One day in Athens

When Nicole originally booked her trip to London, we thought we might take an overnight trip to Bath and Oxford, which are both just an couple of hours by train.  However I had a work conflict that came up and I needed to be at some meetings in Cyprus for two days.  So we took a flight instead! 

The two days in Cyprus I was quite busy with work, but the conference was at a very nice beach hotel!  So Nicole enjoyed the beach, the pool and the spa for a couple of days.  We also had a big night out for dinner with my colleagues and they invited Nicole along and were delighted to talk with both of us. 

The day we flew back to London, I scheduled our flight to connect through Athens, Greece and we had a twelve hour layover.  So yeah, we are kinda rock stars to just spend a day in Athens!  First stop - the Acropolis and the Parthenon!

View over the city from the Acropolis

We were glad to see the Acropolis in the morning - it was more crowded and hotter as the day went on!

The Temple of Nike was my favorite - can't really say why, I just liked it!

After the Acropolis, we made our way down into the city and found a café for lunch.  How amazing does this food look?!

It was delicious and the waiter was super nice to us.  Even brought us a second glass of wine, on the house! 

We did a bit more wandering and window shopping, then made a second stop for ice cream.  Best days ever when its hot enough for ice cream!!

We had a great day and although it was exhausting, I'm so glad we made the effort to see another city!

Nicole visits London!!

In mid-October, Nicole came for a visit!!  Most reading this blog should know, but just in case, Nicole was a friend in college, roommate, big sis and one of my dearest and best friends.  I was so glad she was able to make the trip to visit London! 

The day she arrived was OU/texas, so we joined the OU and texas alumni clubs of London for a watch party.  We were definitely outnumbered by the texas fans, but still won the day - Boomer Sooner!

Later in the week we visited the Tower of London to see the Poppies.  2014 is the 100 year anniversary of the start of World War One.  The Poppies were an art installation in the moats around the Tower of London.  One ceramic red poppy was planted for each British life lost during WW1, so there were over a million.  Volunteers came and did the "planting" of the majority of them and it occurred over several months.  My running route on Wednesdays comes by here, so every week it looked a bit different.  The entire thing was finished in early November and taken down on Armistice Day.  So when Nicole visited in mid-October, it was near completion. 

I thought they were so beautiful and too bad they couldn't leave them up permanently!  The ceramic poppies were sold as a fund-raiser for veterans organizations, so each one was pulled up and sent to its new owner.  There is also apparently going to be a permanent exhibit at one of the museums in London. 

We had a really sunny day in London, so spent the afternoon walking to enjoy it!  We also did some shopping, saw a musical in the West End and had some delicious dinners. 

A Very British Weekend

I took a break from travelling after Norway for about six weeks, but still had some fun events in London!  This was Proms in the Park. 

"Proms" is a concert series over the summer in London, hosted by the BBC.  There are classical concerts every day (sometimes twice a day) and they are all broadcast on the BBC.  Or you can get tickets to go in person.  The last concert of the series is on a Saturday in September and is outdoors in Hyde Park.  It is a huge festival that goes on from 3-11pm and includes a variety of entertainment.  Here we are at our picnic spot - you can get an idea of the crowd behind us!

The headlining act was Earth Wind and Fire.  They were great live and the only disappointing thing was that their set was fairly short, about 30-40 minutes. 

The whole event is very patriotic and ends with the BBC Orchestra playing the classic British songs - God Save the Queen, Rule Brittania, Land of Hope and Glory (we know it as Pomp & Circumstance).  All the British people know the words to these songs and sing along - with enthusiasm!  We did our part by waving flags and singing along what we knew.  Well, Laura and I did - Dan and Mike know the words.  Although Mike was boycotting singing as he is Scottish and the vote for Scottish independence was only a few days after this.  I digress.  Rule Brittania!

The very next day was a little trip to visit Highclere Castle - aka Downton Abbey! 

I bought the tickets for this WAY back in February of last year.  It is so popular and they are only open for visitors on limited dates.  Isn't it beautiful on the outside?  All I needed was a yellow lab to walk next to me. 

We did get to tour inside the house and see several of the rooms they use for the show filming.  But unfortunately no photos were allowed.  We enjoyed walking around the grounds and had a nice tea before heading back to the station.  Amy and Alison selfie, just to prove we went!

