photography | Around the World in 80 Trips (Or Less)

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Venice to Turkey 07

Day 07, Bar, Montenegro, Mother’s Day

So today, being the romantic that I am, I took Elee to the City Bar for Mother’s Day!

Today we sleep in and have a leisurely breakfast. We get off the ship at 9:30 AM. We take the mandatory shuttle out of the industrial port to the Promenade where we get a taxi. Our driver, Marco, speaks very good English. He takes us to the Old Town and we agree on a pick up time. We don’t have to pay him until the end so we feel comfortable that he will be back. On the way to Old Town, we have him take us to the oldest olive tree in Europe. Marco comments that he doesn’t understand why tourists are willing to pay €2 to see an old tree!

We walk into the quaint cobblestone streets of Old Town and it’s lined with small boutique shops. As we walk further, boutique shops turn into restaurants. We walk through and come across the entrance to the old ruins.

A slow climb up through the ruined streets reveals an ancient life of different buildings. Amazingly old structures mostly built of stone show a civilization from days of yore. Many vistas for our cameras entertainment present themselves.

We find rooms that were used as public baths and on of them even has natural lighting window in the ceilings!

Eventually we reach the top and it’s time to come down. We make it back to Old Town and stop for refreshment in the form of Pomegranate Beer!

Feeling a bit refreshed, we walk down further and find a restaurant for lunch. Here we have Cevapi, a rolled meat sausage, Dolmas and an eggplant dish. Top it off with Pomegranate Wine and life is good.

We then meander back through Old Town and stop for a t-shirt purchase and walk back to our taxi. Marco takes us back to the Promenade and we ride the shuttle bus to the ship.

In the afternoon we take walks around the ship, take part in trivia games and generally have fun on the ship. We even found the original “Rock, Paper, Scissors”! Off to dinner and then to a magic show before bed. When the ship departs, locals gather on the docks and piers and wave goodbye to us!

See you all tomorrow!

Vietnam & Surrounds Day 10 (Part 2)

After returning from My Son, we go back to the Garden Palace Hotel and switch out camera batteries and go to the hotel restaurant to get lunch. After, we go to the lobby to join our next adventure! Our travel companion Hannah, has arranged for 7 of us to go on an unplanned excursion. So we board a small bus with a new guide Hwan (Juan). A truck loaded with ducks catches my cameras attention and one must wonder which restaurants they are going to!

An hour and a half later we arrive at Sun World in the Ba Na Hills, part of Da Nang, and we begin a journey into a building and up a series of 8 escalators, not one of them less than 2 stories! Some 3!

We eventually come to a cable car system. We board the cable car with 8 people (our group and guide). As we go up the mountain, we realize that there is a car every 100 feet or so. Then we look around and see there’s at least 6 cable car systems going up this mountain! There are cable cars as far as the eye can see! We move rapidly up through fog and mist. We disembark at the top after a 20 minute ride (and the car moved fast!). We are now at 1414 meters (approximately 4639 feet) above sea level.

We navigate throngs of people and shortly arrive at the main attraction, the Golden Hand Bridge! This is a marvel of engineering at its finest! Our cameras are feeling like royalty! This bridge connects Marseille Station and the Heavenly Garden and is 150 meters long.

We spend most of an hour on the bridge and our cameras finally relinquish control to us. But we have been teased again! Off in the fog, we have spotted a tall Budda statue and we are off in search of more camera entertainment. Another mile of path brings us to the Budda statue after trekking through displays and the Heavenly Garden that would make Walt Disney proud! Everything is a bit surreal in the fog!

Our cameras satiated, we make our way back to the Bridge and decide to walk across it one more time. We meet up with Hwan, our guide, and head out, thinking we are going down. We board a different cable car and, in the fog, go to a different mountain top. Here we discover a medieval town, replete will castles and turrets galore!

