European Winter Escapade 2019 - Part Nine - Leiden Pictures

A pictorial interlude of our day trip to Leiden  

Quintessential Dutch Pictoresque

Family

Wife

#3

Ode to Frites

Study of a Cathedral

Misc

The Dutch version of Fortress on Hill

Seen from the Fort

A wall from a restaurant called...

Weight

Something else

I have never seen a beer promoted as being 'Really Ordinary'

 

European Winter Escapade 2019 - Part Eight - That Darkness Is Not Just The Arctic Winter...It Is Our Souls

#2 and I were reflecting last night as we drank tea and ate potato chips in the hotel lobby instead of chasing after the Northern Lights, that if you travel you are going to have disappointments. (I guess if you do anything, there is the chance of disappointment.)  Of course, if you don't travel often and you have a disappointment that proportionally is a much bigger deal. As the #2's and we travel a butt-ton, the number of disappointments is actually pretty small. But count our first 30 hours in Tromso as a MAJOR disappointment.

We can start with the weather. We had geared up shopping like crazy for the 'Arctic' experience. It does not look like it will go below freezing the whole time we are in Tromso. It rained all morning which meant even going out and taking pictures was pretty much squashed. There is no snow on the ground. It is dark all the time so I will grant you that.

Let's go on to the hotel.  Our initial room had a bed so small that I refused the room and asked to change to two single beds. It is a major US brand but is always understaffed even though it is a big hotel with a ton of traffic. The understaffing seems to be something of a standard operating procedure here. Its main draw bar on the upper floor with a view is closed all day on Sunday. The restaurant is not open for lunch on Sunday.

Moving on to restaurants, the food has been uniformly poor, service poor and terribly expensive. I had been warned that Norway was expensive. But honestly, the two meals we ate out so far were just about as much money as I have spent per person on a meal in a decade...especially since they were not good. It is not just a point of the flavors, representing local cuisine tendencies, are not to our liking (they are not) but the execution is just not there.

On Saturday when we arrived, 2B had lined us up for what was purported to be one of the better restaurants. We chose the four-course menu. The food lacked any of the basic flavor bases that really highlight any dish - salt, acidity, umami. They were uniformly bland and flat. The service was terrible (#3/3A you would feel right at home) with only 2 servers managing a whole dining room.  It was easily 30 to 40 minutes between courses while the chairs were hard wood which made sitting and waiting really uncomfortable. We had to get up and walk around just to ease the pain on our arthritic hips. Then the management had pulled a bit of a bait and switch on a wine. We ordered a bit of a splurge wine, a wine that I new specifically, that was from a very good vintage. The price was up there but not more than I would pay in the U.S. for the same. But the bottle that came out was from a different vintage than that advertised. When the wine was poured for tasting, we noticed right away that it was a shadow of what such a wine should be. 2B checked out the vintage on his phone and sure enough, the vintage was a particularly poor vintage for that region. He also had a view of the wine storage area from his seat and noted there were 6 more bottles of this 'replacement' vintage. So they were listing a premium wine on their menu and swapping out one that was selling retail at half the value. I was pissed. This whole fiasco set us back $500.

I will not say much about our second meal out (which took us almost an hour and a half to find) because so many places were closed on Sunday or only offering a fixed menu with either salt cod or smoked reindeer as the dishes), but if the sound of boiled, salted lamb ribs does not sound appealing to you, then you are with the four of us who equally did not find it very appealing. This meal - four entrees, three soups, two soft drinks, two coffees and two beers - only set us back $250.

And to top our day off, as we were getting all our gear on for our all-night trip to see the Northern Lights - our only reason for coming - 2B got an email from the guide saying that all the routes he takes were looking like they would be cloudy so he was calling off the trip and refunding our money. This didn't surprise me as I had looked at the regional weather which did not look good. Honestly, all of us but 2B were pleased that the guide was honest and didn't take our money to schlepp for hours and hours to see nothing. But it was a bummer nonetheless.

We will have one more chance tonight.

European Winter Escapade 2019 - Part Seven - Some Amsterdam Pictures

These were taken during our first day in Amsterdam during our traditional walk to the Albert Cuyp Market.

