Todd has always maintained that he
comes from Viking stock. To prove it, he would point to the painted
wooden horses and Dip-In-The-Pan (a traditional Swedish stew with pig
knuckles, sausage, and other unidentifiable pork parts) that his family brought
out every Christmas. The Peterson name
is apparently up for grabs between Norway and Sweden, as his family purportedly
came from some fishing village on the Norwegian/Swedish border.
"Peterson" is the Swedish spelling; however, some Norwegian
immigrants apparently changed the Norwegian spelling of "Petersen" to
"Peterson" in order to appear highbrow. (What Todd seems
to forget, when he teases me about my Germanic heritage, is that his mother's
maiden name is a very Teutonic "Schneider.") Our children, however, have clearly inherited
the Viking genes.
Crazy Vikings
Whatever the case may be, we ended our summer vacationing in the Far
North, traveling vast distances in very few days in order to explore Todd's
homeland. This lesson about packing too much in should have already
been learned, but alas! If you don’t learn from history, you are destined to
repeat it.
Learn this: Horns In Battle = Getting Stuck In The Eye
We flew into Göteborg from Paris, a stopover destination due to cheap
Ryanair prices. As a first introduction,
Göteborg was modern, industrial, clean, cool, and rainy. Water and pines forests surrounded the city,
and we rode the ferry everywhere despite the rain. A quick walk and dinner, a night at our
lovely dockside hotel with delicious licorice treats, and off we went the next
day to Stockholm.
Modern Sculpture With Viking
Hanging out enjoying the short-lived summer
Stockholm’s skyline is one of the
prettiest I’ve ever seen. The city’s
water-bound location, spread out over 14 islands in this northern archipelago,
reflects and magnifies its mix of 19th-century and modern
beauty.
Glorious Skyline
Water, water everywhere
We stayed on a boat-hostel called
the Gustav Klimt, with tiny, bohemian cabins and a shared bathroom. The girls were thrilled by these exotic
accommodations complete with porthole; Todd was barely able to squish his
six-foot-two frame into the narrow bottom bunk.
The following day we spent at Skansen, Stockholm’s famous outdoor
historical museum, where you can see how life used to be in the northern
wilds. This park is part zoo, part
old-town, part historic village, part playground, with examples of living
quarters including docents in historic dress practicing domestic arts from 100
or more years ago.
Old-Time Swedish Hut
We even found a Swedish horse, along
with a squirrel. The set-up for kids was
incredible, inviting Tia and Sasha to run from one thing to another with
glee.
Look, Gram, what we can ride!!!
Acting Nutsy
From there we spent the afternoon at
the Vasa Museum, an incredible building crafted around the ill-fated ship the
Vasa, which sank on her maiden voyage in 1628.
It is a story of human pride and hubris; King Gustav insisted on
completing it despite boatbuilders’ doubts.
No one had the courage to tell King Gustav that thirty men running from
one side of the boat to the other could set it rocking enough to capsize. Sure
enough, as soon at the Vasa set sail, a light breeze sprang up and knocked it
over, killing at least 15 people and stunning the thousands who had come to watch. In 1961, the Vasa was raised from its bed of
mud and cleaned; the remains of 8 of the dead were salvaged and their lives
reconstructed. We were all fascinated.
All the woodcarving was another big mistake, adding to the Vasa's topheavy load
The next morning we explored the
Viking Museum while Todd went off to visit his friend Tim. Tia and Sasha showed yet again that they
clearly have Scandinavian roots.
Viking Girls with Sacrificial Dog Skeleton
They also demonstrated their prowess
at Viking weaponry:
and early Viking boxing:
We then joined
Todd and Tim in Uppsala, where we toured the Protestant cathedral and the
surrounding gardens, the old church (where an impromptu quartet sang haunting
harmonies in the vestibule), and an outdoor dinner in magnificent evening
sunshine.
Uppsala Gardens
Reflected Beauties
We also lit a candle in the church for my mom,
her presence always on our minds and in our hearts as we traveled onwards.
We Love You, Nana
And off we went to
Oslo, again a stopover city, for a brief tour via the tram and a trip to
Frogner Park, home of the artist Gustav Vigeland’s famous statues. Despite the fact that it is the world’s
largest statue park and Norway’s biggest tourist attraction, we were more
impressed by the excellent children’s playground next door.
Somehow Vigeland's work reminds me of Dante's Inferno
Our trip to
Bergen via railway is part of the “Norway in a Nutshell” experience, highly
touted as the way to see the best of Norway.
And the trip was spectacular, the train winding its way through forests
to the still-frozen spine of Norway’s Hardangervidda, the highest mountain
plateau in Europe. Each railway station
along this route puzzled us with their scores of rental bikes; we laughed at
foolish tourists pedaling along in the 30˚F weather on well-paved bike
paths. It wasn’t until we saw the
glorious bike paths heading down past cascading waterfalls to the ice-blue
fjords below that we understood why someone would brave such a forbidding outing;
we wish we had.
Desolate and beautiful
Sod House and Wildflowers
Fun with Dad on the train
Bergen: another
stopover city, another boat-hotel, this time more comfortable, but more
expensive. We had time for a walk
through the botanical gardens and a absolutely delicious but outrageously
expensive dinner of salmon, reindeer, and halibut. We walked home in the twilight at midnight
only to be scolded by rule-loving, early-rising Germans on the boat when we
made too much noise.
Amazing that this exists in the Northern hinterlands
Balestrand was
our final stay in Scandinavia, a beautiful picturesque town marred only by the
concrete multi-story box-like hotels built into the 19th-century
Victorian neighborhoods. The German
phrase for such an disaster is a “Faust im Aug,” a fist in the eye.