Hwan leads us up and up and tells us to keep going up. We go up the path and find pagodas and views to excite our cameras again. It seems odd to be in the top of a Chinese building looking down on medieval Europe! This is an amusement park built amongst a (fake) French Village on top of a mountain reached by one of the longest cable car’s in the world. Keeping it’s original theme of when the hill station was a resort for French tourists back in the Colonial days. It’s a hugely popular destination for families – a Medieval castle, cobblestone paths, a Neo-Classical cathedral, manicured gardens and (for the parents) a beer garden. There’s a wax museum, an “Alpine Coaster” ride, an underground amusement park with rides and shows, countless restaurants and food stalls.

Hwan leads us on to a German Beer Garden where we will eat dinner. The sound volume is deafening! We are given coupons good for 2 beers each and dinner. The room is huge and we find a slightly quieter corner where we can at least shout to each other. Outside, we even come across a bride and wedding party!

The food is buffet style and I fill my plate with duck and other meats and toss on some noodles for good measure. Then I queue up at the bar for a beer and there is only one bartender. So I wait in line, plate of food in hand when they open a second line. So I take whatever beer she hands me. It is a 1 liter mug (more than a quart)! And I am allowed 2 of these?

I never order a second beer. We leave and are glad to be out of the din. We pass through revelers partying around a bonfire! We make our way to the correct cable car to go down the mountain. After about 10 minutes, we board the ride down. The fog has set in and it is quite dark, being after 8 PM. The cable car appears to fly off into a white wall and starts to descend. It is very eerie and we all make jokes about the Twilight Zone. 20 or so minutes later, we arrive at the bottom. Or at least the building at the bottom. Then we start descending the escalators, all 8 of them.

Finaly outside, we walk to the van and wearily climb aboard for the hour plus ride back to the hotel. The van is very quiet as we are all exhausted. So I type this Blog on the ride. I have over 16,000 steps in today, an exhausting amount! I don’t even know the elevation gain!

It’s time for bed. See you all tomorrow! Goodnight!

Northern Lights Tour Day 16

Day 16, Feb 13, 2025, Oslo, Norway

We sleep in to 8:00 AM today. Down at the breakfast buffet, something is missing. Where are the Black Currants to put in my Yogurt? They must be here someplace. But, alas, they are nowhere to be found! Oh well, there’s some dried fruits to toss in so I settle for that. The coffee machine is one of the best though. Only a couple days left to get good European coffee so I enjoy 2 cups!

We board the bus at 10:00 AM. Mikael sits to the back of the bus as we have a local Tour Guide today. The local Guide speaks very good English and has a great sense of humor. She guides us around the city and describes everything we see.

She takes us to a park, Frognerparken Vigelandsparken, where a famous artist, Gustav Vigeland, carved thousands of sculptures, mostly of naked subjects. We are told that he never explained his subjects as he was telling a more esoteric story. He was basically unknown to the outside world because he refused to allow his sculptures to be outside of this specific park.

Then she takes us up a hill to a ski jump. It’s very impressive. Too bad we didn’t have enough time to ride the simulator at the top.

She shows us a beautiful building which started as an apartment building. What a grand place to live! But, like governments will, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs took over the apartment building as their offices. Beautiful building.

We visit the Natural History Museum and see some interesting Viking memorabilia. Viking history is very violent yet interesting.

Then we stroll through the city leisurely and stop at Olivia’s Bar and have lunch. Comical trolls greet our cameras on the sidewalks. The waitress in Olivias Bar, Rikke, is amicable. It turns out that she was in the Norwegian Marines and worked with dogs. She was impressed with our story of dogsledding a week earlier.

We arrive at the Thon Hotel Opera around 4:00 PM and take a nap. On the way in, there is an interesting statue sitting on a bench and we just know he wants to chat! Inside, we find a naked lady hugging the Invisible Man! At 6:30 PM, we join our group for a farewell dinner and wish each other well. This is the end of the Tour for most. I’m sure we’ll stay in touch with some of the group. Hugs abound as we all bid farewell!

Then it’s off to our room for the evening. Finding English speaking TV is a challenge in the evenings. We settle on a Portugal/Romania soccer game where we don’t need sound. Romania seems to dominate the first half. But Portugal comes back to tie in the second half. It’s a 1-1 Match and it goes into Overtime. Alas, it’s almost Midnight and we can’t stay awake to see the end.

