NORWAY STREET

Gerda in Tromsø

2010-02-21T00:34:00.003+01:00

As promised, some more photos of my mum's visit to Tromsø. After that first clear night when we saw the aurora, she wasn't very lucky with the weather. But we went out anyway, and on one of these trips we visited Håkøya, my favourite place around here! It was a very windy day with lots of snow showers but we managed to visit during a brief break in the showers. There was a lot of drifting sea ice around there...

Paul was brave (or stupid?) enough to stand on one of the ice bits, he had to jump off when it started sinking!

Some portraits...

And Paul with a moose sign :)

We found these cute mini snowman, or better snow birds, on the railing of a restaurant terrace on a snowy/rainy day in the city centre. By the evening there was nothing left of them, they had melted.

A photo of me on a very icy pier at Telegrafbukta, and one of my favourite building. I have a collection of photos of this building in several seasons, quite nice! See for example this one (or this one) for a very different view of the same building.

My mum also took these nice photos of our house, on the only sunny day she had in Tromsø (which of course I spent at work!). The first photo shows what I call the back of the building, which actually has the front door. You can't really see our house in this one, we are in the third one. The second one is at the front, with the windows of our front room on the top floor and the bedroom and the guestroom on the ground floor. (And no, that ugly satellite dish is not ours! )

After a short break we have visitors again, this time my brother and his family, including my 2 year old niece :) The weather has been beautiful in the last few days (though very cold!) and I'm sure there'll be lots of photos to share. For now, you can see some on their blog.

SNOW - at last!!

2010-02-10T00:41:00.003+01:00

We didn't have any snow in Tromsø for a long time, I think they had more snow in the Netherlands and the UK than we did here... which is quite frustrating as everything was just very icy and we couldn't go skiing. It's also a lot darker when there is no snow. But last weekend we finally got snow, and not just a little bit... 50 cm!! :) This is what the view from our window looked like after all that...

And that's actually the upstairs window ;) Hehe... there is a small roof underneath where the snow piles up. It weighs down on our front door, which is now hard to open. We'll have to remove this snow at some point I think, if only to get some light in again!

On Sunday we went skiing on Kvaløya with Sevim and Njål. The snow was so deep and powdery that we sank in up to our knees at times. It was good fun though, and great to be out skiing again. Of course there were lots of people with the same idea, it was really crowded! Here's a picture of us during our break. We learnt how to make a bench out of ski's :) While we were eating lunch, the skies cleared up a bit - the second photo shows how it changed from foggy to almost clear...

The next day was very sunny, and I stopped at Telegrafbukta on my way to work to take a few pictures. The fresh snow looked so beautiful in the sun. There is an open air museum here with pretty old buildings. "in cod we trust" is a (really nice) exhibition in this museum. The small red house is a cafe when the museum is opened.

My mum arrived in Tromsø today and she got lucky on her first night here - we got to see the aurora! It wasn't very active or very bright, but it was impressive nonetheless, reflecting in the water as well. My mum wanted a picture to make everyone at home jealous, so I took one of her with the aurora in the background :)

All for now, more photos soon!

Ice & Aurora

2010-02-06T20:30:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday we met up with a friend from Norwich, Nina. She's a PhD student in the same project that I was in, and she was in town for the Arctic Frontiers conference. We picked up her and Svetlana (Nina's friend from Russia) from their hotel in town, and we drove to Håkøya - the same place I took the sunset photos in the last post. We had a VERY cold spell in Tromsø last weekend. The lowest temperature measured was -15, for the first time since 1998! Combined with a strong wind, it was seriously freezing. We went for a short walk on the beach. Here's a photo of Nina (on the left), Svetlana (middle) and me, and one of Nina and Svetlana.

It was beautiful there, with lots of big pieces of sea ice lying on the beach. We spent some time taking photos before running back to the warm car...

We drove back to town and stopped underneath the bridge between Tromsø island and the island of Kvaløya. Svetlana wanted to take some pictures of the bridge. I had never stopped there, but it was really impressive to stand underneath the bridge!

Our next stop was Prestvannet, the lake on top of Tromsø island. We've hardly had any snow this winter, which means that you can skate on the lake! There were quite a few people braving the cold wind. I was hoping to go skating too, but as we're in the middle of moving my skates were somewhere in a box and I couldn't find them.

After our visit to the lake we were really frozen and went for a cup of tea inside :)

I have finished my training at work now, and I've started with the parallel shifts. Very exciting! I'm now writing forecasts "for real" and I'm learning a lot. They don't want me to do night shifts yet, but I have worked a few afternoon shifts (15:00-23:00) which aren't too bad. On Tuesday night I drove home from work and noticed some northern lights in the sky. When I came home, they were really bright, I could clearly see them even from inside the house. I quickly went outside to get some photos. The first photo is taken from the building plot in front of our flat, they're building a football field there. The second one is taken near our front door :) We thought it would make a great "we've moved" card, but as we've been subrenting this flat before we started renting it ourselves, everybody already has our address :D

The aurora was so good that we decided to drive to a beach near the north tip of the island. When we arrived there, it started to move like crazy, dancing across the sky. It was showing some pink as well, as you can see below - very impressive!

We stayed there for a while, enjoying the beautiful show. Luckily temperatures had climbed up that day, otherwise we would have never lasted that long! I played with the camera a bit, and asked Paul to stand very still...

We've been busy this past week with decorating our new flat. This is the first time for us to live in an unfurnished flat, so we needed lots of furniture and appliances. We finally have everything now and we can start to unpack all boxes. Tomorrow we're going skiing though, we FINALLY had a lot of snow. And on Tuesday my mum is coming to Tromsø for a few days, so I'm sure there'll be lots of photos to share next week :)

Ice

2010-01-25T17:02:00.001+01:00

On Saturday we drove to Håkøya, an island near Tromsø. We noticed that large parts of the sea are frozen, something we've never seen before! It hasn't been especially cold, but it has been windstill and we had freezing fog (on the day the sun was supposed to come back) - so perhaps this caused the sea to freeze? The sun only comes up for a short period and by the time we arrived it was after sunset. The sky still had a deep orange colour though, and the views over the frozen sea were beautiful...

