Browsed by
Month: May 2016

Prague in photos

Prague in photos

The second half of May was really busy, I went on 4 different trips, often only spending one night at home before leaving for the airport again. Crazy! So that’s why it’s been silent here, but I am trying to catch up. I start with the first trip, in mid May: a long weekend in Prague with my sister 🙂

Neither of us had ever been there. My sister loves to plan and read guidebooks so I basically just followed her around 😀 but that was really nice! Here we are on the first morning, on the main square (the Old Town Square) in Prague

My sister on the main square in Prague

Panorama of the Old Town Square

The Jan Hus Memorial on the Old Town Square

My sister had found a guide book which described walks through the different neighbourhoods of Prague, and they were really nice 🙂

Wandering around the pretty streets of Prague

The weather was warm and sunny on the first day. We thought the outdoor cafes with pretzels hanging on every table were funny…

Outdoor cafe with pretzels hanging on every table

We visited this fruit / tourist market

Souvenir / fruit market

And had a nice break by the river…

A break by the river

River panorama

We had lunch in a traditional restaurant, of course we had to try the pork. We shared two different dishes, they were both really good!

Our lunch, we shared both (pork) dishes - it was really good!

What amazed us most about Prague was that it seemed to be pretty everywhere 🙂

The beautiful architecture of Prague

There were these funny fake long oldtimers driving tourists around, I had never seen this before. Well, it’s prettier than big busses 😉

There were lots of fake old timers driving tourists around - I had never seen this before!

This is typical street food served everywhere in Prague, and really tasty 🙂

Typical street food in Prague: Trdelník

We loved the metro stations in Prague!

A very cool metro station

Taking the long escalator

View over the river, and the very cool Dancing House 🙂

River panorama, with the very cool Dancing House on the left

My sister and her guide books ;)

The Dancing House

And one of the pretty trams…

On of the pretty trams

Cool art, and beautiful Art Deco buildings everywhere.

Cool art in an old art deco cinema / shopping centre, Prague was full of places like this!

Swans on the river close to our apartment

Swans on the river

The Charles Bridge early in the morning, before the tourists wake up 😉

The relatively empty bridge in the early morning

These idyllic views underneath the Charles Bridge were straight across our apartment – great location to stay!

The water wheel near where we stayed

Underneath the Charles Bridge, this was basically the view from our apartment

Penguins in front of the modern art museum (Kampa).

I loved these penguins in front of the Kampa museum!

As well as giant babies with weird faces…

Weird giant babies next to the same museum

We didn’t visit this museum, as we were planning to visit another modern art museum later in the day, but it looked really cool!

My sister walking past the Kampa Museum

Short break on a bench, Laura reads out loud from the guide book while I take photos 🙂

A break to read the guidebook

This made me laugh…

This made me laugh!

Prague’s very own (mini) Eiffel Tower 😀

Prague's version of the Eiffel Tower ;)

Nice green views over Prague

Nice green views over Prague

Another pretty street, this was near the castle.

A typical street near the castle

The amazing modern art museum at the Veletržní palác – part of the National Gallery

The amazing Veletržní palác - part of the National Gallery

The Veletržní palác

View from the highest floor of the museum…

Nice view from the top floor of the Veletržní palác

Threatening skies over these interesting buildings (which appeared to be some kind of exhibition centre)

Threatening skies!

Behind this exhibition centre we found an amusement park, which looked abandoned but it wasn’t!

Rollercoaster sign in the weird theme park that appeared abandoned but wasn't

The strange amusement park

Walking through the park, we heard music coming from somewhere. We followed our ears, had a very cheap hot dog and listened to these (handsome 😛 ) guys who were not that good in English, which made the lyrics of well known songs quite amusing 😀

Music in the park - very nice, though these guys could hardly pronounce the English they were singing and sometimes changed the whole meaning of the lyrics ;)

On the way back we stopped at Shakespeare and Sons, a really nice book shop selling foreign and second hand books.

