Oslo

Yesterday we caught a flight to Oslo for our next adventure. We have gone a bit posh lately and have access to the airport lounges, so started the day with prosecco and a bacon butty. 

Then we landed at the airport, caught a train, and dressed up warmly for Oslo waterfront.

We are going on a Hurtigrurten cruise up and down the Norwegian coast, and our ship is just in view in the background. We walked along the waterfront and retraced the steps that we made the last time we visited which was in May 2023.

At that time there was a heatwave and people were jumping into the water. I thought it very surprising, they were still doing it today and I think that they were insane.

We dropped off our luggage and went for a stroll around town, and the temperature was well below zero.

Back on board and we had time to explore the ship, find out that the bar serves free wine, and enjoy a lovely dinner before the ship set sail at 10pm.

Today the sea was quite rough and the ship was rocking sideways. I wasn't ill, but was happy to mostly hibernate in our cabin, only venturing out for meals and coffees.

Darren made up for me though, and he went to the gym and up on the top deck to watch as we sailed past South Cape, the most southerly point on mainland Norway.

Maritime Museum and Storehouse

This blog is over a week out of date. I forgot to do it at the time, but it was a good day out, and better late than never.

First up was a walk to the Maritime Museum and a quick look at the impressive ship in a bottle at the entrance.

Once inside it was a little bit embarrassing as we were almost the first visitors of the day and were vastly outnumbered by loads of volunteers who were very keen to chat to us and tell us all about the exhibits.

It was fortunate that after a while the whole place started to fill up with children on school trips and we were left alone to browse.

There was so much more to see than we expected, but the main reason we came was to see Admiral Lord Nelson's jacket that he was wearing on board HMS Victory.

Very, very unfortunately, and after the battle was almost won he was shot by a sniper and died shortly afterwards. A volunteer pointed out the hole in the jacket where the shot hit him.

We then caught the DLR up to Stratford for another exhibition, that also had a large number of helpful and knowledgeable volunteers.

This was the new V and A Storehouse at the Olympic Park.

This incredible and enormous building houses all of the surplus items that do not fit into the actual V and A Museum. You are allowed to walk along paths to look at everything.

There is even a glass floor where you are standing right on top of a huge archway that was taken from the Taj Mahal.

The building is kept at 20 degrees and without sunlight, and we were very impressed that there was no dust anywhere.

Yet another volunteer (what would we have done without them today) who explained that they have a massive ducting system that draws dust up in to it without damaging the items.

How wonderful would it be to have one of those at home.

Frameless London

 Today we visited the Frameless exhibition in London. It looked amazing online, so we went to see if it was as good irl (in real life), as I think the kids say.

Well, it certainly was. It is an underground set of rooms where moving visions of famous pictures are projected on to all of the walls, the ceiling and the floor. They also move around, and at first it's very disconcerting.

There were four separate galleries and the first was called Beyond Reality. The pictures all swirled around and were set to music. It lasted for about 20 minutes before it got back to the beginning and was superb.

The next gallery was modern art and was the least good in our opinion. 

The third room was fantastic. Each scene started with all of the brush strokes on the ground and they gradually floated up the walls to make the picture. While they were on the ground you could walk through it and kick the brush strokes around.

That probably doesn't make sense unless you can see it.

They were mainly impressionist paintings including Van Gogh and Monet.

The final room was the biggest and the paintings wrapped all around the room. As we walked in the Fighting Temeraire was being towed by a paddle steamer with smoke coming out of the chimney and the wheels going round as it gradually got closer.

The scenes of Venice and the great wave in front of Mount Fuji were also highlights of a fantastic show.

A great afternoon.

La Traviata in a Venetian Palazzo

Tonight we walked across town to see an opera in a Palazzo on the Grand Canal.

We arrived and took our seats for the first act in a glamorous reception room. 

The Palazzo was very grand and the whole thing was very unusual because the audience was small and each act took place in a different room.

The opera singers were superb and the first act of La Traviata is very cheerful with the famous drinking song, and the happy couple making plans for the future. 

Afterwards we all had a glass of prosecco, and a chance to stand on the balcony and look out over the Grand Canal.

It was a very small balcony and very cold, so just a quick photo then back inside and on to the next room and the second act.

This time we sat right next to the stage and we could have reached out and touched the performers.

Things didn't go so well for them though, because they wanted to get married but the boyfriend's father didn't approve. He went secretly to see the girlfriend and told her that she must call it all off.

At the end she collapsed in tears on the floor right in front of our feet.

Then the final act in a very grand boudoir style room with plaster cherubs on the ceiling.

This time things got very dramatic as the boyfriend and girlfriend got back together after all, and the father apologised for keeping them apart.

All would have been well if it had ended there, but no, she was very ill and then died in his arms.

An excellent evening, and on the way back to our hotel we felt very sophisticated to be out at 11pm and crossing the Rialto Bridge.

