The Italian encounter

(Random image from the net.)

Ain't it funny how sometimes completely coincidental happenings can turn into some of the most memorable experiences?

Last week, my friend Hege and I agreed to spend the lovely sunny and warm Saturday evening on my terrace, just to relax, chat and have a few glasses of wine.

(Daytime - My photo)

 What it looked like that night (sorry about the camera shake, but dropped the flash in order to catch the natural light)

While planning for the evening, I decided to ask the other girls to come around, too. It ended up being five of us, enjoying drinks and snacks, and just generally having a good time. So much in fact, that at around 1 AM in the morning we were in the mood for going out and decided to continue the party at a pub in a nearby area called Grünerloekka, popular for it's atmosphere and nightlife.

Incidentally, one of my friends speaks Italian, and through her we met a large group of Italian guys at the pub. Funnily enough, of all cities in Europe, they had chosen Oslo as the venue for the bachelor party for one of them. Funny because bachelor parties usually involve consuming at least a few beers, and Norway, due to the extremely high taxes on alcohol, is commonly known for its' exorbitant prices on all alcoholic beverages compared to almost anywhere else in the world. However, these were well travelled men and had already visited a number of other European cities, so Oslo was chosen as few, if any, of them had been here before.

The combination of wine drinking Norwegian girls and beer swinging Italian men seemed to be a very good one. We got on so well that after the pub closed, we all went back to continue the party and have a night meal in my place. With the weather last weekend being among the best all through the summer, even at that late hour it was still warm enough to sit outside on the terrace. It's just a small one, so it had already seemed full with the five of us earlier in the evening. Somehow, though, we managed to fit in more than twice as many people, excluding the one guy who was so exhausted that even with all the noise the lot of us made, he fell asleep on my couch.

My guests didn't leave till about 6.30 on Sunday morning. Later that afternoon, surprisingly, as I would have thought all of them would have been completely exhausted by then, one of the Italians called me and generously invited me to join them while sightseeing around Oslo. I met them again at the tiger statue in front of the Oslo Central station.

Quote from wikipedia: "The city was once referred to as Tigerstaden (City of tigers) by the author Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson around 1870, due to his perception of the city as a cold and dangerous place. This name has over the years achieved an almost official status, to the extent the 1000 year jubilee was celebrated by a row of tiger sculptures around the City Hall." (Random image from the net.)

In the warm and sunny afternoon, we decided to visit the famous Vigeland Sculpture Park, one of the most popular attractions in Oslo with tourists and locals alike. According to the official information from the Vigeland museum: "...(T)heme of the entire park: Man's journey from cradle to grave, through happiness and grief, through fantasy, hope and wishes of eternity." There are more than 200 sculptures in the park, all of them created by the artist Gustav Vigeland, who donated all of his work to the city.

The park seen from the air. The main entrance is a bit further out of the image at the far left, above the public pool. The distance from the main gate to the last statue symbolizing the wheel of life at the far right is 850 metres. The fountain is located in the middle, while the Monolith is on the granite plateau a bit right of the centre. (Random image from the net.)

Sinnataggen (the angry boy) - the most famous sculpture, located on the bridge across the pond (Photo from the Vigeland Museum)

The large fountain with the Rose Garden in the middle of the park (Random image from the net.)

The Monolith - 17.3 metres tall, made of a single block of granite (Random image from the net.)

The wheel of life - at the end of the park (Random image from the net.)

After spending several hours in the park, including chillin' in the grass by the bank of the pond with some cold drinks, we spent the rest of the evening first enjoying dinner at The Broker pub in the popular shopping area of Majorstuen, located in the Frogner borough of Oslo, before continuing our walk through the city to the Royal Palace and it's surrounding park. The Palace is at the end of Oslo's main street Karl Johan, and the destination of the Children's Parade on our National Day on May 17th, to celebrate our Constitution that we got on that date in 1814. On every National Day, the Royal family waves to all the children and other spectactors from the balcony.

(My photo)

The parade leading up along Karl Johan towards the Palace on May 17th (photo from aftenposten.no)

Then we continued further down along Karl Johan on to the Stortinget (the Parliament building, random photo from the net).

Since this was pretty late in the evening, the building was closed to visitors, but it is possible to visit it if making an appointment in advance. Through the windows at the second floor we could barely see some of the main hall, but from a previous visit early this spring, here are a few photos that I took inside it:

The main hall where politicians gather to vote on laws.

The painting in the background depicts the statesmen that wrote our Constitution in 1814. Above it is our national symbol, the lion with the sword and the crown.

