When Bill Potter and I decided to book the tour “Highlights of Scandinavia: Sweden, Norway and Denmark,” he said that he was going to write to Hope Jahren to see if we could meet sometime during or after our tour. If her name sounds familiar, perhaps you’ve read her bestselling books, Lab Girl or The… Read More Happy times with Hope and Clint
It was just about 5 years ago that I visited Norway on a trip with Brekke Tours, and about 25 years before that I came to Norway with my husband Carl. So this trip with GoAhead Tours is my third visit to this beautiful country, and certainly, my third trip to Bergen. We started the… Read More Bergen, revisited
I had set my alarm for 4:45 am in order to put my bag outside my room for pickup at 5:30, and found myself wide awake at 12:04 am! Luckily I fell back to sleep again, and woke up at 4:00, with plenty of time to spare. We left the hotel at 6:00 am for… Read More Reindeer hot dogs in Bergen
The life of an organist can sometimes be a very lonely one. Sure, there are services to play, and choir rehearsals to accompany, but besides that, there are hours and hours of practice, alone in a darkened church. So when Sissel Sødal suggested that I play a duet with Tim Harry Blomberg, I jumped at… Read More Four hands, four feet
After riding to the airport with the rest of my tour group, most of them went in the direction of the international terminal while I turned the opposite way to fly domestic. I had booked a flight to Kristiansand, scheduled to be a 50 minute flight, but we arrived 15 minutes early. Sissel Irene Sødal… Read More Happy reunion!
Today was the first real day that we had concern about the weather, because we were planning to be mostly outdoors. The rain hadn’t started yet, so our first stop was at the Vigeland Sculpture Park within Frogner Park, which is a huge park displaying the sculpture art of Gustave Vigeland (11 April 1869 –… Read More Walking through Oslo
Today we visited a hydroelectric plant in Rjukan that was taken over by the Germans when they occupied Norway during World War II. It was here that the Germans did research on “heavy water,” and had they been allowed to continue, would have developed the atomic bomb. In this plant Norwegians were originally producing an… Read More If not for the Norwegians…
On our way to the Hardangervidda National Park we passed many locations where the land meets the water—the water was so still that you could see a mirrored reflection of the steep mountains and valleys. This is a lot harder to describe than it is to just show you the photos! As you can see,… Read More Mirrored reflections
In looking over the posts I’ve written on my Norway trip, I suddenly realized that I totally (but not deliberately!) left out any mention of our visit to Hopperstad Stave Church, which dates from 1130 AD. First of all, what is a Stave church? It refers to Norway’s unique architectural style of wooden churches, based… Read More Hopperstad Stave Church
It so happens that the tour that I booked is called “Splendor of Norway,” and today’s boat, train and bus travels showed us the spectacular natural scenery of this country. The morning started out a little forebodingly, with light rain sprinkles as we walked to the boat dock just a short distance from our hotel.… Read More Splendor of Norway