada is the Alhambra (الحمراء) a palace and fortress complex of the Moorish monarchs of Granada. However, the weather was still cold and rainy. We wandered around the complex for a while, enjoyed the Arabic architecture and the splendor of the gardens, and it many fountains. We had to cut our tour short without visiting the palace portion of Alhambra since they were staging people through at specific time. We have a schedule to keep, we had to return Clio in Valencia, 528km away.

As we left Granada, this is where the GPS gave us hints of unreliability. Some road construction had exits re-numbered, and some interchanges were slightly different than the maps on the GPS. We found our way, but the tension levels were on the rise since we made a couple of wrong turns.

6hrs later we were in Valencia. Destination - our hotel, the Comfortel Aqua 3. We made a couple of wrong turns thanks to many round-abouts and some darkness. Spaniards don't really obey the lines on the road, they love the horn, it was a bit of chaos. Oh well, we were here and got to say goodbye to Clio. Our hotel was situated in a modern area of Valencia, a stones throw from Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències. This is a collection of ultra-modern buildings dedicated to the arts and sciences. We took it easy and spend our last day at the L'Oceanogràfic, by far and away the coolest aquariam we have ever been to, in fact this is the largest aquarium in Europe. Well worth the 23 Euro admission. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the 'holy grail' authenticated by the Vatican that is in the cathedral in Valencia, but you can only see so many churches...

We crammed quite a bit in during our last fews days in Spain. We were ready for our bus ride, errrrr, make that our flight back to Stockholm.

Hasta La'wego

München and Neuschwanstein Castle

Robin and I recently went to München. For me it was a business trip, but we stayed a few extra days to absorb the great capital of the German state of Bavaria. We stayed in a town by the name of Ismaning, just outside of München on the way to the Airport. This was where the office was located. Ismaning was conveniently connected to both the airport and München via the S8 U-Bahn. Our first day in München was spent wandering around the city. We took a tour of the The Residenz (German word for residence). The Residenz is the largest downtown palace in Germany and serves today as one of the finest room decoration museums in Europe. This place was ornate! We ended our day at the The Hofbräuhaus am Platzl, a beer hall. If you ever go you need to know the the song "In München steht ein Hofbräuhaus, eins, zwei, g'suffa!" ("There's a Hofbräuhaus in Munich—one, two, drunk!"). Robin and I enjoyed a liter of beer, pretzels, and talked to a few of Canadians, an American and a chap from the UK who stepped on an airplane for the first time a few weeks ago. I guess you could say this was a bit of a tourist attraction. The Canadian couple we met were from Toronto, and the guy was here to drive Audi's on the autobahn. He actually got to drive an Audi R8 on the Nürburgring!!

Robin I went to see Neuschwanstein Castle. This was an all day adventure, as it was a two hour train ride from München towards the Alps. Neuschwanstein Castle (New Swan Stone palace) is a 19th century Bavarian palace. Located near Hohenschwangau and Füssen in southwest Bavaria, the castle was built by Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as a homage to Richard Wagner, the King's inspiring muse. It also served as the inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland. The Castle was magnificent, placed on a hill top, over looking town, at the base of mountains. It snowed the day before we went, which added to the fairly tale look of it all. The pictures don't do it justice.

This trip was great since we got to see different things from the last time when i was here (about 7 years ago). I did take Robin to a couple of the places that I saw previously, kind of interesting to say I was here 7 years ago, in this exact spot! Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to go to the BMW museum or factory. Some how we ran out of time (or interest). I'll save that for next time, I think the BMW experience will be open by then!

For more picture click here

Rush in Stockholm

Robin and I went to see Rush tonight. I was Robin's first time to see Rush and the first time both of us stepped foot inside the Stockholm Globe Arena.

We had fairly good seats, section A11, rad 8, plats 59 and 60. However I think we were seated around every amateur drummer in the crowd. It was good show, and they made a few shout outs to Canada which was cool. At one point Geddy Lee pulled out a video camera and pointed at the crowd say he was making a video for back home in Canada. He got the crowd to shout out "HELLO Canada". To my surprise there was some video footage of Bob and Doug McKenzie as well.