The view from the Parliament, with the Karl Johan to the right, the Palace in the background, and the round roof of our National Theatre barely visible behind the trees to the left.

Having greatly enjoyed my glorious day with my newfound Italian friends, and guided them through parts of Oslo and our Norwegian history, we concluded our evening by walking Karl Johan all the way down, taking in the views of parts of Oslo's nightlife along the way, and saying goodbye back at the Central station.

I'm rather ashamed to admit that while visiting a huge number of much more far away corners on the globe, I've never been to Italy before. But now that I know someone from there, and with the possibility of seeing some of them again and possibly share an equally pleasant time again sometime in the future, I guess I'll have to put Italy on my travel wish list fairly soon.

This all started out just by a friend suggesting drinks on my terrace. Who would have thought? You never know your luck!

Furry greetings in my guest book

From Sati (3)....

...and Poja (3).

While mum and dad cruised away in the Mediterranean, they left us with this weird babysitter that was waaaaay too strict and did not let us do absolutely everything we wanted to. For instance:

She would not trust our flying squirrel skills and let us jump off the terrace. I mean, come on, it's only five floors down...

...and she would only let us climb halfway up the bookshelf...

...even if she knew we would have so much fun going all the way to the top!

What a boring old fart!

And then she would force us to exercise outside EVERY DAY!

Over there? What do you mean over there? That's friggin' halfway across the park!

Hmmmm....only if you carry me up the stairs afterwards. All five floors, or no deal!

No wonder we sometimes were dead tired...

I'm not gonna make it all the way to my bed, this plastic bag will have to do....

But, ok then, it really wasn't all that bad...

We got to fight with her large collection of ugly teddy bears...

...and mess up her kitchen drawers real good

And she did have a lot of patience when we found something really interesting to do...

...like testing out the ostrich kind of life style...

...or spending endless amounts of time playing hide and seek...

...or even wanted to take a roll in the soil in the janitor's freshly planted beds of flowers in the backyard:

But the coolest thing though, was when we put up our most sorry faces to show her that the grass would be so much greener on the other side of the terrace door...

...the sucker fell for it every time!

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

When mum and dad came to get us again, we showed our appreciation for all the soil cleaning work she had to put up with by restraining ourselves from going for her tempting soft leather Jimmy Choos, and only left our greetings in her cheap $2 flip flops. Aren't we just the most considerate guests ever?!

Ooops....I did it again

Just a few weeks ago, I commented on several other blogs that under no circumstances would I ever dream of buying clothes for fall in the midst of summer.

Now, back in January I was all over myself about Diesel's prefall collection. Just a little pic to remind you:



And while running an errand in the shopping area where their store is located, I figured there would be no harm in going in just to have a look around....

Ok, so I confess. I had one of my many lapses of willpower when leaving with these...


...and the pants too...

At least I didn't buy the jacket. Probably because it still hadn't arrived in store.

The Croatian holiday

Earlier this summer, when my long time buddy L. invited me to join him and a couple of his friends on vacation in Croatia, I jumped at the chance of going someplace new. My friend B. felt the same way, so she joined in as well. On July 2nd, we boarded our flight, more than a little ready to escape the dreary Norwegian summer weather in search for warmer and sunnier pastures. After visiting Dubrovnik, we took the ferry along the coast for a scenic ride, visiting the beautiful islands of Korcula and Hvar before ending up in Split and returning home from there on July 13th. These are my holiday memories:

Dubrovnik

The old town in early morning light (~7AM)

The road into the town center: steep, narrow and one-way only, but lined with colorful flowers and medieval sights

Our hotel for the first night was a tiny, family-run pension, close to the gates of Dubrovnik's old town. Although quite basic it was cheap, clean and the location was excellent. It's called Kortizija, and the homepage is here. L. had bought a bottle of bubbly and some fresh fruit which he had put in our room as a surprise - a pretty nice way of being met on our first day there, don't you think?

Lunch in one of the numerous restaurants in the old town

The city beach

Enjoying life at the city beach, the background's not too shabby either

The five star Excelsior hotel, where we spent the other two nights in Dubrovnik

B. and L. admiring a lovely, old stone house and it's impressive garden

Medieval buildings and streets in the old town

By the famous Onofrio's fountain from the 15th century 

While the buildings might be medieval, the shops are modern enough - the girls trying out Havaianas in one of the numerous stores in the old town

The five of us all dressed up for dinner in one of the posh restaurants by the old town's waterfront

My absolute favorite spot in Dubronvik: The Buza Bar

Buza means "hole" in Croatian - and the entrance is just a hole in the city's fortress walls

Situated on top of the cliffs outside the wall...

