Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods

Welcome to the City of Roses

@brittarnhild

Molde, a small city in the northwestern coast of Norway. Molde, the City of Roses, a name it got more than a hundred years ago.
Even though we are north in Europe, the climate here, close to the Atlantic Ocean, is good for roses and also garden flowers in general.

History tells that every cruice ship which enters the city is given a bouquet of roses from the hotel directors. This continues even today.

You find flowers everywhere in the city, even up on the roof of the municipality hall. I took some footage from there, which I will add in an upcoming video.

From our cabin we take a ferry and then drive for 2-3 hours, over The Atlantic Ocean Road, as I showed you yesterday, and not long afterwards we are in The City of Roses. We went there two days ago and stayed overnight at Hotel Scandic Seilet (The Sail). Our room was up on the 7th floor. I love heights, the view was amazing.

We had a lovely walk Sunday afternoon, another one on Monday morning,

and before heading back for our cabin, we drove up in the hills to see the city from above. Wherever you are in Molde you can see the mountain skyline across the fjord. I am sure Molde is the city in the world with the most beautiful, scenic view.

 

:::::::::::::::::::::::::

In my next English YouTube video I will take you along The Atlantic Ocean Road and also to Molde.
Meanwhile, why not watch an old episode, from October last year:

 

 

 

If I had a flower shop

@brittarnhild

If I had a flower shop I would cover the pavement outside my shop with rose petals.

Red, yellow, white, purple. Like smiles to greet the passerby.

If I had a flower shop.......

 

.............

I don't have a flower shop and I guess you don't have one either.
But we can always cover our paths with rose petalsRed, yellow, white, purple.
Like smiles to greet the passerby.......

 

::::::::::::::::

I took these images in Molde today. Molde is Norway´s  City of Roses
And quite a lot of other flowers.

 

Married to a road engineer

@brittarnhild

When you are out driving with a road engineer, you never know what is behind the next corner. We are at our cabin now, after spending some days driving up from the southern tip of Norway. It is possible to do the distance in one (long) day, with a few ferries along the road, but why do it in a hurry when you can do it at snails pace?

Well, part of, or rather most of, the driving was done along main roads, but as soon as we had the possibility to drive along one of the old historical roads.......well, we did!

Taking pictures from the car when we are driving is not easy, and of course we could not stop every fifth minute. But Terje is a good guy, when I say stop, he stops (sometimes.......) and when I say jump, he jumps (sometimes.......)

Of course it took so much longer to drive these historical roads, but it gave us some fantastic moments.
Can you imagine being a road engineer a hundred years ago. Not to say a simple road worker.

Imagine meeting a car here, as we did many times :-)
Well, one of the cars had to back and luckily, drivers in Norway, on these narrow roads, are all very polite. Often both we and the other car backed. 

 

:::::::::::::::::::::

Thank you for visiting my YouTube-channel 
And if you have not done so yet, well, it is never too late :-)

 

 

 

Florø, as far west as you get.......almost

@brittarnhild

After a wonderful week in the south of Norway, with our youngest son and his family, we are heading north again, up along the western part of Norway. This afternoon, just as the sun left us and the sky turned grey, we arrived in Florø, the westernmost town in Norway. We have travelled quite a lot up and down Western Norway, but we can't quite agree if we have been here before. If we have, it was back in 1983, when our oldest son Torgeir was a baby. We do agree that we were in the neighbourhood then :-)

We did a downtown walk before dinner, enjoying some of the many sculptures around. Like this grandma. 
You see two grandmas , you say? 
Well, you are right. I have titled the picture "when grandmas meet" :-)

Florø was built on the rich herring fishing. Our hotel is situated right on the harbour, with busy traffic, but I am not sure how many fishing boats there are nowadays.

Of course I had herring for dinner.
And shrimps.

This cute bicycle, covered in colourful crochet, was situated outside the tourist information.

The yellow building is our hotel.

:::::::::::::::::::

 

Have you not seen my most recent video yet?
Here it is:

 

 

 

 

 

Serendipity took us to The Old Rectory Garden

@brittarnhild

We are in Lillehammer now, after leaving our home in Trondheim this morning. Lillehammer holds some very good memories for us, our second son, Øystein was born here in 1984. 10 years later we came here to watch the winter Olympics.

It is less then 6 hours to drive here from Trondheim, so we had made plans for a couple of very nice stops along the road. We made the stops and had just about an hour left to our hotel when I got a message on my phone from my best friend. "We are in Ringebu now, visiting the most adorable rectory garden you can imagine. I wish you were here."
I hardly finished reading the message before I cried out to Terje. "Terje, stop the car, we passed Ringebu three minutes ago, now you need to turn the car and drive back, we are going to visit a garden!"