Norway Hiking

The main event of my visit to Norway (aside from Mario Kart of course) was a hiking trip!  There are three well-known hikes in the area around Stavanger.  Leslie and her husband Kyle hiked one of them earlier this year and Leslie wanted to do another.  But with three kids at home, its hard for them to get away.  My visit was the perfect opportunity for her to have a partner in crime (while Kyle kept the boys) and for me to do an amazing hike!  Win win.  

Our day started early and we had a couple hours drive to get to the base of the hike.  You can see the parking lot down on the right in this photo as we started up the mountain.  

When I call this a "hike", I don't just mean it was an outdoor walk.  There was climbing involved.  Look closely at the picture above.  Along the left side of the boulder I was standing on, you can see some small posts - they had chains strung between them for the us to pull ourselves up the hills.  It was really steep in some parts!

We saw lots of these stone piles on our drive up and throughout the hike.  I googled it to see what it was all about and got mixed messages.  They are called cairns.  Sometimes they are used as markers for a trail that otherwise doesn't have noticeable landmarks.  I read one legend that trolls turn into piles of rocks when they die, which is why there are so many rocks in Norway.  General convention seems that it is just a popular thing for hikers to do - leave a stone on a pile as though to mark "I was here."  In any case, they were everywhere!

The hike took about 2 hours to go up.  From the car we had one steep ascent and then descent into a valley.  Then another.  This me in the bottom part of one of the valleys. 

After the third climb up, we leveled off into this other-worldly plateau.  Unfortunately this is when it started raining.  And it was hard, torrential, windy rain. We were soaked and freezing cold but determined not to turn back.  There were still plenty of other hikers going forward, so we did too!  The best I can tell is that this plateau was basically the wide cliff that makes up the top part of the fjord.  If you walked in the right direction, you would come to the edge of it.  We kept following the painted arrows marking the path and walked over this landscape for about 30 minutes. 

And finally make it to the top!  This is Kjeragbolten.  Its a large boulder that was wedged by glaciers between two cliffs.  It is suspended above a 984 meter drop into the fjord below.  And it is extremely popular to climb out onto the boulder for a photo op. 

Did you think that was me above?  Ha ha - not in a million years.  That is my friend Leslie though!  It nearly gave me a stroke to watch her do it though.  The standing space on top of the boulder was actually pretty wide, you just have to pull yourself out there and then stand up.  Not for me!  But Leslie is very brave and couldn't walk down having not done it.  So I was her photographer and she did it like a champ!  There were about twenty other hikers at the top when we were there.  About half of them did it.

This is a view down into the fjord below.  If the weather had been more clear, these pictures would have been SO much better.  Ah well! 

A good view of the boulder with no one on it.

Just to prove I was there - and freezing cold and soaking wet!  We didn't stay for more than about 15 minutes at the top as we were both shivering.  The hike down also took about two hours.  Thankfully the rain eased up as we came down and the hiking kept us warm. 

This is at the last peak before we descended to the car.  The sky cleared up just enough to have some really spectacular views!

We did it!! 

When we finally got home, we watched OU football (Leslie and Kyle have a slingbox) and ate pizza. A really fun weekend!!

Stavanger, Norway

Almost immediately after my Ireland trip, I took a weekend trip to Stavanger, Norway.  I have a friend from OU living there with her husband and family.  They moved to Norway at the same time I moved to London and we had dinner together when they visited London last spring.  Norway is supposed to be amazingly beautiful and as long as I had a place to stay and local tour guides, I wanted to make a trip.  Norway did not disappoint!

These are a couple of photos taken on our drive to the hike on Saturday (more to come on that!).  A tiny local church.

There were lots of houses with grass growing on the roof!  Leslie didn't know anything about it, but she did say that many of these cabins were for weekends out of the cities for Norwegians.

On Sunday we took a short walk around the Stavanger city center - look at the cute painted buildings!  Stavanger is sometimes a stop for the fjord cruise ships that travel around Norway in the summers.  September was a bit past the cruise season, but apparently its very busy in the summer!

These trolls were everywhere - I guess they are part of the local mythology/legend/stories?  In any case, I took home a troll Christmas ornament.  This is one of Leslie's three boys.  After this photo was taken, he proceeded to beat me about 10 times at Mario Kart - super competitive!

Earlier on Sunday Leslie and I also went for a run near their home.  They live just a few blocks from the water's edge, so we ran along the fjord.  So beautiful!