It was quite cold, so we didn't walk for too long ;) When we came back to the car, on one side it was getting quite dark while the lights were coming on...

While on the other side, the sky still had some colours, and was reflected in the very still water.

On Sunday the weather was overcast, and we decided to visit a waterfall near Ramfjorden. It was all frozen over, with spectacular ice formations! Below you can see Paul sitting on part of this ice fall, and some of the icicles that are part of it.

And some more ice formations.. the second photo is taken with quite a long exposure, which blurs the water flowing underneath the icicles.

It was a fun weekend! We also enjoyed the Tromsø International Film Festival last week. We saw 10 films, and we liked most of them. We thought we'd be fed up of going to the cinema by the end of the week, but we actually regretted it was over! Last night after watching our last film, we cycled to Telegrafbukta to watch the aurora from the beach, under a bright moon - a great end to the weekend :)

The Jurassic Coast

2010-01-21T23:51:00.000+01:00

Or part 2 of our Christmas break ;) We spent New Year's eve with friends of Paul in Southampton, which was really fun! Some photos of that can be found here and here. As the weather forecast was looking promising, we had booked 3 nights in a really nice cottage near Charmouth, on the Dorset coast just after New Year. The cottage was a converted barn, I loved it!! The photo below gives an impression of the cottage inside and outside, and some of the views. Can I live there? :)

We woke up to a sunny day, and drove to Seatown (not to be confused with Seaton, not very far away and also on the coast...), a small village right on the coast with access to the beach. It's so beautiful there... the sand is a golden colour and there are steep cliffs next to the beach. But the reason people come here are the fossils! This part of the Dorset coast is nicknamed The Jurassic Coast, and is geologically really interesting. The cliffs you can see in the photo below (especially on the right) used to be the bottom of the sea, and are made of a sort of clay in which lots of fossils formed. The cliffs are continuously eroding, and it's quite easy to find fossils.

Below you can see an example of a belemnite, a sort of squid (extinct now). The bit you find is the back part of their shell, which is shaped like a bullet. Some of them are crystallised very nicely!

Another common fossil that can be found here is the ammonite. I found the one in the photo on the left! It's quite large, about 10 cm diameter. In the other photo Paul is trying to get a similar one out.

We had a really fun day searching for fossils, I was so fascinated by it! To finish our day, we climbed up to the Golden Cap, the highest clifftop (191 m) on the south coast of England, to watch the sunset - beautiful!

The next day we explored a different part of the coast, starting from Lyme Regis. The beach is very different here. At first it was rocky, until you get to this flat rock platform called a "wave cut platform". There are some big holes in it that look like dinosaur footsteps ;)

In the photo below you can see what the platform is really made of - LOTS and LOTS of ammonite fossils! They are very worn down, but it's impressive to see so many! Further on you can find very large ones on rocks on the beach. Very impressive!

Just to give you a sense of scale, here's one with my foot in it. Also showing how incredibly muddy my boots were from the previous day!

The next day it was time to head back... but as it was another beautiful day, we decided to take the scenic route home and see a bit more of the coast. Our first stop was Chesil Beach, a very long (30 km!) beach that is actually separated from the mainland. You can see it in the panorama below, taken from a viewpoint on the road.

The beach is made up of small stones and it's tough walking on it. We walked back further inland, through very high reeds, with nice views of a ruin in the fields (the same one you can also see in the panorama above).

We then continued to Durdle Door, a famous rock arch. The coast there is spectacular!

We spent quite a lot of time here, and I couldn't stop taking photos. The beach has a beautiful colour and it was just before sunset with very soft light.

A last view of the beach before leaving...

We drove the short distance to Lulworth Cove, just in time to watch the sunset. The rock formations are impressive, you can see all the layers. The second photo shows the village of West Lulworth, a nice little village!

This is the actual cove, or rather the entrance to it. The cove was formed when this entrance collapsed a long time ago, and let the sea come in.

And then it was time to drive back... It was a really beautiful trip! I've been wanting to see this part of the coast for a long time, and it didn't disappoint :)

Waiting for the Light

2010-01-16T20:33:00.002+01:00

We've been back in Tromsø for a week now. A week with rubbish weather unfortunately - temperatures were above zero all week and we had lots of rain. The rain would still freeze on the ground though, which turned the whole city into an ice rink! One day I couldn't even get up the hill next to the house - way too slippery. Our car doors keep freezing too, we've never had a problem with that before. Yesterday after we finally managed to open them, they froze while we were inside the car! Luckily they defrosted after driving around for a while. We need snow!

The weather finally cleared up yesterday, and we went for a little trip with Maiten, hoping to see the northern lights. They had been quite active, but by the time we got out of town they had died down. I only took this photo below, which does show a green glow, but I used an exposure of more than 7 minutes! Still, shows how many stars there were :)

The days have been getting lighter, and the sun comes above the horizon now. Not yet above the mountains, we have to wait until Thursday for that. I took this panorama just before 15:00, it was quite dark already but I loved the cloud!

That's all for now, but I hope to upload some more photos of our Christmas break tomorrow :)

Christmas break part 1: The Netherlands

2010-01-08T01:14:00.000+01:00

Happy 2010 everyone! Hope you all had a nice break :) Ours was very nice and relaxing. I'll post some photos from the past weeks in the coming days, today part 1: The Netherlands. We were very lucky to escape cancelled flights on the way to The Netherlands. It was actually colder there than in Tromsø, and they had quite a lot of snow.

The day after we arrived was my birthday :) We went for a nice walk in the snow...

In the afternoon we celebrated Sinterklaas (St Nicholas) with my whole family. This is supposed to be celebrated on the the 5th of December, but this year we postponed it a bit! It was a really nice evening, we had lots of fun. As there are way too many pictures, I combined them to a collage. Plus a crazy photo of 2 Vikings under the Christmas tree ;) if you take a closer look at the Christmas tree you can see that it has rubber duckies instead of traditional lights - the creativity of my crazy brother!

Snow in the Netherlands equals chaos with the trains, so we decided to travel to Amsterdam by boat. This "fast flying ferry" (aka hydrofoil) goes from IJmuiden to Amsterdam and takes only half an hour. A fun way to travel! Amsterdam looked pretty in the snow...