Lucky me, I have a husband who jumps when I say jump, so a few minutes later we found ourselves in the rectory garden, where our friends greeted us :-)

Pure serendipity.
No more.
No less.

The garden.
More than 150 different historical roses.
Perennials.
Herbs.
Fruit trees.
View.
Sun.
Bees.

And in the rectory, and also inside all the other different houses on the old farm, were exhibitions with art by a wide range of Norwegian artists.

We have had a very warm summer so far here in Norway, and most of then roses were already gone.
I still enjoyed it all, and when we left Terje said, "You know Britt Arnhild, we can always come back here another year, when all the roses are in full bloom.

 

Fishing in the ocean

@brittarnhild

We were invited by Ingrids father in law to go fishing in the ocean outside Lofoten. We love fishing, we love the ocean, we love to be outdoors, so we YES, was out immediate answer.

It was a sunny day, as all our days have been so far this vacation. Quite calm near Stamsund where we left the shore, but windy enough out on open sea. 

The Lofoten Island is traditionally where you get the most and the biggest cod, and lucky for us, it still is today.

It did not take us long to fill our buckets. Big cods for us, smaller fishes for the eagles.

The captain of the boat took us out to an island where he knew there are eagles, and true enough, soon we found two, and I could start photographing.

For a long time they sat watching us, but when we threw out a fish one of the eagles took of to catch it. 

I was lucky enough to catch both the eagle and the fish :-)

Great catch :-)

Roadtrip up north

@brittarnhild

Vacation time is finally here, and we are on a roadtrip heading up north to the Lofoten Islands. It is many years now since our last long roadtrip, but we still master the art.

Starting from Trondheim this morning, with breakfast with my parents, our goal today (Monday, but due to slow internet I don't know when I will get this posted) was the island of Leka, a small island as far north in the county of Trøndelag as you can get.  I have been knitting in the car and I was of course knitting on the ferry out here :-)

Leka is especially known because of its geology, stone pressed up from deep down Mother Earth millions of years ago. 

In 1932 little three years old Svanhild was taken by an eagle and carried high up in this mountain. You can read the tale in the next picture.

Tuesday morning:
We have had a good night at a camp here on Leka, now we are ready to explore, to hike :-)
See you later.......

 

The old Coastal Line Ship

@brittarnhild

The annual opera festival is going on in Kristiansund, the small coastal town not far from our cabin. As usual Terje and I are here, this  year we have tickets for Rigoletto.

We left Trondheim some time after breakfast, had a short stop with Ingrid and Marius just to smell and cherish the little newborn Milian, stopped for a lovely lunch along the way, had coffee and a sweet treat, svele, on the ferry, and arrived here in time for stroll along the harbour before heading back to the hotel to change for the opera.

One of the old, and with that I mean really old, hurtigruten, coastal line ship has anchored at the Kristiansund harbour. A beautiful vessel. With a million tales to tell.

Nordstjernen, the North Star.

Like a queen. And believe me, we were not the only ones there with cameras.

Then one of the new ships came in. A stop in Kristiansund on her way from Bergen to Kirkenes. Next stop after Kristiansund is Trondheim.

 

A visit to Falstad Prison Camp

@brittarnhild

Drive 1 1/2 hour north of Trondheim and you might find yourself in the small village of Ekne, a place with a dramatic history. Most of this history is connected to this building, which was used as a prison camp during WWII. Some Norwegian prisoners, but mostly prisoners from the Soviet Union and the former Yugoslavia.

Many of the Norwegian prisoners were Jews. Many years ago I was at Falstad, in the courtyard, listening to the Norwegian Jew Julius Paltiel who told about humiliation. With the guards and the other prisoners watching, the Jews were forced to crawl over the courtyard, taking one and one birch leave in their mouth, moving it over to one corner. When they had manage to move all the leaves, one of the guards kicked the bunch and the Jews had to carry them back to where they originally were found. Still by their mouth only.

 

............this travel tale continue over in Caffe Avec.

 

Sweet, sweet honey

@brittarnhild

I booked a later plane home from Tromsø, just to be able to visit the arctic-alpine botanical garden again.

I have been to many botanical gardens around the world. Visiting botanical gardens is something I love, really love to do when I travel,

and the one in Tromsø is among the best.

May be even The Best.

I am working on a blog post in Caffe Avec, and will let you know when it is up.

 

:::::::::::::::::::::

Thanks to those of you who has visited Caffe Avec, and an extra thank for the comments left :-)

 

::::::::::::::::

In my blog world today:
(might be updated.......)