Summer vacation part 1

On July 11th I went to work like I normally do. At 6pm I caught a non-stop plane to London, grabbed a prepaid SIM card for my phone at the train station, checked into my hotel, and fell asleep before midnight. Then I woke up at 4:30am and caught the Heathrow Express so I could meet my mom at the airport.


Our intentions were simple: enjoy London, see the Rolling Stones play in Hyde Park, and visit 'The Making of Harry Potter' so my mom could meet a house-elf named Dobby.

There was a sketchy Ferris wheel at Hyde Park.

  The Ferris wheel went faster than I would have preferred but the view from the top was nice. It was sunny and hot but the beer was cold so the afternoon was quite pleasant.

The concert itself was excellent. I try my best to not get too attached to the Stones these days because they are going to drop dead at any moment. They can, however, still rock and roll. The stage was full of trees and beautiful.

My mom enjoyed the Harry Potter museum. I don't know much about the franchise but I was impressed by the scale model of Hogwarts that they used during filming. As it turns out, Dobby was entirely CGI and was therefore absent from the experience.

After we left London we returned to Trondheim. My mom divided her time between relaxing, cooking, and meeting my friends at dinner. This may have been the first American pumpkin pie made with Viking Melk.

We introduced my mom's cooking to a carefully-selected demographic. Pictured here is fudge, pumpkin pie, and a carefully-selected native.

Although the food at the top of the Tyholt Tower is terrible, the rotating restaurant provides a terrific tour of Trondheim.

After a few days of taking it easy in Trondheim my mom, Becca, and I hopped on the Hurtigruten ferry for an overnight trip to Bergen in southern Norway. The ferry is famous for being a cruise ship that weaves in and out of islands and fjords wherever it goes.

Part of the fun of riding on boats in Norway is watching for other boats. I had an app for my phone that allowed us to identify nearby vessels and get interesting statistics such as purpose and the number of beds on board.

It was a lot of fun watching the cruise ship weave between little islands.

True story: the Jurassic Park movies were filmed in Norway.

We had the hot tub all to ourselves because of the weather. Specifically, because the decks were wet and all of the geriatric passengers on board were afraid of breaking a hip.

By the time we got to Bergen the weather was so nice that the water was quite crowded.

In Bergen we tried to have dinner at a nice restaurant (it started with raw reindeer and went downhill from there), visited the fish market, rode the Fløibanen, and then crashed at a crappy hotel. I'm not a fan of Bergen.

It was literally too sunny to get good pictures from the top of the funicular in Bergen. My mom did, however, score some sweet souvenirs.

The train between Bergen and Oslo is incredible. It is also incredibly hard to photograph without exiting the train. Oslo is a great place to live but a terrible place to visit so we hopped on a plane to Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, the weather was stupidly hot on our first day in Amsterdam and our hotel rooms were miserable. We had to abandon a tour boat like this one because it got too hot to even rest your arm on the tables.

Thankfully, the beer in The Netherlands is wonderful and basically free compared to Norway.

The hollyhocks in Amsterdam are even nicer than the ones in England. EDIT: "There's a bee in your blossom, dear Liza" - the Girl

Amsterdam is even more beautiful at night.

The Amsterdam zoo was amazing. This is a baby giraffe.

 

The zoo decided to celebrate its anniversary with an abundance of flowers. There were so many pretty flowers that it was hard to pay attention to the animals.

These strange flowers reminded me of the Great Gonzo from The Muppets.

 

Baby monkeys are cuter than baby humans.

The weather in Amsterdam got better after the first day and by the time my mom left for home we were all enamoured with this great city. Not pictured: Van Gogh museum, horse-draw carriage ride, Dutch cheese store, killer breakfasts.