On our last day in the Netherlands we went to Haarlem, which was also looking pretty with all the snow and ice. It was very cold and windy though!

These swans were trying to climb on top of the ice, but it was too weak to hold them and they kept breaking it. Poor things, they looked very confused.

In the evening we went skating with my sister and my youngest brother. Paul had never skated before, so he started out with one of those "zimmer frames" as he calls them. We started out on the bit in the middle of the rink, where you can practice (while trying to avoid out-of-control kids!) Within an hour, his skating improved enough to join the "real" skaters on the outside ring, I was impressed! It was lots of fun, I didn't realise how much I missed skating... I should find out about the rink in Tromsø.

The next day we flew from Amsterdam to London to have Christmas with Paul's parents. To be continued...

Flying Home for Christmas

2009-12-18T20:20:00.000+01:00

I haven't had time to write my blog for ages - in fact I even haven't taken any photos for over 2 weeks which is probably a record for me ;) The reason for this was that I've been working on the corrections for my PhD. It hasn't been easy to work on that during evenings/weekends with a new job taking up most of my energy. Last Sunday I finally sent an email to my external examiner with a new version of my thesis. And today I had good news: they have been accepted!!! This means that all I've left to do is get 2 bound copies to UEA, and then I'm finally officially Dr. Hanneke :) It's a huge relief, and a great way to start our Christmas break :)

We're flying to Oslo tonight, and on to Amsterdam tomorrow morning. I can't wait! We're having a (very) late Sinterklaas in the Netherlands, and Christmas and New Year in England. I'm really looking forward to it! I hope to find some time to put photos online while we're away :)

As I can't write a blog post without any photos, here is one I took on Sunday night, just before finishing the corrections. We went to watch the northern lights, but they didn't get very active. The lights reflecting in the water were pretty though! And we saw several meteorites (Geminids), one so low we thought it might land in the water! If you enlarge the picture below, you can see one...

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Fun in the Dark :)

2009-12-01T23:19:00.001+01:00

Last week, I went out one evening to meet some fellow Dutchies/Flemish in a café. When I stepped out of the house, the sky was filled with beautiful aurora! Quickly changing plans, we drove to Telegrafbukta hoping to get some pictures, but by the time we got there (only about 10 minutes later) it was all gone... Paul dropped me at the café and drove to the north tip of the island afterwards, hoping the lights would reappear. And they did! Here are some nice pictures he took...

On Saturday we went to town for some shopping. The Christmas lights are hanging now, and there's a Christmas tree in the square. (They actually put it there by helicopter, I would love to watch that but keep missing it!) It also snowed a little - a perfect Christmas atmosphere! After shopping, we stopped at our favourite place: Aunegården. They serve the best cakes in Tromsø! (And guess what, my new job's "julebord" (Christmas meal) will take place there :) needless to say I signed up!)

On Sunday, I had some work to do so I stayed at home, despite the beautiful weather. Paul went up Tromsdalstinden! He started from Tromsdalen, even though the walk through Tromsdalen valley is quite a boring one. But the first cable car is at 11:00 and that wouldn't give you enough daylight to get to the top. He walked up via Rødryggen. From there he took this panorama, which shows how beautiful the light is even when we have no direct sunlight:

In the first photo you can see Tromsdalstinden from Rødryggen. He took snowshoes, but didn't use them as there was very little snow, and it was quite hard and compact. Crampons were needed to get over the icy patches. By the time he reached the top it was dark! There was however a very bright moon that night so it wasn't a problem. He took a self portrait on the top, very pleased to finally have conquered "the beast" in winter. He was hoping to sign the turbok (logbook), but the cairn was so snowed under that it was impossible to reach it!

Safely back in Tromsø we enjoyed a well-deserved (for Paul anyway!) pizza in town :)

Mørketid

2009-11-23T23:30:00.000+01:00

After a very rainy Saturday, we were craving some fresh air on Sunday, and we went for a walk with Sevim. The mørketid, or dark time, has now begun - the sun doesn't come above the mountains anymore. By Friday, it won't come above the horizon at all. In the weather forecast, a cloudless day is indicated by this symbol:

Anyway, we went for a walk along the coast. It was cloudy and windy, but quite warm. We found a lighthouse with a ladder leading up... without any DO NOT signs, we couldn't resist climbing up! The photo on the right (below) is taken through the top bit and you can see the large lens on the left.

We enjoyed the views from up there for a while! In the photo on the right you can see Paul climbing down. It's not a very large lighthouse, but it was a fun visit :)

Last week, when the weather was frosty and clear, we missed out on some great aurora shows. I was simply too tired after work to go out and look for the lights! Sunday night it cleared up, and Paul decided to drive to a dark place to go for a walk and see if he could get some pictures. The aurora wasn't very active, but it was continuously visible low on the horizon, and he did come back with some nice photos:

Too bad I had to miss out... but that's the disadvantage of having a job which is not as flexible with working hours. I really enjoyed my first week at work though, I'm learning a lot and I really like it. Anyway... it's definitely bedtime for me now!

Ice Crystals

2009-11-16T23:30:00.001+01:00

Last Saturday we went for a trip with Sevim (who's now my colleague!) to enjoy the last bit of sunshine. Although the sun will still come above the horizon next weekend, it won't come above the mountains... The weather was still looking very nice, so we set out to climb Rødtinden on Kvaløya. We were quite slow, as we were fascinated by the beautiful ice crystals everywhere! We kept taking pictures :)

They come in so many different shapes, and some were very large. I really regretted not bringing my macro lens on this trip!!

Sometimes we found patches of what looked like snow, but in close up turned out to be a huge pile of ice crystals! We almost forgot to enjoy the view ;) It was a beautiful day, here is Tromsdalstinden in the last light of the day...

When the sun disappeared behind the mountain, we decided to abandon our plan to reach the top, and turn around. A large part of the mountain was like a swamp turned into a skating rink (but with some steep slopes!) and we didn't fancy finding our way through that in the dark. At the bottom of the slope, we followed this beautiful river that was all frozen over...

One last photo taken just before we got back to the car. It was a great walk, and I am glad we enjoyed the last bit of sunshine!