Soviet-style Concrete Block does not belong here
We reached
Balestrand by boat via the Sognefjord, a four-hour boat trip on one of Norway’s
most famous and longest waterways, faintly reminiscent of Washington’s Puget
Sound but ten times grander.
The scale of grandeur is spectacular
Fishing village with waterfall and glaciers
While in
Balestrand we hiked for hours up the mountain until we reached snow, a small
crystallized dirty patch that nevertheless allowed us to throw snowballs at
each other. The following day we rented
bikes and rode along the fjord in rain, mist, and slanting sunlight, pulling
over each time a train of cars passed us after they disembarked from the
ferry.
Biking the Fjord
Our return trip
took us back into the Sognefjord to the tiny town of Flam, dwarfed by huge
cruise ships that plied the fjord and engulfed by the massive crowds emerging
from the Flam Railway. We joined these
flocks of tourists for the final leg of our journey, a trip up the Flam
Railway, dubbed “The World’s Steepest Railway”
and “Most Spectacular Tourist Attraction.” Well, attract tourists it does: the train was
packed, and the engineer obliged the shutterbugs with well-placed stops to
admire the enormous waterfalls.
Beware: siren-like Huldra lurk to lure unwary tourists to their death...
The remainder of
the trip—a train ride to Oslo and then Moss, on the outskirts of RyanAir’s
airport, with an early flight from “Oslo” (aka Rygge) to Malaga, and a car ride
back to Puerto—was fraught with anxiety, as news from my sister about my mom
became more and more frightening. I
literally dumped our two carryon suitcases as soon as we got into the house,
repacked them with clean clothes for the girls and me, and left for the Rota
terminal within a couple hours. But Scandinavia
has stayed on my mind every time I look at my blue-eyed, blonde-haired Swedes
(or Norwegians?), so Nordic-looking that everyone on our trip spoke spontaneously
to them in Swedish or Norwegian, much to their delight and embarrassment. This is a place we are sure to revisit.
Paris. How can you do justice to the City of
Light? Pictures can’t capture it,
words can’t draw the sweep of skyline and detail…now I’m waxing poetic. Paris does that to you. How could it not, with detail like this
jumping out at you at every turn?
Paris bridge
While still not
my favorite city (Granada, San Francisco, or my own little Puerto lay more
claim to that title), Paris is amazing. We stayed in a sweet little apartment on Rue
Rambuteau, next to the Georges Pompidou Museum, making nearly everything in Paris easily accessible by foot or Metro. Down the street was the gorgeous Notre Dame, a frescoed
parable for the 13th-century illiterate masses.
La belle Notre Dame
What happens when you are good, or when you are bad, is obvious
Paris has a texture, a color, a hue, a luminescence that
showed up in nearly every picture I took.
The sky in particular, mottled with clouds that exuded the occasional
rainshower, gave the most beautiful pictures in the Louvre a run for their
money:
Paris Sky over Notre Dame
Impressionist or Photo?
After Notre Dame, our next stop was the Eiffel Tower. Sasha raced me up the stairs and
WON! What an amazing landmark,
built for the World Fair in 1889 and slated to be taken down in 1909, but since
it was useful for newly developed radio communications, it was allowed to
stand—and is now the most-visited paid monument in the world. Not bad for a temporary structure.
Ode to Gustave Eiffel
The next morning we sauntered off to a Seine River
cruise. Departing from Notre Dame,
we leisurely motored upstream to the Eiffel Tower and back, ducking under
numerous gorgeous bridges on the way.
Touring the Seine
Seine bridge
One of the beauties of Paris is the amazing detail in so many corners,
rooftops, overhangs, and eaves;
the city drips with them. Tia and
Sasha were particularly delighted with the scary faces.
Next we hit the Louvre, with its intense crowds and art and
architecture. I longed to
have a quiet afternoon there to myself, but July is not the month. But still, the Louvre enchants.
Louvre entrance
C'est magnifique!
Tia and Sasha were remarkably engaged, taking pictures of
everything that fascinated them, from Egyptian sphinxes to outrageously painted
and carved ceilings. And of
course, we saw the famous Mona Lisa.
Detail, detail everywhere
Tia was impressed
We ended up at sunset visiting the Arc de Triomphe after a
moto-scooter ride for 7 people up the Champs-Élysées. I had not paid much attention to this monument in previous
visits, nor had I realized you could travel to its rooftop. It is now my favorite Parisienne
monument.
Parisienne splendor
Atop the Arc
It was there we had the most amazing views of Paris old and
new, from the Seine to the Eiffel Tower to the stunning financial district, all
bathed in a silken sunset. Again,
the sky was perhaps the most amazing feature here, but the modern Arc de
Triomphe of the financial district came a close second.
Modern Arc
Spiraling down the Arc staircase
And of course, we had to pay tribute to the Sun King. Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre,
supporter of the arts, and profligate spender, built Versailles from a hunting
lodge kept by his father, Louis XIII.
The sheer opulence made Tia’s and Sasha’s jaws drop.
Entering Versailles
Just ONE corner of Louis's dining room
The Sun King himself
And it was also here where one of our favorite French
figures, Marie Antoinette, did NOT say, “Let them eat cake!” But one day at Versailles will help anyone
understand why the peasants were mad nevertheless.
Marie Antoinette's bedroom mirror
The famous Hall of Mirrors in Versailles
Four days is simply not enough time to see what Paris has to
offer. We missed the catacombs (a
two-hour wait when we stopped by), and many museums, along with the outdoor
markets and free concerts. Lucky
for us, Paris—with its 6,000 year history—will most likely still be there when
we return. Next stop: Intro to Scandinavia
Gare d'Orsay, now the Musee d'Orsay, home to the Impressionists
Hotel de Ville--Tia would like a vacation house like this!