Off goes the TV and we go to sleep.

Northern Lights Tour Day 14

Day 14, Feb 11, 2025, Lofoten Islands

Today we board the bus without luggage as we will return here tonight. We are off to see more of the Lofoten Islands and possibly another WWII museum. It is raining lightly. We travel to “A” (yes, that’s the name!) at the end of the road after driving through another tunnel in the Lofoten Islands. We see bridges, islands and fish farms. The tunnel at the end opens to a parking lot. There is a Kafe here and rest rooms. We stop for pics and a comfort stop.

Then we drive back to Reine where we stop briefly for a photo stop at a large waterfall. Shortly after we stop for lunch at another Kafe. There is a marina here on the edge of this fjord. It is very picturesque and our cameras are happy! Fish and Chips and another local IPA and we’re good to go!

While we are stopped, a rock slide falls near the road we need to drive on. The road is closed. We are stuck. So everyone walks around the picturesque town with their cell phones, the only cameras that this group knows. Still a mystery to me that people travel around the world with only a cell phone camera. But we find some grass roofs!

The authorities send up drones to assess the damage. Apparently, the slide fell near the road but didn’t block it. Good News! One hour later the road opened. We drive away and shortly come to a surf beach where we stop for photos. Fun surf. There is a surf rental shop nearby. Not exactly a choice in the winter!

Viktor drives us back to the hotel. Some of the group goes to a (new to us) WWII Museum and then to a sauna. I opt to go back to the hotel, having learned enough at the last museum. Saunas are not my thing either. The rain obscures photo taking through the windows so we just watch the landscape in the rain.

We eat dinner in the closest restaurant tonight to avoid the rain and have duck and halibut.

We visit with new travel friends and turn in for the night.

Northern Lights Tour Day 09

Day 09, Feb 06, 2025, To Alta, Norway

After getting up and dressed at 5, I go outside but there are no Auroras. So it’s back to bed. Then it’s up at 7:00 AM. We get on the bus at 9:00 AM. We see lots of moose today and reindeer. Someone calls out every 5 or 10 minutes. Photographing them is a different story through moving bus windows.

The temperatures top out at -4C today (26F). We will be driving to Alta today. I spot Some Sami girls in costume getting into a car. I playfully point my camera at them and they smile, hop out of the car and pose for our cameras! The Sami girls in costume are on their way to a celebration. It is National Sami Day!

The winds are strong. There is a “Truc Dies” flag at Circle K. The winds have destroyed the flag. We believe it originally read, “Truck Diesel”, LOL. We all agree that we would prefer -30C to the winds.

The terrain is different here. We see a lot of Norwegian Birch. They are scrubby trees, almost what we would call bushes. It never gets warm or sunny enough here for a lot of tree growth. On the other hand, it makes it easy to see wildlife. The animals we see are very difficult to photograph from the bus moving at 60-70 KPH (45 MPH).

We arrive in Alta and visit the Alta Museum. It tells us all about the Sami culture and sits overlooking a fjord. The views from the open deck are fabulous. We move on and arrive in downtown Alta. We stay tonight in the Scandic Alta Hotel. We arrive in time to take a nap before dinner.

Dinner tonight is at Erica Mat & Vinbar (food and wine bar). Tonight we indulge ourselves and have a Smoked Whale Meat Tapas appetizer. Add to that Reindeer Steak for the main course. Now before you get all upset, it is allowed in this part of the world to hunt a certain amount of whales, usually “Minke” whales. Minke whales are commonly in over abundance and are not on the endangered list.

The Smoked Minke Whale is on the top grey plate, Reindeer Filet on the bottom! It is interesting that the whale meat is almost black in color!

Then a walk back to the hotel for the night in the brisk air. There is a church outside the hotel that charges for entrance, but it is closed so we can’t go in. This is a new experience for us to see churches charging entrance fees. We are finding Scandinavia expensive, from the food to entertainment.