I started at my new job today, it went well. I am quite tired now, speaking and listening to Norwegian all day requires so much concentration for me. But it's going well, and I'm really enjoying it!

Frosty Tromsø

2009-11-12T16:42:00.000+01:00

We came back to Tromsø last night. Today we walked to the south tip of the island (Telegrafbukta) to watch the sunset. We almost missed it - at 12:30 we just saw the last glimpse of sunlight before it disappeared behind the mountains! The weather is cold and clear, and everything is covered in white frost. We walked along the coast for a while, enjoying the beautiful views...

We walked on the jetty seen in the pictures above. I took a photo of these bird footprints. For a sense of scale, click here and remember that Paul has big feet ;)

Everything is covered with thick frost, like this branch that Paul held against the sunset so I could take a photo. The Tromsø palms (or giant hogweed) are now like skeletons, they are quite pretty against the winter sky.

We walked to this beautiful old boathouse, with grass growing on the roof...

After 1.5 hours in the cold, we were more than ready for a hot chocolate at home :) It's great to be back!

This blog might go a bit quiet, I just found out today that Monday is my first day at my new job!! I have to be there at 8 in the morning too, I'll have to get used to early mornings again...

London, Lymington - and a job!

2009-11-06T17:51:00.000+01:00

Let's start with the good news: I found a job in Tromsø! I'm going to work for met.no as a weather forecaster. I'm really excited :) I'm not sure when I will start yet, as this also depends on the second person they are hiring (we have to do our training together). I'm so happy that I found a good job, and I am looking forward to "really" live in Tromsø (I've been a visitor all this time, unable to do the simplest things like opening a bank account). We're also almost certainly going to keep renting the wonderful flat we are in now, but it will become unfurnished - we are excited about decorating/buying furniture. Yay!

I've had a busy week... on Monday I took the train to London, which takes only 1.5 hours. I met up with Tanja and her friend Mike, and after a pub lunch, we visited the Victoria and Albert museum. Quite a crazy collection of all kinds of things, very interesting. Below is a photo of Mike and I in front of the big entrance, and the beautiful cafe where we had a break.

We also went to say hi to Tanja's biggest friend: the blue whale in the Natural History museum :) The museum is next door to the V&A museum, and housed in a beautiful building. The photo below shows the entry hall, I love it!

On Wednesday I took a train to Lymington, on the edge of the New Forest. From there I walked part of the Solent Way, to Keyhaven and Milford on Sea. This walks takes you through an amazing landscape of brackish marshes on one side and the Solent on the other side. I always thought the Solent is a river, but it's actually a stretch of sea. At this point, it is quite narrow and you can easily see the Isle of Wight on the other side. The day started out very sunny, but soon the clouds were increasing...

Some lucky people live in this beautiful old building in the middle of the marshes! This area used to known for salt works. Now the marshes are a paradise for birds. Unfortunately, I didn't have the right lens with me for taking photos of the birds, but I did catch these geese flying over.

The skies became darker and darker, until it started to rain quite heavily. In these marshes, there is nowhere to take cover so I got soaked. I didn't mind though - I saw the best rainbow I've ever seen! Suddenly the sun broke through the clouds and the colours of the landscape became very vibrant against the dark sky - with a beautiful double rainbow as the icing on the cake :)

It briefly became quite sunny again after the shower had passed, but not for long. The tide was going down, exposing large muddy areas.

Near Keyhaven, there is a long spit with a castle at the end (Hurst castle). I could see it from far away, as well as "the Needles", chalk cliffs at the isle of Wight behind it. I decided not to walk to the end of the spit though, as it was really windy and exposed and I didn't want to get soaked again. I walked from Keyhaven to Milton On Sea to catch the bus back to Lymington. The public footpath was more like a small river, very wet and muddy. It had become very windy too, with some impressive cloud formations. In the photo below (on the right) I managed to get the reeds blurred as they move in the wind :)

From Lymington I took the train back to Southampton. I really enjoyed this area, Lymington itself is also a really nice looking town. I told Paul that if we ever move to Southampton, I want to live in Lymington - but unfortunately I don't think I'm the only one, house prices there are rather high ;) Anyway, no need to worry about that as we are now certain that we're staying in Tromsø for at least another year :)

Autumn in the New Forest

2009-10-30T18:33:00.001+01:00

My youngest brother came to see me yesterday! There are direct flights from Amsterdam to Southampton, so it was an easy trip for him. We decided to visit Beaulieu, a village in the New Forest National Park, famous for its National Motor Museum. Beaulieu is of course a very French name, but they pronounce it as "Bjooly". The museum was quite nice, but the most fun bit was "World of Top Gear", an exhibition about the popular tv program, showing all the crazy cars they built, like this Fiat Panda stretched limo...

The motor museum is part of a large complex which simply calls itself Beaulieu. There is an old abbey, a palace, a monorail and an old bus driving around, all on a large area with nice gardens. Below are two photos of the palace. The second one is taken from the village of Beaulieu.

The village is really picturesque, I loved walking around there. I was quite envious of the people living there, what a nice place! Just look at the garden below, who wouldn't love a view like that...

There are lots of ponies freely walking throughout the New Forest. We saw quite a few, also inside the village where they caused small traffic jams :)

Some more views of the Beaulieu river at low tide...

There is a really nice long distance walking path going through the village and following the Beaulieu river, I'd love to go back there and see a bit more. Unfortunately it's difficult to get to Beaulieu, as there is no train station and only one very infrequent bus service. What I really need is a bicycle I guess :)

The Seven Bays of Broadstairs

2009-10-26T11:28:00.003+01:00

Last Saturday we picked up a rental car and drove to London. It was actually cheaper than going by train, which is pretty ridiculous! Anyway, we spent the weekend with Paul's parents, and on Sunday we all went on a trip to Broadstairs. This is a small town between Margate and Ramsgate on the east coast of Kent, surrounded by seven bays with white (chalk) cliffs. We started walking from Botany Bay, the most northerly one.

This part of the coast has a smuggling history, and apparently Botany Bay is named after the smugglers who were sent to Botany Bay in Australia... (to prison, not on holiday ;) ). I was really impressed by the chalk cliffs!