...the view of the endless horizon is stunning, especially at sunset

At the other side of the old town is the Dubrovnik Harbour

Quite the number of lovely old houses here too

This is where the ferries to the islands leave from...so goodbye for now Dubrovnik, and welcome...

...beautiful scenery on the four hour ferry ride to Korcula...

via a short stop at the city of Sobra on the island of Mljet, where the ancient greek god of Odysseus is said to have spent several years of his life....

and passing the city of Orebic on the mainland on the way.

Korcula

Arriving at the island of Korcula, with it's tiny fortress by the harbour, we almost felt like we had come to a miniature version of Dubrovnik. Not just much smaller, but more quiet too. While there being a number of tourists on the island, partly due to it's popularity as a safe overnight haven for sailors, clearly this idyllic gem is nowhere near being as commercialized as many of the other Croatian islands. The harbour was tiny and quiet, the number of shops and pubs limited and the larger hotels scattered and few. There were a good number of dining restaurants on the inside of the fortress walls though, as visible here by the green umbrellas behind the trees:

Life here was really quiet and relaxing, and the little Korcula city beach, situated right in the middle of town, was all pebbles, just like the one, albeit larger, in Dubrovnik:

My favourite beach activity - floating around in the calm water

We had booked accomodation in a private house before we arrived, and the friendly owner came down the hill from where he lived to collect us all in his car. The accomodation was quite basic, but at least it was cheap, 100 HRK (~USD18) per person per night. As we were there for two nights only, we chose to stay in where we were, even if it was lacking much needed air condition.

However, while walking from our place at the top of the hill to the centre of town, halfway down I found a large house with the most beautiful flower garden, with air conditioned two storey sea view apartments for rent at only the double of what we had paid for a small room. Had we stayed for longer, I would have instantly moved. The place unfortunately doesn't have a web site as of yet, but it's called the Villa Farac. Local phone numbers are 020-711-825 and cell: 091-542-9040. If I'm ever going back to Korcula, looking for fantastic value for money accomodation, I'll definitely be trying to book a room at that place.

Our first day there was spent in the city and on the city beach. The second day, three of us decided to follow the advice of the personell at the tourist agency and visit a supposedly wonderful beach called Lumbarda. One can get there by bus, but also by taxi boat, which is a much nicer way of travelling the distance of 7 km when the temperature rises above 30 C.

L. and B. sitting in the shade in the taxi boat waiting to be taken to Lumbarda from Korcula city

While the three of us were the first ones to enter the boat, we soon got company by a group of Maltese pensioners from a large cruise ship. They were taking the taxi boat just for sightseeing, and were obviously in a very jolly mood, as they were all singing and cheering all the way. I've visited Malta twice, but I never did get the impression that a couple of stiff drinks was a regular feature on Maltese breakfast menus. Maybe it's different when they're on holiday? ;)

The 15 minute walk from the taxi boat terminal out to the actual beach was scenic experience:

Local fishermen's small boats dotted in the harbour of Lumbarda town

Crystal clear, calm sea set against a backdrop of dramatic mountains on the mainland peninsula

Tiny geckos, which we don't have in Norway, all over the stone walls on the way to the beach

And then, the view from the rooftop of the only restaurant at Lumbarda beach:

Gorgeous!

The beach in itself, however, was kind of a disappointment to us. We had expected a more lively place, and with the pebbles that we favored instead of the sand that would stick to us all over, and that was way too hot to walk on barefoot:

We had brought our beloved floating devices though, so we did have a great time in the water as always, here represented by my friend L.:

Due to it being so hot that day, in the afternoon we retreated back into the shade of the trees in the restaurant close to the taxi boat terminal. A lovely place, with the best sandwiches we ever experienced during the whole holiday:

Right below the restaurant was another, quite small beach. This one was pebbly and with a very cool beach bar. We all agreed that had we stayed for longer, we would have chosen this one the next time:

After two days at Korcula, we had to get up extremely early the next morning. The little less than two hours express catamaran ride to the island of Hvar left at 6 AM to cater to the working locals commuting between the islands. I would have loved to stay an extra day at Korcula, though. If it's wild nightlife and action you're after, this island is definitely not the right place. But for tranquility, relaxation and beauty, it's simply fantastic.

Hvar and Split

To be continued in The Croatian holiday, Part two here.