Norway Røros Mysterious Light Phenomena September 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, France, Hotels, Museum, New York, Norway, Rail Pass, Sweden, Tickets, Tour, Trails, Trip , 2commentsThe town of Røros is inscribed on the World Heritage List because of its mining heritage. It owes this, of course, to the mineral resources of the surrounding landscape, and because it is that landscape, the natural aspect of the area, that concerns us here, this choice from the List is a little different in kind from the other entries selected for this book.
The valley of Hessdalen is situated about 19 miles (30km) northwest of Røros, reasonably close to the border with Sweden. It is sparsely populated, with fewer than two hundred inhabitants scattered in farms amid the isolated wildness of the place. Despite its remoteness, the Hessdalen area put itself ‘on the map’ because of an outbreak of extraordinary light phenomena, which commenced in the closing months of 1981 and which were witnessed on and off for a few years thereafter. (more…)
Mount Tai Shan, Five Peaks, one of the Nine Sacred Mountains of China continue… July 27, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Airlines, Cars, Destination, England, Greece, Hotels, Malaysia, Sightseeing, Sweden, Trails, Trip, Venezuela, Wales , 4commentsShortly after midnight, a monk with a lantern awoke them with the cry: ‘The Bodhisattva has appeared!’ They threw on their clothes, their teeth chattering with the cold, the excitement, or both, and they scrambled across the temple courtyard and mounted to the tower. As they entered they found themselves facing one of the windows looking out on the vastness of the space beyond. Everyone gasped in surprise — none of them was prepared for what they saw. Numerous orange spheres of light where floating ‘majestically’ through the darkness of the mountain night beyond the window. (more…)
The EXhilaration Adventure, real Hiking Mountain Trail, Kebnekaise Mountain Station continue… July 18, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Cars, Flight Schedule, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, Motel, Restaurant, Sweden, Switzerland, Wellington , 2commentsIt was soon clear that the man had no idea what he was doing. He shouldn’t have been in the mountains. I asked him where his gear was. “Over there,” he said, pointing to the corner of the room. There was a tiny rucksack, a summer sleeping bag and a pair of Wellington boots. “Is that all?” I asked.
“Shit man, I didn‘t expect this. I came straight down the path from Abisko. It was beautiful the first two days. Which way did you come?”
“Over the mountains through Lapporten.”
“What was it like up there?”
“Cold and too much snow.”
“Where are you going?” (more…)
The EXhilaration Adventure, real Hiking Mountain Trail, Kebnekaise Mountain Station July 18, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Art Gallery, Beach Resorts, Cars, Coliseum, Dolphinarium, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, Motel, Museum, Norway, Oceanarium, Planetarium, Restaurant, Round The World, Sweden, Trip , 2commentsThree of us got off the train at Abisko in the mountains of Swedish Lapland: two men and a dog. I sat on my rucksack while the dog and his friend strolled over to the station building. When they were out of sight I stood up, glanced at my map and took a compass reading. It’s difficult to look confident in the mountains, so I always check map readings when there’s no-one to question my judgment.
I was going to walk south through Lapporten to Kebnekaise — Sweden’s highest mountain, 7,000 feet above sea level — and on to Nikkaluotka, a Lapp settlement by a beautiful ribbon lake. If the weather was good, it would take about a week. If not, I told myself that ten days would do. (more…)
I travel in Rome June 21, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Bangkok, Hotels, Las Vegas, Museum, Restaurant, Sweden , 1 comment so farArriving in Rome from Bangkok at the end of January 2007, I experienced a sense of euphoria at the sight of the umbrella pines, the perfect architectural proportions of an old farmhouse, the ruins of a medieval tower. We spent mostof our time in the city simply recovering from the flight and adjusting to the change. But we did see Caravaggio’s St. Matthew triptych in San Luigi dei Francesi, or as much of it as possible in the thirty-second installments purchased by inserting coins that slowly switch on the ceiling lights. Alva and I were back in the city in May 2007 on our way to Magna Graecia, of which I knew little more than Paestum, visited with Stravinsky. My objective in 2007 was to see the Villa Giulia, which had been closed for many years. In April the Stravinskys and I explored the Etruscan tombs and their frescoes systematically, going almost daily to Tarquinia and the other great sites in a car provided by the Rome Radio, and no less frequently to the Villa Giulia. A madness for things Etruscan was afloat at the time, and the King of Sweden, one of its victims, lived above me on the top floor of the Hassler Hotel at night, but worked in an excavation during his days. (more…)
Fontainebleau: A hunting lodge which saw four centuries of French history continue… May 21, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Museum, Sweden, USA , add a commentThe influence of Louis XV, like that of his predecessor, was detrimental. He demolished the Galerie d’Ulysse, decorated by Primaticcio, an action much regretted and criticised at the time, as well as the Pavillon des Poêles dating from Henri II, and he replaced this with the Gros Pavillon employing Mansart as architect. Louis XVI converted the rooms formed by the angle of the courtyard into enchanting petits appartements, and he also enlarged the Galerie Francois I.
In 1793 the sans-culottes behaved here with greater restraint than at Versailles. ‘The Revolution destroyed little’, remarked Charles Terrasse, ` (more…)
Queluz: A rose pink palace in the French eighteenth-century style May 8, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Bank Note, Beach Resorts, Brazil, Denmark, England, Europe, Flight Schedule, Hotels, Italy, Library, Lisbon, London, Memorial, Museum, Portugal, Restaurant, Spain, Sweden, Travellers Cheque , add a commentThe palace of QUELUZ, near Lisbon, is elegantly rustic in a way that is very characteristic of Portuguese life and manners. It has a seductive grace, for its muted beauty grows on the beholder gradually, until at length the splendours of a more conventionally royal building seem almost vulgar in comparison.