My kind of heaven: a wonderful second hand English bookshop :)

The Charles Bridge in the twilight after sunset…

Evening on the Charles Bridge

We paid to climb the tower at the end of the bridge, which was more than worth it for the really nice views over the bridge and the city centre.

Evening view over Prague

So pretty…

The Charles Bridge and Castle at night

On our last day we visited Vyšehrad, a historical fort on the top of a hill a bit outside the city centre. Much less tourists here, and a very nice area.

The rotunda of St Martin at Vyšehrad

I loved all the flowering horse chestnuts in Prague!

With nice views towards the city centre and all the bridges…

View from Vyšehrad

Where we finally took the obligatory sister portrait 🙂

Obligatory sister portrait :)

My sister’s flight was a couple of hours before mine, and after she left I visited the amazing Kafka Museum. I’ve never been to such a bizarre museum, with sound and light effects that are almost hypnotising. It was beautifully done. This sculpture in front of the museum was a lot of fun too… both their hips were rotating 😀

Funny sculpture in front of the fantastic Kafka Museum: the hips rotated ;)

Kafka was everywhere in Prague. After buying chocolate to take back to Norway, right before getting on the metro to the airport, I walked out of the shopping centre and found this giant Kafka sculpture. It was really cool, as each layer moved around individually and the sculpture reshaped itself in a different direction every 10 seconds or so.

Kafka is everywhere in Prague, here I ran into him behind a shopping centre. This sculpture rearranged itself all the time

What a fun city and what a fun trip! 🙂

A sunny day off

A sunny day off

Today (ascension day) is a day off in Norway. After a period with cold and grey and rainy weather, it seemed spring arrived overnight yesterday – nice warm sunshine :). So we decided to go for a hike in the forest today.

We took the tbane to Frognerseteren with lots of other people with the same idea. We chose a small path away from the main dirt road, and we soon had the forest to ourselves. It was a beautiful hike, with lots of spring flowers. There were still some patches of snow left, and at times the path was muddy and wet, but it was never a problem.

After 8 km and just over 2 hours of walking we reached our destination: Kobberhaughytta. We were sure the cafe would be open, but it wasn’t. So we just had our sandwiches on the jetty near the cabin :).

The lake Kobberhaugtjernet

Lunch break at Kobberhaughytta

We were really craving waffles though, so we had a look at the map and decided to head to Finnerud. We checked their website to make sure they were open and that they served waffles – and with renewed energy we started the short walk to this cabin.

Signs at Kobberhaughytta

This path was covered with the last remaining snow, but never mind – we covered the 2 km to Finnerud in record time: waffles calling!

Still some snow left in the forest

Some strange dangers in the middle of the forest…

Surprising sign in the middle of the forest, but there was indeed a road nearby

We made it to the cabin, it was still open and full of expectation we entered. Only to find they had “sold out” of waffles, as so many people had visited that day. This is so typical Norwegian to me, they have a golden opportunity to make money (a bank holiday which is the first sunny and warm day in a while, is it so hard to guess you will have a lot of visitors?!) but they aren’t prepared. Oh well 😀 they had some other tasty snacks so we still had a nice break in the sunshine.

Finnerud - but where are the waffles?

Afterwards we hiked the gravel road down to Sørkedalen, where there was a shop selling ice cream (yay!) which we ate enjoying the view over the countryside, while waiting for the bus back to the city.

Sørkedalen, funny to find countryside while still in Oslo

We hiked nearly 14 km – a great day! And I hiked in a tshirt and needed sunscreen – it almost felt like summer 😀

A bike ride

A bike ride

Four photos from my bike ride in the forest today. Spring is here, but last week the weather was unusually cold and it even snowed a couple of times (meanwhile in Tromsø it was 17 degrees… crazy!). Yesterday it rained non stop so I was glad when the sun came out again today. I’m excited that the hiking and biking season has started again 🙂

Nedre Blanksjø, a pretty little lake

A female common goldeneye (Kvinand in Norwegian) was diving for food

Svartkulp, a lake near Sognsvann

Cloud reflections