Entrance to the Market

An Omen

The Dark Bird foreboding gloom in Tromso

Albert Cuyp = Herring

 Family Pics

A requirement for any visit with them

 3.2

3.1

 

 3A

 Photographer and subjects

Street Art

Something new

On our way to the market, there was a whole row of new street murals done by a local artist

I, unfortunately, forgot to take a picture of his name but maybe #3 or 3A will put it into the comments

I think this was done by someone else

European Winter Escapade 2019 - Part Six - If It Is Dark, It Must Be Tromso

Tromso, Norway, third-largest city in the world north of the Arctic Circle. We are here in search of the Northern Lights.

We arrived yesterday, taking most of the day for us to get here. It is dark. At this latitude, sunrise and sunset are only 20 minutes apart. Oddly enough it is not that cold temperature-wise. It is above freezing. In the city, most of the snow from earlier has melted. However, there is a very strong wind and it is raining so is very uncomfortable.  In my clothing preparation, I had planned extensively for below freezing and snow. I don't really have the right gear for wind and rain.

Our main purpose, however, is to go on two nights of touring with an experienced Northern Lights guide. We will be out for 6 to 10 hours each night, driving inland to try and find an open sky to see the occurrence. The weather forecast for here in Tromso is for non-stop clouds, rain and snow for the few days we are here. However, our guide says that we should be prepared to bring our passports for we may be driving as far as Sweden and Finland (whose borders are close by) to find the Lights.

I have looked on the map and there is a long line of mountains that make up most of Norway. However, as you move east and go towards the other countries, you get beyond the mountains and into flatter land. I am hoping that perhaps the mountains act as a weather barrier keeping the moisture and clouds on the west side and opening things up on the east side. We will see.

In the meantime, I have a lot of pictures that I took during our time in Amsterdam and need to get them edited and posted.

European Winter Escapade 2019 - Part Five - Amsterdam Family interlude

Sunday we transformed from our touring/photo mode to family mode.

We spent the whole day traveling. This was in part due to the inconvenience of Old City Strasbourg being completely closed to auto traffic after 11 AM and it raining. Even though our flight was not until 2:30, we did not want to schlepp our bags manually out a quarter mile to where we could get an Uber. So we got a taxi early at the hotel. This meant waiting at the small Strasbourg for a number of hours before we got on our flight and finally arrived in Amsterdam.

Since then we have been engaged in familial intercourse with our daughter, son-in-law and granddaughters. Nothing overexciting here, just enjoying their company. We have been to Amsterdam so many times over the 13 years that it is not a place we look for 'travel' experience. It is a place we have become comfortable and familiar with. There are a few food things we enjoy and always have (herring, frites, waffles). At this time of year, it is Olliebollen time - a fried dough donut type product. But mostly it is about being with family.

I am playing around quite a bit with my DJI Osmo Pocket video camera. I hope to have some time going through the iMovie app tutorial.

Kudos by the way to SiL 3A has kitted out two of the rooms in their flat with beds that have MEMORY FOAM mattresses!  One of the things that is reducing the amount we can travel, is the difficulty in getting quality sleeping facilities in various hotels and rentals. So we are super appreciative of this!


We will be here through the 28th. Then we head for something completely new for us - Going to Northern Norway for a Northern Lights Experience Tour! Should be cool...no late me rephrase that...should be freezing our ass off!

European Winter Escapade 2019 - Part Four + - I Lied

I said we were going to go out tonight without our cameras and just take in the ambiance. Well, that was true in so far as our Olympus cameras are concerned.

We actually almost didn't go. Wife, in particular, was having leg issues and felt the need to rest. But in the end, we decided that we needed to get out at least for a little. We get out and it is the clearest it has been since we've been here. All the lights are as bright as can be. And it is mobbed, this being the Saturday before Christmas. We ended up going around a great swath of the inner city, touching on all the major markets.

Also despite our complaints about the amount we had been eating, we got ourselves in the mood to eat a number of things that we hadn't yet tried. There was a soup made by a local chef donated for one of the charitable organizations in town. Then there was a salmon we had seen earlier that was grilled on a wood plank.

Served with lettuce and creme fraiche that nicely offset the salty, spicy flavoring

We had to try some hot white wine that was on Wife's list

Then it was on to crepes - a glorious street food that is better in France than anywhere

The crepe sequence

A fresh-made crepe with butter and sugar
Perfection

I ended up with a few roasted chestnuts. While all this was satisfying, the lack of any red meat or poultry allowed our systems to calm down substantially. 

And then it happened. Wife just saw something that really tickled her photographic mind. Out came the smartphone. Soon I was with her. And yet another small patch of pictures was produced.

And one final Cathedral shot

Tomorrow we are off to Amsterdam to spend Christmas with the #3 Clan