The rose-pink colour-washed facade is cunningly designed with two low semi-circular wings springing out from a small central block. The southern side ends in a black onion dome above the chapel, and goes on at right angles in a series of dependent buildings of different sizes. The northern wing now contains a luxury restaurant in the original kitchens of the palace. (more…)
The Royal Palace STOCKHOLM: One of the finest examples of French taste outside France Part 3 April 27, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Europe, France, Library, Memorial, Museum, Paris, Sweden , add a commentBetween them, these two francophiles, Carl Gustav Tessin and Carl Hárleman, saw the palace all but completed, and completed virtually as old Tessin had planned it, but brought up to date in the details - most notably in the charming decoration of the less formal rooms, much of which was designed by Hàrleman himself or at least under his personal supervision. With his perceptive appreciation of the contemporary French idiom, he was able to create, more than a thousand miles from Paris, interiors which are among the finest surviving monuments to the various phases of French taste during the reign of Louis XV - the firm but graceful symmetry of the Regency style, the swirling yet controlled rhythms of the early rococo, and the brilliantly balanced intricacies of the high rococo just before it stiffened and turned into Louis Seize. All this can be seen in room after room of the Stockholm Palace. Much has been changed since Hárleman completed his task but much still survives. (more…)
The Royal Palace STOCKHOLM: One of the finest examples of French taste outside France Part 2 April 26, 2008
Posted by dodo in : France, Paris, Poland, Russia, Sweden , 4commentsTessin had been much impressed by Italian late-renaissance and baroque buildings during his European tour, and the exterior of his new palace bears witness to this admiration, for it is in rather a severe style, obviously much influenced by such buildings as Caprarola and the Pitti Palace. This severity is relieved by pompous entrances in the south and west facades and should have been further softened by a series of statues which were to have been placed along the top of the otherwise quite uncompromising skyline. By the time the building was ready to receive these statues, however, Charles XI was dead and the dashing young Charles XII was on the throne. (more…)
The Royal Palace STOCKHOLM: One of the finest examples of French taste outside France Part 1 April 26, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Beach Resorts, Denmark, Europe, Finland, Russia, Sweden , add a commentThe Swedes must have felt they were well on the way to becoming a great Continental power at the end of the seventeenth century. Already, during the Thirty Years’ War, Sweden’s small but well-trained armies had distinguished themselves in central Europe under the leadership of their king, the dynamic Gustavus Adolfus. A quarter of a century later, Gustavus X had beaten the Danes by yet another stroke of brilliant generalship. This defeat did not finally settle the long drawn-out quarrel between the two countries, but it forced Denmark to give up the fertile southern part of the Swedish peninsula. (more…)
Tullgarn: A charming lakeside summer-palace of the Swedish monarchy April 25, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Hotels, Library, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Russia, Sweden, Travellers Cheque , 3commentsMuch of Sweden is composed of very wild country, and even today one can travel for miles through the rock-strewn, dark pine forests only occasionally seeing a cluster of houses or a gang of wood-cutters or a school bus on its daily round, returning the children from the school-house in some local township. Every now and then one comes to a town which has grown up round the timber industry, but such towns are mostly fairly new and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was nothing but wilderness stretching over most of Sweden — dark, terrifying and, it is easy to imagine, filled with trolls and other supernatural beings. Separated by these vast forests, were the three principal areas of habitation. (more…)
Kronborg: Hamlet’s pinacled castle at Elsinore on the Baltic shore continue… April 23, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Denmark, Flight Schedule, Italy, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Netherlands, Sweden , add a commentThe distinctly military purpose of Kronborg, already mentioned, is undoubtedly the reason why Kronborg in its architecture is so different from other more or less contemporary Danish buildings, whose style, like Kronborg’s, must be characterised by the very broad term ‘ Scandinavian renaissance style ‘. This, at least where Denmark is concerned, is a style in which decoration plays far the most important part, whereas the plan is still rather medieval, despite certain efforts to pay attention to symmetry. The decoration has generally been inspired by, if not directly copied from, Flemish and German copperplate engravings, and besides, many of the stone-masons working in Denmark at the time had been brought from the Netherlands. (more…)
Kronborg: Hamlet’s pinacled castle at Elsinore on the Baltic shore April 23, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Air Tickets, Airlines, Beach Resorts, Denmark, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, Memorial, Museum, Sweden, Travel Insurance, Travellers Cheque , add a commentKronborg is situated outside Elsinore, on the coast, forty kilometres north of Copenhagen, and on the promontory farthest to the north-east of Zealand. Although close to Elsinore, Kronborg is not really, and never has been, that town’s citadel. Even more than is the case today, Kronborg in former times stood apart from Elsinore. In those days, as the old pictures show, the open stretch between the castle and the town was still broader, and the great fortifications then as now surrounded the castle only, while the town remained defenceless.
Kronborg stands at the narrowest part of the Sound between Denmark and Sweden. On the journey by sea from the north towards Copenhagen the towers of the castle are the first thing to come into view. In former times this sight certainly more often than not gave cause for mixed feelings, especially to captains of foreign merchant vessels. For, from 1425 until 1857, the ships had to cast anchor at Kronborg and there pay a toll for passage through the Sound, both sides of which until I 66o were Danish territory. As this toll yielded a large revenue, which went direct to the King’s own privy purse, the Danish kings bestowed great care on Kronborg, which by virtue of its guns was expected to ensure payment of the toll. (more…)
