Norway National Park Trip

This is Rondane National Park. As you can see it is above tree line. We visited 3 national parks and each one was entirely above tree line. Below tree line are farms and logging. This was beautiful, but we missed trees and stuff (we did see a pair of cute weasels, though). We hit a bit of weather and gorgeous skies.

This is where we stayed. There is a system of huts (hytta) on public lands in Norway (and other parts of Europe, I think). Some just have cafes, some food and lodging and some are unstaffed and have food you can cook and some are just huts. They are generally a few hours walk between them and the big ones are generally relatively close to the nearest road or parking area. This one was a 2 hour walk. Everyone who shows up and needs a place to stay gets one. The cost is relatively inexpensive and the food is great. There are no private rooms, but there are ones with a variety of number of beds. We arrived a bit late (I guess) and the only space left was the dormitory. This turned out to be a basement room with bunkbeds - 8 on the top and 8 on the bottom. Zero privacy. We were assigned to the top. THere were boards between mattresses, but snoring.....

Amsterdam VIII

Did I mention the sculpture garden? It was enormous. This is a piece that is floating around a pond - constantly moving - quite a cool piece. The interior of the museum had more van Goghs' than the van Gogh museum. Such an incredible collection of art from the Impressionists onward (there were a few Old Masters). We ran out of time and energy to see it all.

This is a sculpture by Dubuffet called, I believe, 'The Garden.' There was a sign that stressed no climbing or touching, but then there was a door and ....

in we and everyone else went.

Another view of the park - so nice.

That is the end of our Amsterdam trip (well, sort of, but don't you think i have subjected you to enough pictures fromthe Netherlands???)

Amsterdam VII

Travelling in style - or the best way to get around the Netherlands. It seems that you can get almost anywhere in the Netherlands in an hour by train. And the trains run so frequently that it made it so easy for us to do day trips. And it was a good way to see the countryside on a short trip.

This is a national park called Hoge Veluwe. At the entrances to this park there are hundreds of free bicycles and you are encouraged to ride around the park (no cars). SInce it is mostly flat, this is not much of a problem. There is also a fantastic art museum and sculpture garden in the middle of the park.

The landscape is pretty varied in the park. Easy riding and a beautful day!!!!

Sand dunes. Feels out of place here, but it shouldn't.

Amsterdam VI

Street sculpture. The trees have eyes with really big lenses.

This is in The Hague. A most bizarre and ornate fountain. They look like greyhounds being treated badly. This town does not look like it would be a fun place to hang out. You can tell that there is some official goverment stuff there. There is a museum called Mauritshuis that we visited that was amazing. Lots of amazing Masters paintings. Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is here as well as 2 city scenes that he did that were so different from what we usually see of Vermeer's work, but then so in his style. They were among my favorite pieces. We saw 'The Milkmaid' at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and that brought tears to my eyes - so amazing to see the original. It is a very small piece and yet so powerful.

OK -so this is some moderny art. It was supposed to be a dress (it was in a photography museum, but ...). They say that the Netherlanders are amongst the tallest people in Europe...(yes, that is me standing behind the dress).

Ah, yes, another form of modern art that seems to be ubiquitous in Amsterdam and here in Oslo as well. Some is quite well done, but it bothers me nonetheless.

Amsterdam V

More architecture. We passed this building many times and each time I pointed it out (as if I had never seen it).

Always lots of people around. Lots and lots of tourists. Groups from everywhere and lots of young men in the red ligh district. Although you could be walking through there noting the groups of 20 something men and then turn a corner and see a guided tour of Spaniards in their 60s - very diverse.

OK, it is a chair made out of legos. There was a lot of cools stuff in this store (Droog), but we only have this picture. There was a steel bench that had as its surface a large quantity of ball bearings. When you sat on it you could slide around and into anyone else sitting on it - fun. There was also a pinball machine in which all the posts were porcelain cats each with its own chime. Very pretty and silly.

The canals were so pretty - such a nice place to walk around.

Amsterdam IV

We took a birding trip outside Amsterdam. Yes it is quite flat and there is a lot of water and dikes and farmland and some old windmills (that don't seem to be used much) and lots of th modern steel windmills. Windy place. IF you have seen Dutch art from the Golden Age (Rembrandt and others) you might think the skies were over dramatic and very dark and take up too much of the canvas. Well, that is what it really looks like.

The place we went birding was called Oostvaardplassen. It is a polder that was (reclaimed land surrounded by dikes) created in the 1960s and then was never developed. It now has a 'virgin landscape' and some odd and very old species of mammals. The horses below are called conic and they all look virtually alike (I believe they are from eastern Europe). There are also horned heck cattle and red deer - all somewhat different from the forms we are used to seeing.

Here we are with our guide (next to me) and one-half of a couple from the US.

More beautiful architecture from Amsterdam. So much to look at and absorb.

Amsterdam III

This was just amusing!

A little modern building in with the old. Note the leaning house.

Bicycles, bicycles. There are soooo many. THey have the right of way - do not walk in the bike lane (which is often the only place to walk as the sidewalks are mostly obstructed - with parked bicycles). They mostly have no gears (it is pretty flat there) and only foot breaks.

This was taken in a very old botanical garden. We were in the tropical greenhouse - a taste of warmth and home....

Amsterdam II

Some Architecture. Different styles are from different periods and reflect the wealth of the city. Notice in some of these shots that some buildings are tilted and that many have what are called hoists at the top (those pieces sticking out perpendicularly to the building). These were used to lift up furinture to the top floors and the tilting of the buildings was to prevent the furniture from banging into the building. Some are more tilted than that, but they were built on reclaimed land...

This is in the redlight district. Picturesque canal and live porno show.

Cute building from the 1627. It house the restaurant pictured below. It is called the 5 Flies and you know we had to eat there. A very fancy restaurant.

Amsterdam I

Well, we took a trip for a week to Amsterdam. We stayed in a nice little hotel (attic room where we needed a key and a bathrobe to get to our bathroom). From Amsterdam we took trains around to visit the countryside. We did a lot of museuming, visiting the van Gogh museum, Rijksmuseum, Mauritshuis (in the Hague) and Kroeller-Muller museum (there should be umlauts on some of these letters, but I am lazy). Amazing art everywhere.

Here we are in Amsterdam at the flower market where, what else, they are selling bulbs!!!!!

There was a fabulous glass gallery right down the street from our hotel (and exciting for me since I had just come from my glass class and I could talk relatively intelligently about what we were looking at (well, not this particular piece - cute, no?)

There are many houseboats in the canals - with plants growing all around.

Stave Church in Averoy

Here are more images of the Stave Kirke in Averoy. There are a number of these old churches still around and each is ineresting. We have visited about 4 (including one in the Folkmuseum here in Oslo). This is one of my favorites. The walls are so tall and relatively unstable that these poles are necessary to keep the walls up. (I don't know if that is original to the church, but it wouldn't surprise me).

This is the inside and you can see how heavily decorated it is. THe whole church was painted on the inside. The decorations are from a later time - perhaps the 1600s. In a later post I will show you a church that was mostly preserved from its inception and you will see the difference.

You can see the date for yourself. I think this means that some of the artifacts here date from that time - when Christianity was imposed on the populace and the early churches (stave kirkes) were built. There were casket lids that we saw that dated fromt he 1600s which were found under the church during a renovation (int he 1920s, I think)

Here is a view down the church (away from the pulpit). The priest's family (that is right) sat in the blue balcony on the left. A ship like the one here can be seen in many of the old churches (we saw them in Amsterdam as well). These were a seafaring people after all.