Give your parents a birthday card with the words:
Dear mamma and pappa. Happy birthday to both of you. For a present we invite you to a dinner party in The House in the Woods. You are welcome to bring four friends.
Love, Britt Arnhild and Terje
The million blessings - the preparations of a dinner party, a night with my parents and four of their best friends, eating, talking, laughter, music.....and music, music, music.
I filmed their six handed piano playing, and can watch again and again and again and again.....and know I will do it, at least a million time.
As you can see my brother Børge filmed them too.
I will not post the video, I have no idea how to transform it to YouTube and I am not sure if the musicians want to be posted to the worldwideweb, but come to The House in the Woods and share the fun with us :-)
Note to myself, to Sue and to everybody else: this is the kind of gifts we love to give, not to buy any more "stuff", but to give something you can do together.
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Today's travel memory is from Reykjavik, Iceland, a day with my borther Børge:
I have a wonderful, huge collection of travel books (Journeys Around the World, The Silk Roand and Burton Holmes' Travelogues are the favorites)......and when I need some extra dreaming time I love to look through one of them, or read from one of the many books with words only......I have a passion for female travel litterature, Dervla Murphy, Freya Stark, Alexandra David-Neel, Vita Sackville West..... My own travel books, the travel section of my blog, I have alot of places to nurture my dreams. The past days I have added strong, lifelong memories from my days in Reykjavik. I have blogged about many of them, now I will need to sit down with my Moleskin and write it all down.
When I reread my blog, I am enjoying to read your comments over again, and also emails you fill my mailbox with. A few days ago I got an email from Margaret where she tells about her 8th birthday which was celebrated in Italy in 1960. Thank you Margaret for sharing a lovely memory, and than you for allowing me to post it here for everyone to read:
My grandmother had a very good travel agent in Tampa, Florida, where she was living at the time. The agent put together a very customized itinerary, just for us. Yes, my mother decided to take me as I was an only child, she had no place to leave me and assumed that the Europeans had children, so I wouldn't be to much of an oddity!
It was actually a lifelong benefit for me! We spent from late May to August touring and were met in each city by an escort. Transportation varied from trains, to a bus tour on the coast of Italy and an elegant chauffeured Bentley through France, Monaco and Lichtenstein. We sailed on the two Cunard Queens: Mary and Elizabeth.
The Hotel in Genoa, where I happened to be on June 3rd, had been a private palace built in the Beaux Arts style of the late 19th century. Our room was enormous, as was the beautifully maintained vintage marble bathroom.
The dining room was oval, very French. The walls were upholstered in pink silk damask, and the chairs were upholstered to match. Of course there was plenty of gilt embellishment, crystal candeliers and 9 waiters for the 3 of us and one other couple in the dining room. Mother had thoughtfully brought candles and asked the chef for a special dessert for me....Everyone sang, with the waiters all lined up in a row, then I blew out the candles. And that is the story of why I felt like a Princess for my 8th birthday!
I had my own chauffeur in and around Reykjavik, my brother Børge of course. Not driving a Bentley, but a very posh, stylish Jaguar! Sunday after lunch, Børge took me around the city for several hours. Down to the harbour where the old whale ships caught my interest, up on tops to get the best view of the city, new areas where the building stopped abruptly in January 2009 when the financial crisis stuck like lightning from a clear sky, out on an uninhabited island where the roads were so bad they were almost impossible to drive on.
I am sure all of you have strong travel memories, from sometime, somewhere. I would love to hear them, will you please write about them in the comment section? I have a nice little surprise for one of you, something I bought in Reykjavik.........
No, I haven't forgotten the postcards. I even bought a few more on the busstation before leaving Reykjavik.