The cliffs are eroding fast, and you can find many caves. I took the photo on the left (below) from inside one of them. In the other, Paul and his dad are standing near the entrance of this cave.

A bit further on there was a (steep) path coming down between the cliffs. Paul called it the stairway to heaven because of the sunlight streaming through it (or because he found a toilet at the top??).

At the far end of Botany Bay, there is a cliff with a arch in it, large enough to walk through. On the other side is Kingsgate Bay.

The photos below are taken from Kingsgate Bay, looking back at the cliff with the gate in it. The cliffs in this bay have many caves, some very high up in the cliff. I found out later that they are connected by tunnels and were used for the smuggling activities. Some of the tunnels are still accessible, perhaps it's best I didn't know about this at the time ;)

On the other side of Kingsgate Bay is Kingsgate Castle, built in the 1760s but now converted into apartments... what a place to live! We continued our walk through Joss Bay and Stone Bay. At Stone Bay, we took the steps up and continued on top of the cliffs. The photo on the right shows the view from up there.

Broadstairs is a very pleasant town, with nice buildings on the promenade. It was a sunny day and temperatures even reached up to 18 degrees, warm enough for an ice cream :) The bay in the photo below is Viking Bay. The man-made sand bank apparently protects the coast against winter storm damage, we saw a similar one in Botany Bay.

The photo on the left (below) shows the nice seaside promenade, with a lift (!!) going down to the beach and three stories of beach huts! On the right is the beginning of Louisa Bay, with a big newish apartment building. They have some courage building it right at the cliff's edge, you can see they need concrete to reinforce the cliff. By now it was high tide and you couldn't really walk on the beach anymore.

What a wonderful day! I really enjoyed it, such a beautiful place. I've always been fascinated by the famous white cliffs. Last year we went to Brighton to see them, but there is no real beach there and you walk on a concrete path underneath the cliffs. This was so much nicer!

Southampton

2009-10-22T17:05:00.001+02:00

After a fun summer with lots of travelling, I was looking forward to coming back to Tromsø and not get on any planes until Christmas... but guess what, we're in England now! Paul got a very last minute opportunity to analyse the samples from his cruise in a lab in Southampton. And I decided to come along :) We only had a few days to arrange everything, but we managed to find a self catering apartment in a very convenient location - much better than being stuck in a hotel room!

Paul is making long hours in the lab, and I try to work as well as see a bit of Southampton and the surroundings. Southampton is not exactly the most scenic town in England... It was bombed in WWII and rebuilt with lots of concrete. It's quite industrial as well, mainly as a harbour. But I do enjoy being back in England! No language barrier, less expensive, good cinemas... :)

Yesterday I took a little ferry across the river to Hythe. Quite a nice place! The ferry goes to the far end of Hythe pier, which is quite long (640 m). In the photos below you can see the pier with the ferry.

There are lots of planks with inscriptions on the pier, I guess people were able to sponsor the pier in that way. It's nice reading all the messages as you walk along. If you don't want to walk, there is also a cute little train! The train ride is included in the ferry ticket so I took it one way.

I walked around the marina of Hythe, from where you can see Southampton on the opposite side of the river. The ships here are enormous! Not only the container ships, but the cruise ships too. The cruise ship that you can see next to the container ship in the photo below is a rowing boat compared to the other cruise ships that are in port sometimes ;) I also found some trees in spectacular autumn colours, very pretty!

I took some leaves home with me, and played with my new macro lens. The leave in the photo on the left has a wormhole in it :)

Today I watched a homecoming parade for British soldiers returning from Afghanistan. I had never been to something like that, and I was just curious. It was quite nice actually, they did a kind of show with different types of boats, explaining where and how they were used. The parade itself was not very long, but it was fun to watch the people there... :)

That's all for now... hopefully more photos soon :)

September in the Netherlands

2009-10-11T16:11:00.000+02:00

I spent most of September in the Netherlands with my family. It was nice to be back home for a bit longer than usual! It had been much too long, especially during the last phase of my PhD I hardly had time to go home for longer than a couple of days.

Veronika came to visit me on a sunny Saturday, and we spent a fun day catching up and enjoying the weather. We cycled to the beach through the dunes. The dunes have changed a lot in recent times, they don't get drinking water from them anymore (so it's a lot wetter) and they have introduced grazing animals in certain areas. We spent a long time at the "Vogelmeer" (bird lake), watching several species of birds and lots of cormorants. And some Scottish Highlanders :)

The skies turned grey by the time we made it to the beach, but it was still warm. We walked along the beach for a while, and then had some lunch - and rosé :) - at a restaurant where you can sit outside - very nice!

We continued our way through the dunes, and found some more Scottish Highlanders. In a different part of the dunes, we also saw horses! There were so many of them...

And they all seemed to love the basket on my mum's bike! One by one they came to check it out, we were laughing a lot.

We briefly visited the ruins of a medieval castle (Brederode) close to my parents. Autumn is obviously on its way...

I went to the dunes a few more times, and also took this panorama below.

I also finally got to play with the lens baby that Paul gave me for Christmas. This is a very creative lens that gives special effects in sharpness, as you can see in the photo of the path through the forest. It can also take very nice portraits, like this one of my mum :)

My brother and I organised a dinner for the whole family (including aunts/uncles) to celebrate that we both graduated in September. It was a really nice evening! In the photo below I am cutting an enormous icecream cake for dessert :)

I also spent quite a lot of time with Mare, which is always fun :) Though it's a bit hard to use the computer when she's near, hehe. She's so funny, if you show a picture of a cat on the screen, she's very happy and even tries to lure it towards her by making funny sounds!

My parents bought me a new lens for my camera as a graduation gift. I actually bought two :) A 12-24mm wide angle lens from Tokina, for taking photos of the northern lights this winter, and a 60mm Canon macro lens. I've always wanted a good macro lens, and I'm so happy with this one! On the way back from the camera shop, my parents went to this large garden centre/nursery, so I had the perfect opportunity to try my new lens! And WOW, I am so happy with the results! Click to enlarge, I have made the enlarged versions bigger than I usually do so you can see all the details in them...

