I stayed at Grand Hotel Kempinski in the beginning of November 2008 in connection with a short trip to Geneva. I booked the hotel in advance and paid about 2500 NOK (about 365$). I took the taxi from the airport to the hotel and that cost about 35 CHF and check in was quite fast and I got room 4460. It was easy to see that this is a pretty luxurious business hotel and the lobby area is quite vast and there were lots of shops selling good quality watches and there is even a huge cigar shop filled with Cuban cigars. Click on the link below to read the entire review.
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I got a newsletter from the Norwegian travel magazine Zine travel today and one of the topics were weird museums around the world. You can view the article here (only in Norwegian I’m afraid). Did you e.g. know that there is a sewer museum in Paris? And there is a British Lawnmower Museum. I think the weirest museum I have been to is the  Museum of forensic history in Bangkok. I went there during a trip in 2002 and the brochure said that this was a museum “not for the squeamish”…and they were quite right. It is a place were you can see mummified criminals, body parts on jars, babies with various birth defects, skulls with bullet wounds etc.  It was really a bizarre place and I left the place kinda nauseous.  But I guess it depends what you are used to seeing…when I went there, there were school classes visiting and they did not seem to mind. Anyway, you can see more photos at the bottom of the Thailand 2002  trip report.
Now it is your turn…have you been to any weird museum? Tell us all about it

In September 2008 I went to Aberdeen on a short business trip. I was not sure where to stay so I asked a colleague of mine that had been to Aberdeen before and he said “Stay at Skene House on Rosemount….but be sure to ask to stay in the church”. I found “the church” recommendation to bit a bit odd but I followed the advice and booked the room. Click on the more link below to read the entire review.
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When Nikki and I have been traveling, there are quite a few times where we have wanted to take a picture of us with something in the background. Sometimes we try to balance the camera on top of something but it is rarely a success and sometime we end up asking people but that can also be tricky if they don’t have any camera skills But here is one product that might be able to help out a little: Gorillapod . This is a tripod like any other but the special feature is the flexible legs which means that you can wrap it around stuff (like a bar as shown in the picture to the right) and that introduce new possibilities. I still haven’t made up my mind to buy it or not but I’m tempted. It comes in different versions by the way…there is also one model that are made for SLR cameras.

I stayed at the Majestic Grande hotel in Bangkok from Friday 28th of September until Monday October 1st 2007. I had room 1605 located on the 16th floor and I had a view from the Sukhumvit area where the hotel is located towards the Lumpini park area. We chose to stay at this hotel as it was rated very high on TripAdvisor.com and the price was quite low (which seems to be a great combination) but as we found out you can’t always trust the ratings on TripAdvisor. Please click on the link below to read the entire review.
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If you have traveled a bit you know the procedure – once you get into the aircraft there is a boring safety announcement and hardly any of the passengers pays attention to it. But it is possible to do these safety announcements with a twist in order to get people to pay attention. Here are two examples.

Thomson Airways:

Southwest Airlines:

And when we are talking about airlines – have you seen this add for Air New Zealand? Well, if you haven’t check it out and take a close look at what the people are wearing…or rather not wearing They have nothing to hide.

Have you ever heard of Trolltunga (the tongue of the troll)? I had not heard about this place until a few days ago when I saw a photo in a newspaper. It is located near Odda and it seems like quite a spectacular place – maybe not as nice as Preikestolen and Kjerag but still The photo from  Trolltunga below (taken from Jan’s blog) should give you an idea of what to expect. From this place you should also get a view to one of Norway’s glaciers, Folgefonna.

Odda also seems to have their own small version of Via Ferrata and you can read more about that on Opplevodda.com.

I have now posted some photos and videos from our trip to Phnom Penh in Cambodia and you can find them on this web page. Phnom Penh was of course filled with lots of impressions as we got to visit places like Tupl Sleng genocide museum, the Killing fields at Choeung Ek etc. But we also got to see a country celebrate as it was New Year. I’m working on the trip report and it will be posted sooner or later

Or maybe it should have said “SAS is still in trouble”. SAS is Scandinavia Airline System – the airline that is the “pride” of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The only problem is that they are loosing money…a lot of money. It seems like they lost about 140 million US $ in second quarter this year and today CEO Mats Jansson had to tell the press that they have to cut more jobs and save more money. Another 1500 jobs must be removed in addition to cuts that have been made already and the rest have to face a cut in salary of 10-20% – I wonder what that will lead to as SAS has a history filled with strikes as the unions are pretty strong within the company. I guess it is not news that airlines are struggling these days but it is sad to see how things are going with SAS. The problem seems to be that their expenses are so much higher than for e.g. Norwegian so they are not able to compete. So while Norwegian is doing great at the Oslo stock exchange, the SAS shares have dropped a lot over the last years. SAS have also had a lot of intercontinental routes (that they have lost a lot of money on) and they are being cut one by one. So what will happen to SAS? I think that when they get control over their costs they will be bought by e.g. Lufthansa and then Lufthansa can take care of the intercontinental flights while SAS can take care of the Scandinavian traffic and to/from Europe to Scandinavia. So maybe it is wise of me to spend the Eurobonus points now…it would be a tragedy to lose all of them if SAS goes bankrupt.

Have you ever seen a plane above you and wondered where it is coming from or where it is going to? Well, over Scandinavia you can actually get that info for quite a lot of the planes that you seen in the sky.  Check out flygradar.nu and click on the various planes to get more information about the flights. It is not really a radar as far as I understand but a radio signal (Mode-S/ADS-B-transpoder) that most modern planes have and it seems like it gives the position of the plane pretty accurate. Thanks to DinSide for reminding me again about this web site