The Flåmsbanna

Off to Flåm and the scenic Mydra to Flåm railway aboard the Flåmsbanna, one of the steepest railways in the world (apparently). This is clearly a tourist attraction as, there were hundreds for grey hairs and Japanese tourist lined up to catch the train. Well, there wasn't much to see as it was raining and completely fogged in. We did have a great view of a colourful Spaniard who loudly "oooooh'd" and "ahhhh'd" at every chance he could. I believe he has mocking the the rest of the people (a Spanish tour group) who still decided to take picture even though you couldn't see anything on account of the fog. Since it was such lovely weather (raining), we decided to hike to a waterfall (more water). When you're wet might as well keep it that way.

The second day in Flåm was awesome, the clouds broke and it was completely cloudless. We headed of for a monster hike, 6hrs, i have no idea how many kms. It was from Østerbø to Vassbygdi. The view were breathtaking, the pictures just don't do justice.

The third day, Robin and I kayaked on the Aurlandsfjord, with our German tour guide. It was just the three of us, so we were able to do more kayaking than the group normally would, and we had an opportunity to talk about pre and post german unification. She grewup in the eastern part of german. You might thing I'm nuts but I drank water from a river, or runoff steam, and I didn't get sick. To top it off the water was tasty!

Of course you can see more pictures here.

The ice planet of Hoth

We arrived in Voss by train from Stockholm via Oslo. Voss is situated on the main road and railway line from Oslo to Bergen, about 100 kilometers east of Bergen. This is where we met up with friends Julie and Joel, and made our home base for the next two nights. Not much going on in the sleepy town of Voss, except for some guys ripping up the street on dirtbikes and four wheelers. Reminded me of rural any where in Canada. We also stumbled upon some teenagers filming each other grinding a rail on skis in front of the church. Ahh only in Norway.

The next day we set off for a hike in Finse, which is at the highest point along the Olso to Bergen railway at 1222m. Finse was the location for the ice planet Hoth in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Can you imagine, I was at the site of the legendary battle of Hoth, and walked the very same earth as Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and those crazy Imperial walkers things.

It was cold, 5C cold, and on the verge of raining when we arrived. I didn't bring bring gloves, so i was forced to purchase some at the local and only bike shop. Infact I think this was the only shop, as there are no roads that lead here, acess is by train. I payed a kings ransom for these gloves, seems thy have a captive audience there. We hiked out to the glacier, two hours out, two hours back. The scenery was beautiful, but desolate. The hike was cold and wet, i think it rained the entire time. The entire time we were out there, I had to remind myself, this is August, yes, this is August. We returned to Voss, had a sauna, dinner, and called it a day.

Norway in nutshell

• Aug 17 - 22:30 caught the train to Oslo
• Aug 18 - 03:00 train stops in a train yard
  
• Aug 18 - 03:30 train connects to another bunch of cars heading to Oslo
  
• Aug 18 - 09:30 arrived in Olso
  
• Aug 18 - 10:30 caught the train to Voss
• Aug 18 - 16:00 arrived in Voss, Norway
  
• Aug 18 - Met up with Julie and Joel
• Aug 19 - hiked the ice planet of Hoth from Star Wars (Finse, Norway), more detail here.
• Aug 20 - Mydra to Flåm aboard the legendary and scenic flåmsbanna
• Aug 20 - Arrive in Flåm
• Aug 21 - 6hr hike from Østerbø to Vassbygdi, gorgeous!
  
• Aug 22 - Kayaked the Aurlandsfjord
• Aug 22 - baord the high speed catermeran to Bergen, great view of the fjords
• Aug 22 - Arrive in Bergen
• Aug 23 - Ulriksbanen cable car to the peak 642m, and hiked down
• Aug 23 - tour around Bryggen (the old warf)
  
• Aug 24 - Train from Bergen to Oslo
  
• Aug 24 - Arrive in Oslo and off to the Scandic hotel
• Aug 24 - visit the Vigeland Sculpture Park
  
• Aug 25 - viking ships and a Stave Church
• Aug 26 - Edvard Munch Museum, and goodbye Oslo, hello Stockholm.