The ruins of Pompeii are one of the most popular stops on any trip to Italy. Until today, I had never managed to get down to them. My plan had originally been to walk the short distance from my hotel to the gate nearby but the audio tour that I reserved was, naturally, at the…

It’s time again for another series of posts that start out with a lot of descriptions and get progressively more image heavy. For this trip, I am headed back to Italy but to regions that are new to me. My trip starts in Pompeii, to visit the ruins, and the heads up to the region…

The morning started with a fun elevator ride in my car as I headed out from my hotel in Oslo. My main stop today was a trio of museums int western Oslo devoted to their maritime history. The first museum was the Kon-Tiki Museum, devoted to the experiential expeditions of Thor Heyerdahl. There were two…

Yesterday was mostly just traveling to Oslo and resting with one quick stop at the ruins of a cathedral. Thus not much worth posting. This morning started with a trip to the Viking Planet. This multimedia museum includes movies, VR and interactive exhibits. One of the parts I found very interesting was a virtual tour…

My only full day in the town of Lillehammer was spent, almost exclusively, at the open air museum of Maihaugen. Just like the folk museum from yesterday, the Maihaugen museum was created to preserve historic homes of as many periods as possible. The oldest buildings were first started in the 1200’s and the youngest were…

Sadly, I had to leave the lovely lodging with the porch over the fjord. I really didn’t want to. The drive today was to the city of Lillehammer, of both Olympic and Netflix fame. Along the way I was able to see several more stave churches with the first stop being the Borgund stave church….

Started my slow loop back to Oslo by leaving Bergen and heading north. The first stop of today was Tvindefossen, an easy to get to waterfall. Located at a camp site, yes you can camp at this waterfall, Tvindefossen was a bit low on flow and I suspect is more impressive in the spring. Still,…

It’s the short, short version today. Some days you see amazing sights and some days your choices are a bust. Today was the second one. My first stop was the town/area called Hellesoy. I had been assured that this would be an all day trip. It took about an hour. The drive was through the…

Another fun day of walking the streets of Bergen. My main stop of the day was the Bergen Aquarium. Thankfully it did not open till 10am so I got to sleep a bit later today! The Bergen aquarium is similar in interior size to the Mystic aquarium in Connecticut. In their outside space they have…

Finally a day with no driving. I spent the whole day walking through the city of Bergen. The morning was around the historic area know as Bryggen, a series of historic buildings that haven’t burned down recently and used to be trading houses. Currently, the area is shops and restaurants geared towards tourists. After a…