Back home I also took some photos of my mum's passion flowers. I love these flowers, they are quite incredible! And the plant has a lot of these "rolled up"branches that are very photogenic too.

I cycled around quite a lot, happy to be back in a country where this is so easy :) This is a view I came across when I cycled back from Bart and Kaya to my parents, somewhere in Overveen.

And these photos are taken in Spaarndam, a very nice village near my parents. I love the bench with the swans :)

That was a short overview of my time in the Netherlands, hope you enjoyed it!

Skiing in October!

2009-10-10T23:44:00.003+02:00

We had a lot of snow last week. I thought it wouldn't last, but it did. And so this morning we took the cable car up (which is now going to run all winter instead of closing down until March, yay!) and we went skiing! Up there (at about 400 m) there is a lot of snow (half a metre or so), and it's quite good, though a bit wet. The weather today was beautiful, with bright sunshine and a pretty band of clouds over Tromsø island...

Of course we weren't the only ones out to enjoy the first snow. There were lots of people on skis and snowboards. The group of snowboarders in the photos below made me laugh. They were walking up to more serious slopes in their snowshoe boots, but with the deep wet snow this wasn't easy. We were zigzagging up while taking lots of photo breaks, and we kept running into them. They looked really funny walking in a line wearing their very bright coloured clothes :)

There was also someone kite skiing, and we watched him for a while. It looked beautiful and so much fun!

Us enjoying the snow and the sunshine...

Paul disappearing into the distance, as always a lot faster than me ;)

Before turning back, Paul wanted to get up a bit higher and I took a break :) with a nice view!

We took the last cable car back down. When we entered the building, we ran into a new colleague of Paul with his girlfriend. They were a bit jealous that we were on ski's, and they happened to have the same size boots, so we swapped our ski's and Telemark boots for their hiking boots :)

It was a fun day! We didn't expect to be able to ski this early in the year. I am not sure the snow is going to last, as the weather is supposed to turn warmer sometime next week, but at least we made the most of it!

Oslo again!

2009-10-07T14:23:00.001+02:00

I visited Oslo for the first time last month (see here) - little did I know I'd be back only a month later! This time with Paul, who hadn't been to Oslo either. We rented a really nice apartment right next to Vigeland park (Catalina Apartment Hotel in case you're interested - we can really recommend this place!). Unfortunately we woke up to a very rainy day on Saturday. We walked to the city centre, visiting some of the sights, like the Royal Palace in the photo below. We found a really nice cafe to shelter from the rain for a while :) serving good hot chocolates. Ordering a hot chocolate is a bit of a hit-or-miss experience in Norway, sometimes you get some kind of warmed up synthetic chocolate sauce, and the other day I even had a hot chocolate with soft ice in it instead of cream...

The next morning we woke up to a beautiful sunny autumn day. We had planned to visit 3 museums in one day, but the weather was too nice to be inside all day. We first went to Vigeland park to see the sculptures. We found this really fascinating oscillating fountain there... I am not sure if it's supposed to be like that, as there was an identical fountain on the other side which didn't do it. I did find this video on youtube, so it looks like it does it more often. We didn't have a compact camera to take a video, so instead I made an animated gif. If you click on the image below you can watch the fountain oscillate... (be patient, it might take a while to load)

We walked around the sculptures for a while, very nice to see them on such a beautiful day!

In the afternoon we went to the FRAM museum. Second time for me ;) but I actually didn't have time to see everything during my last visit so I didn't mind. For Paul (as an Arctic oceanographer) it was of course a must! The FRAM is a really famous ship from the history of Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. Fridtjof Nansen used it to try and reach the North Pole by letting the ship freeze into the ice and drift with the current, and it brought Amundsen to Antarctica on the trip where he became the first to reach the South Pole... so there is a lot of history there and it's great that they preserved the ship for everyone to visit.

This is what it looks like inside, I thought it looked quite comfortable. They have common rooms in the middle and cabins all around the outside. Note how they have a "rail" around the table to prevent things from sliding off in rough weather...

From the FRAM museum, we took the bus and subway to visit Mihailo and Marion (and their kids). Mihailo and I used to work for the same supervisor in Alaska, 5 years ago! It was great catching up and we had a really nice time.

My job interview was early on Monday morning. It went quite well, I am proud to say I managed to do the entire interview in Norwegian! I was scared I'd have to switch to English at some point, but the person who interviewed me was very helpful and it all went well. Of course I can't really compete with fluent Norwegian speakers, so I have no idea what my chances are of actually getting the job, but I'll find out in about 3 weeks time.

It was a really sunny day again, so after dropping our luggage in a locker at Oslo central station, we went to explore a bit more. We visited the Oslo Opera House, a really great modern building where you can walk on the roof (check out a really cool timelapse of it being built here). You have a nice view over the water and the city from the roof. Can you tell that I love my new wide angle lens? :)

We stopped for lunch and another hot chocolate at a nice bakery, and it even was warm enough to sit outside :) After that we went to see Oslo City Hall. This is the building where the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony takes place, and although it doesn't look spectacular from the outside, it is really beautiful inside! Lots of murals with scenes from Norwegian history and culture. In the photo below Paul is also showing off his new backpack, he was very happy to find enormous outdoor shops in Oslo ;)

In the photo below on the left is a detail from one of the murals that I really like: a queen sitting on a smiling bear being offered a crown, cheered on by Norwegian kids - cute! The other one shows just how incredibly detailed the murals (continuing on the ceiling in this case) were.

We walked around the Akershus fortress in the late afternoon. In the photo below Paul is sitting on one of the walls of the fortress, and behind him you can see the port (with some really beautiful ships!) and the brown brick building on the right is Oslo City Hall.

After our visit to the fortress, it was time to get the train to the airport. It was a really nice weekend trip, we both enjoyed it a lot. It was nice to catch some last days of nice weather too ;) Tromsø is turning quite wintry, we had snow yesterday and the roads are icy. Paul has changed the tires on his bike already, now I just need to do mine and the ones on the car and then we're ready for winter...

Back in autumnal Tromsø

2009-10-01T12:07:00.002+02:00

Paul and I both came back to Tromsø last Friday - Paul from the Arctic winter and me from the Dutch Summer... straight into very autumnal weather in Tromsø! We had rain, rain, rain all weekend. Paul really wanted to go for a walk in spite of this, so we put on our waterproofs and braved the weather!

