Adventure of the month

One last day in Oslo (technically just an afternoon, really, since I had a 5pm flight back to Amsterdam) but I had saved the best, or at least the most scenic, for last. On this, my final hours, I had made a reservation for a lunch cruise around the fjords. For the past two days, I had watched families cruise by, enjoying the gorgeous summer weather and the majestic panorama offered up by the fjords. Now it was my turn. So why was I waking up to the sound of rain on the windowpanes accompanied by loud claps of thunder. I convinced myself for a brief moment that it was noise coming from the air conditioner. A noise that I just had never noticed before. I even shared this fleeting fantasy with my hot roommate, the one who had just finished hiking through Pakistan and is currently working on a guide to outdoor adventures. Curiously, he did not share my delusion. With the reservation already made and the $65 cruise included for free with my $68 Oslo Card, I decided I could brave the elemen...

My second day in Oslo was devoted to two things: art and exploring the city itself; or one could say artfully exploring the city. I started off with a self-guided walking tour around the comfortably compact downtown area. The city was as clean and tidy as one would expect, but what I found a bit disconcerting was the number of junkies I encountered throughout my walk. I had noticed them the previous day at the train station, but I had chalked it up to the sad fact that oftentimes, that is where those living on the fringes of society tend to congregate. I should quickly point out that at no point did I feel threatened or in any kind of danger, it just struck me as such an odd dichotomy between the stereo-type of the hale and hearty Viking and those sunken-eyed lost souls that seemed to be simply everywhere. My walking tour lead me to The National Gallery, where I had my first chance to see Edvard Munch's iconic painting, The Scream. I say it was my first chance, because Munch, being...

When discussing Norway, there are two things which are invariably mentioned by all who have visited. First is the natural beauty of the fjords and second the exorbitant amount of money the visitor paid for a pizza/ soda/ beer or some other implied gauge as to how expensive this city is. Actually, I think if a highly scientific poll were to be done, the order of those two would probably would have to be reversed. So to address the elephant in the fjords, yes, it is a very vast and beautiful landscape and yes, this allure has caused them all to lose their ever-loving minds when faced with a price gun. My plans for visiting this, my 80th country, were to stay in Oslo for three days and see about a half-dozen museums, preferably without having to resort to selling a kidney or other organ that I may someday want back to pay for it all. That is where the Oslo Card came in very handy. For one price (approximately $68), I had unlimited access to the city's museums and very efficient publ...

As hella-cool as the Banksy exhibit was, it still left me with most of the day to roam around the small city of Bristol. This would have been a very fortunate happenstance had there been anything else to see or do in Bristol, or to put it more accurately, anything that I wanted to see or do in Bristol. I, however, had already peaked with the exhibit and was ready to move onward and forward, or to put that more accurately, 13 miles to the east. That is where one finds Bath, an ancient Roman city built up around a series of hot springs. The area around the former public and private baths is so well-preserved, that it has earned the entire city the honor of being named a UNESCO World Heritage City (leading one local woman to comment that now if she wants to as much as open her window, she now needs to get permission from the city council). The majority of visitors through the centuries have come here to partake of the supposedly curative powers of the springs. I had not packed a swimsuit ...