Farfalle parkrun and Padua

 Slightly nerve wracking start to the day because we were taking the train 34 kilometres from Venice to Padua for the Farfalle parkrun.

The reason for the worry was that the trains were on strike today, although apparently they were running an essential only service.

However, all went well, our lovely double decker train arrived as planned and took us straight there. We arrived at the parkrun with 15 minutes to spare and admired their homemade timing clock.

It was a cold four lapper and as always, extremely friendly and with lots of treats afterwards including coffee and prosecco.

Then it was back to Padua for a look around.

It's an ancient university town, although much smaller than Venice. In the centre was a superb plaza with a central fountain, then a sort of canal surrounding it with lots of amazing statues on top of plinths that looked like giant chess pieces.

I was also pleased to see that they had the same style of clock as in Venice that started with 6pm at the top.

After this burst of culture we walked back to the station for our essential journey back to Venice.

Unfortunately the strikers had other ideas and there was no trains in sight and hundreds of confused people milling around.

After finding out that no one had any idea when there would be another train, but that the strike ended at 9pm, we decided to go to the bus station.

That was confusing too, but we did manage to find a bus, and feeling very relieved we climbed aboard and got a seat. The timetable said that it took 90 minutes and had 50 stops which I thought very unlikely, but it turned out to be true and we got back on the island at about 3.30pm.

Making the best of it, I can say that it was a pretty route that we wouldn't have seen if we had caught the 25 minute train. And it was nice to have a sit down as we walked over 33,000 steps in total today.

Murano and Burano

 Today we headed down to the water's edge just along from the Doge's Palace for the start of today's journey.

We were on a day trip to two nearby islands.

The first one was Murano and is nearest to Venice. For nearly 800 years it has been the home of specialist glass makers. They originally lived in Venice but around 1281 it was decided to move all of them to a smaller nearby island to protect Venice from the risk of fire.

Most of the Venetian buildings were made of wood, and this was obviously quite a major risk when each glass blower works with a furnace that burns for 24 hours a day at around 1,200 degrees centigrade.

We watched a glass making display and then went into the showroom where most of the beautiful pieces cost many thousands of euros. They did have a room for smaller items, but they were well out of our price range too.

It was a good visit though, and then we got back on our boat and on to Burano.

Burano is famous for it's brightly coloured little houses and in the past also for fishing and lace making.

Most people visit to see the buildings now, and we were no exception.

Unfortunately it was not sunny today so the photos don't really show how nice it was.

One surprising fact we learnt is that the population is decreasing and that most of the existing people are over the age of 80, so the island may be very different in a few years time.

This is also true of Venue where the population has dropped massively over the past 20 or 30 years and is still dropping as people convert their houses to Airbnbs. (We stayed in a hotel for the record.)

Most of the people now live in the north of Venice which is not as touristy as the rest of it, and we went for a walk there this afternoon.

This statue is of a merchant from many years ago who was allegedly turned to stone, along with his two brothers for cheating and stealing from the locals.

This is a church which shows the original brick flooring that was common over the whole of Venice until a couple of hundred years ago when it was upgraded to stone in the fancier areas of the city.

Venice

 I opened the curtains this morning and this was our view!

We arrived after dark last night so we couldn't really see very well, and we even have a tiny balcony. Our first ever stay on the island of Venice.

This morning we were up early and made our way along tiny streets and over tiny bridges to our destination.

We went to St Mark's Square at 9am and were just about the firsts tourists in sight.

We were booked on to a group tourist trip, but it's the middle of January and quite early in the day, so we were the only customers. We had the guide to ourselves and we were the very first people to arrive at the Basilica of San Marco.

Once inside it was almost deserted and we had a fantastic view of the whole place.

The golden ceilings and mosaic floors were superb and it is supposed to house the remains of St Mark, however, Matt our guide was very sceptical about that.

Then we went next door to the Doge's Palace that was also extremely quiet.

The rooms inside were magnificent and full of paintings showing off the glory of Venice through the ages.

We walked across the Bridge of Sighs and saw the view from the window where according to Lord Byron, prisoners were supposed to look out at the beautiful view and give a sigh, as it would be the last view that they would ever see before being taken to their prison cell.

This is misleading as it is actually a view looking at the Bridge of Sighs, rather than the other way round.

I realise that this blog is rather short of facts, even though we heard hundreds of them over our two hour private tour.

However, Darren's best fact that he says that he will remember for a long time is that the only way that you can become a gondolier is to be the son of an existing gondolier. Also that they only take cash and earn a fortune.

My memorable fact is that in the olden days they had 24 hour clocks, but that one o'clock in the morning started at our 6am which was when everyone got up, and it seems far more logical than our system. Not quite so logical however, was that some of the clocks went anticlockwise.

We also did a long walk in the afternoon and saw some great views.