The landscape is really beautiful now, with all the trees yellow and the blueberry bushes a bright red. It would be stunning in sunny weather, but it was impressive in the rain too. This is a panorama Paul took on our way up. Note how it's white in the foreground - snow!

We were trying to reach the top of Grønnlibruna, at 401 m high. This would be my 7th "Ti på Topp" which is enough to get a reward (a mug). Unfortunately we never made it there. The rain changed into snow when we got out of the shelter of the forest. I started to be cold, I later found out that my waterproofs were no good and I was soaked underneath. I think the photos below say enough ;)

After taking these photos, we turned around and went back to the car to enjoy some hot chocolate and drive home to a warm bath :) Too bad I didn't make it to my last top, but I think I can live without the mug ;)

The next day I joined Sevim for a walk close to Tromsø. We were lucky, it was sunny! We went at sunset though, so we walked in the almost-dark most of the time, but I did manage to take a few photos of the autumn landscape - very pretty!

Life is getting back to normal, Paul is back at work and I should start working on my corrections soon. We're going to Oslo for the weekend, I have a job interview there on Monday! The job would be in Tromsø, but the head office is in Oslo, that's why they asked me to come there. Paul has still not been to Oslo, so we decided to use this opportunity to do some sightseeing.

I'll try to post some photos of my time in the Netherlands soon... stay tuned :)

Almost Dr. Hanneke :)

2009-09-12T16:08:00.003+02:00

I passed my viva (PhD defense) yesterday!! I was questioned for about 2.5 hours before they asked me to leave the room so they could make their decision. It wasn't a bad experience, but it was quite tough. Fortunately I got away with minor corrections :) I have 3 months to finish them, but I estimate it's about a month of fulltime work, so that's not so bad. This is quite a normal outcome here in the UK, but it does make it a bit of an anticlimax. You come out feeling quite criticised and overwhelmed by how much work you still have to do. It took a while before I was in a festive mood, but in the end I realised that I have a clear list with 16 issues (which are all quite reasonable). Once I have addressed all these issues, I email my examinors and they will check if they approve of the corrections, and that's IT - then I just have to print and bind it. Doesn't sound that bad, does it? :)

In the evening we went for drinks and a meal. It was Nem's birthday as well, and another PhD student had just submitted, so we had plenty of reasons to celebrate! I really enjoyed the evening :) Here's a photo of me with Karel (on the left) and with birthday girl Nem (on the right).

I had a great time being back at my old university, and seeing my friends here. I lived in Norwich for over 3 years and have so many good memories :) I went for a last walk around the lake and took this photo of the "ziggurat" student accommodation.

I'm flying back to Amsterdam tomorrow and will spend another 2 weeks in the Netherlands.

I would like to thank everybody for their support before (and after) my viva! I got so many emails, text messages, phone calls, blog comments, etc etc, from all over the world (seriously ranging from Brazil and New Zealand to the Arctic... wow!), and it was wonderful to know how many people were thinking of me and wishing me luck :) it means a lot to me!

A Sunday walk with Mare

2009-09-06T22:03:00.000+02:00

This afternoon I joined Bart, Kaya and Mare (team Kriebevel) on a walk/geocache hunt through Vijfhuizen. Mare is at a very fun age now, she walks and starts to talk, which is a lot of fun! She also starts dancing as soon as she hears music. Today she was dancing to Boney M - that's my girl ;) As I know some of you really enjoy pictures of Mare, here are some from today :)

Oslo

2009-09-06T00:10:00.002+02:00

I spent two short days in Oslo on my way to the Netherlands, to meet up with Nicole and her boyfriend Patrick, who were visiting Patrick's sister and her husband who live in Oslo - are you still following me? ;). They live on Bygdøy, the "museum island" which is actually a peninsula. It's a really nice area, and we went for a little walk to the beach on our first day. It was very windy, with some nice clouds, and we also found this abandoned chair on the beach.

The next day we went to visit Vigeland sculpture park, a large park with a lot of granite and bronze sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. The overall theme of the park is man's journey from cradle to grave. All sculptures show people in various scenes of life. Some people find the sculptures disturbing, I think mostly because the people in it are naked, but I think that's missing the point. I found it beautiful and moving, sometimes very realistic, sometimes bizarre... The centre piece of the park is the huge monolith in the middle, surrounded by several granite sculptures. This part of the park has beautiful iron gates.

The photo on the left (below) shows 2 details of the big monolith in the middle. The photo on the right shows several of the sculptures found around the monolith.

Further down there is a large fountain with a bronze sculpture in the middle. Around the bottom of it are square plates showing small scenes. I put some of these together in a collage (photo on the right) - I especially liked the ones with the animals!

From the fountain to the main entrance (we walked the wrong way round ;) ) there are several larger bronze statues, like this girl with crazy hair :). In the other photo Nicole and Patrick are showing off the bikes you can rent all around Oslo.

We spent some time around Akershus fortress, where there are soldiers keeping watch, and lots and lots of cannons on display. The elephant trunk handles on the cannons are quite pretty!

Here is a view of Akershus fortress, and a photo of Patrick and Nicole on the ferry back to Bygdøy - what a nice way to travel!

The next day we went to visit the Fram museum. Fram means forward in Norwegian and this was the name of the ship that Fridtjof Nansen used on his expedition during 1893-1896 where he tried to reach the North Pole by letting the ship drift with the sea ice. He didn't actually succeed in doing this, but FRAM spent 3 years in the ice and everybody survived the expedition, including Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen who set out on ski's and with kayaks to try and reach the North Pole but in the end had to overwinter on Frans Joseph Land. I find this one of the most incredible tales in Polar history, and I was very excited to visit the museum where you can actually walk around the ship! Fram was also used for an expedition around the Canadian Arctic with Otto Sverdrup, and in Roald Amundsen's expedition in 1910-1912 where he was the first person to reach the South Pole. The museum was really interesting, and the ship actually looked quite cosy and comfortable inside, though the beds seem a bit short!

After our visit to the museum, it was time for me to head to the airport to catch my flight to Amsterdam. It was a very short visit to Oslo, but a fun one! I definitely plan to come back and see more :)

I'm now with my family in the Netherlands, it's great to be back for a while! I'm also preparing for my PhD defense which will take place on Friday... I'm quite scared, but also kind of looking forward to it - or at least to having it out of the way ;) I'm travelling to Norwich on Tuesday already, so I probably won't update my blog until the end of the week - but hopefully by then I'll have some good news to share!

Goodbye Tromsø

2009-09-02T23:27:00.001+02:00

This morning I flew to Oslo, and I won't be back in Tromsø until the end of this month. It think it will look quite different by that time! Célia and Gert-Jan came to visit for a couple of days, which was very nice. On Sunday, the weather was warm and sunny, and we took the cable car and then hiked up Fløya. It was great! There were lots of people around, to hike, enjoy the view or pick blueberries. We did all 3 :) Here are some photos - and the last one shows the first signs of autumn: the blueberry bushes have turned a deep red!

I also took this panorama of Tromsø island. Last year, I took a winter version of (almost) the same view :)

I'm now in Oslo with Nicole and Patrick, staying with Patrick's family. Oslo looks very nice, I'm looking forward to some exploring tomorrow! I'm only here until Friday evening, but I'm sure I'll have some photos to share soon :)

Trondheim - Ålesund

2009-09-01T16:37:00.001+02:00

We joined Paul's parents on a trip to Ålesund from August 20-24. We flew from Tromsø to Trondheim, where we rented a car. Our destination for the first day was Molde. We noticed a difference with the north of Norway... around Trondheim you often have to pay toll for crossing bridges or tunnels! The drive was scenic though and included a nice crossing by ferry... it was quite windy, but the wind was very warm!

We took a detour to Kristiansund, a friendly coastal town. It's built on five islands, and you can see several small ferries (for foot passengers) crossing to the different islands. The woman with the clipfish seems to be the symbol of the town. Kristiansund used to be the largest exporter of clipfish in Norway.

We slept in Molde that night. The next morning we walked around town. Molde is known as the town of roses, and they have a nice statue of a girl with roses on the main square. The building on the right is the "Seilet Hotel" or Sail Hotel. Very modern looking, but it really does look like a sailing ship and I love how it reflects the sky and clouds.

We had a drink outside in the sun, before getting on the ferry to Vestnes - the photo on the right is the view from the ferry.

Just before Ålesund, we stopped to look at on old bridge. In the photo below you can see the new bridge, with a rainbow on the left side!

From the old bridge (or bridges rather, there were 2) we could see a maelstrom (whirlpools caused by the tidal current). There are some very large ones in Norway, especially in the Lofoten, but we never got to see those. This one is a lot smaller, but still impressive to watch the power of the water. Below you can see the whirlpools forming when the water comes around the tip of the island, and you can also see strong currents in the photo on the right (which is another, smaller island).

After checking in to our hotel in Ålesund, we decided to climb up the 418 steps to Aksla, the mountain overlooking the town. This is a famous viewpoint, and while researching this trip, it was a photo taken from up there that convinced me to come :). We were at the viewpoint around sunset, it was beautiful!

And now I have my own version of the photo that convinced me to come to Ålesund :)

The next day we woke up to very sunny weather and blue skies :) So we got to see the town at its most beautiful, we were very lucky! Ålesund is a very special place. It was originally a city full of wooden houses, but in 1904 the entire city burnt down. At this time, there was a crisis in the building industry and many workers were unemployed. As a result, labour was very cheap and a lot of people came to Ålesund, looking for work. Most of the architects were trained in Germany, and they rebuilt the city in 3 (!!) years time, all in Jugendstil (or Art Nouveau) style, mixed with other influences and with the Norwegian dragon style. The result is stunning!

We really enjoyed walking around the town, admiring the architecture. Ålesund was voted the most beautiful place in Norway several times - and I can see why!

The details on some of the buildings are really beautiful, with motives of fruit and flowers, and animals - like the owl which we found inside the Jugenstilsenteret, a very interesting museum!

Our hotel was close to the waterfront, where we watched a nice sunset :)

The next day was a long drive back to Trondheim. We did take some time to visit Trollstigen (troll's ladder), a very famous road that goes up very steeply with 11 hairpin bends. The first photo is the bridge over the Stigfossen waterfall. The second is in one of the many tourist shops on the top...

And this is the view from the top of the road:

In the photo on the right (below) you can see Paul, though he is quite camouflaged ;) In the second photo you can see almost the entire road, with the many bends. I was glad I wasn't driving, it takes some skill to drive around these hairpin bends, especially with some big cars coming from the opposite direction.

As real Norwegians, we had a picknick outside, before continuing on our way to Trondheim.

Paul's parents flew back from Trondheim to London the next day. Our flight was a bit later, so we spent a few hours walking around Trondheim. Trondheim is famous for the old colourful storehouses next to the river - very pretty!

We walked though a very nice neighbourhood with a lot of wooden houses with cafes and small shops.

And we found this strange thing... a bicycle lift! We weren't able to try it out unfortunately, but you are pushed up with a platform underneath your right feet, as Paul demonstrates with his invisible bike ;) I wonder how much it's really used though... the hill is not actually THAT steep, and can be avoided too. While we were there, the only people interested in the bike lift were tourists and the few people cycling up the hill didn't use it.

Our flight back to Tromsø was very scenic! It was sunny and we had great views of the glaciers between Trondheim and Bodø, where the plane has a stop. It was a nice little trip, I'm glad we got to see a different area of Norway. I'd love to come back and see more!

Paul is now on his research cruise on board the Lance, just like last year. Today they are receiving journalist and VIP visitors on board, including the secretary-general of the United Nations (Ban Ki-Moon). Or that was the plan, at least - I just read on the local news website that Ban Ki-Moon wasn't able to reach Lance by helicopter due to bad weather. That's a shame!

I have been busy with friends visiting here in Tromsø, and I'm flying to Oslo tomorrow morning, to meet up with Nicole and Patrick for 2 days. Should be fun! After that I'm flying to the Netherlands to spend some time with my family. It's not all holiday though, my viva (PhD defense) is coming up very soon... scary!