A few years back Google introduced the service known as Street View. They basically take car and drive through the city strrets and they take photos. This is linked up to Google Maps and this means that you can take virtual walks in cities like London, New York, Paris etc. But now the turn has finally come to my beloved hometown Stavanger It seems like the photos have been taken on a pretty nice autumn day last year and you can walk around a lot of the streets in downtown Stavanger. So the only thing missing now Google is a good satellite image of the city center itself!! So start by a walk from the Norwegian Petroleum museum, Or maybe walk past the iron age farm, check out the beach at Sola, check out the view of the city from the bridge leading over to Hundvåg etc. Welcome to Stavanger…both virtually and in real life
My wife and I went to Tromsø in the end of Janauary 2010 and I have made a trip report with some photos and you can find it on this page. We had a great dinner at Emma’s Drømmekjøkken, we did some snowmobile driving with Lyngsfjord Adventure to see northern lights, we took the cable car Fjellheisen up to the mountain top Storsteinen, visited Polaria and Polar museum etc. I hope that the trip report can be of some use to others that are going there. Get in touch on gardkarlsen@hotmail.com if you have any questions or comments.
We went to Tromsø in the north of Norway for a weekend and we took Fjellheisen (see http://www.fjellheisen.no/) to the mountain top Storsteinen. You get a lovely view from the 421 meter peak. It costs 99 kroner for an adult to take the cable car to the top. Here is a short video to show a bit of the experience – with commentary from yours truly
I came to Tromsø at night and the hotel is only about 10 minutes from the airport by taxi and it was about 135 kroner (about 23 US dollars at the moment). There is also a bus service but it is not the frequent.
We had room 453 located on the 4th floor and it was a pretty big room and it cost 1170 kroner per night (200 US dollars) for two including taxes and breakfast. The entire room had a rust red carpet, 2 windows but not with much of a of a view as we looked over to another section of the hotel. The room had a two seat black leather sofa and a similar style chair and a low table. There was also a low table, a desk with a chair and a flat screen TV mounted on the wall. The TV was facing the leather chair and it was not possible to twist the TV towards the bed – I think this would have been a great feature. When lying in bed it was hard to see the TV image and it was also hard to use the remote control to change channels (maybe due to the angle?).
There was also a wardrobe with regular hangers which I think is nice, a small safe where you put in your own pin code and a small mini bar. I think a soft drink like Coke was about 42 kroner (about 7 US Dollar). In the hall leading into the room there was a small ironing board and one of those cheap, horrible irons. The room was equipped with some pretty funky and modern lamps but it was hard to control the lightning individually as there was one main switch that killed all the light.
The bathroom was tiled in white and green tiles on the walls and black tiles on the floor. There were some amenities – the usual shower and shampoo and a lotion and the bathtub had a shower option with a glass panel to avoid water from splashing everywhere. I still think the bathtubs should be removed from hotel rooms as I never use it but maybe I’m different from your average hotel guest. One major flaw in the bathroom was the fact that there was no heating in the floor! At least it didn’t feel like it when we were there and hence the bathroom was quite cold and when we took a shower the water would run down from the cold walls. To compensate the ventilation suction was so strong that it felt like there was a constant breeze when we were in the shower.
When entering the room there was a sign saying “Welcome to your business class room” and there was a list of items that should be included. The problem was that several of the items were not there. It would have been great to have slippers and a bathrobe as it was quite cold in Tromsø when we were there and the heating barely seemed to keep up with the cold outside the windows. There should also have been a Nespresso coffee machine but the only thing that was left in the cupboard were some Nespresso capsules. When I mentioned this to the reception I got a water boiler instead which was nice of course but not the same as a Nespresso machine. A morning paper should also be included in the business room and we got it on a Friday but not on the following day. Pay TV was also included in this but the TV signal was pretty bad a times and when watching movies on the pay TV a piece of another film would keep on popping up in the film we were watching.
Radisson Blu has a 100% guest satisfaction which I think is just a PR stunt. I’m not 100% satisfied with our stay and guess I should have complained about more of the issues that I have mentioned above. But I think when they have listed what a room should contain it should not be up to the guest to point out all the things that are missing. And before I stop complaining: the iron is really lousy. I do understand that you have to keep the ironing board small but there should have been a proper steam iron. I assume that a lot of the people that get this room are people that are there on business and that would like to iron a shirt before going to a meeting. Getting a shirt to look nice with that iron would take no less than a miracle.
But let us focus on some of the things that were good. The location of the hotel is very good. Located right on the harbor it is within minutes from most of the attractions in Tromsø. The breakfast was very good and included scrambled eggs, bacon, sautéed mushrooms and you could also order eggs in various ways. Apart from that there was a nice selection of fruit, cereal, bread and pastry etc. And I cannot remember seeing tran at a hotel breakfast before – that is oil of cod liver that we Norwegian normally take with breakfast in the wintertime There is free wifi in the rooms and I think this is a great feature. But I did have some problems getting my iPhone online on the wifi.
All in all this is not a bad hotel at all and it clearly deserved a 4 rating in my opinion even if I was tempted to rate it three as some of the expectations were not met. I have complained to Radisson Blu before on issues and I have yet to get a proper answer in line with their 100% guest satisfaction. If you are looking for a hotel in Tromsø, Radisson Blu is not a bad option at all.
The travel magazine Travel + Leisure has just published an article where they list the world’s most beautiful airports. On the list you can find airports in Beijing, Madrid, NYC, Bilbao, Denver, Seoul, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur etc. You can find the list of the 15 airports in this article. So which airport do you think is the most beautiful in the world? I have to say that my favorite is still the tiny little airport at Samui in Thailand. It is basically just a couple of large huts with straw roofing but it fits really will in as Samui is quite a small island filled with coconut palms. But it also depends where you are hanging out at an airport. Frankfurt is not one of my favorites but when I got to stay in the Lufthansa First Class terminal I changed my mind
A few years back we visited Rome (see the trip report with photos) and as many others we went for a tour at the Vatican museum and at the end we got to visit the Sistine Chapel. It was a bit of a surreal experience as it was so crowded and the guards were busy chasing people that were talking or taking photos. But now it seems like it is possible to go for tours after regular opening hours. Companies like Italy with us, Context , Rome in limo and Viator can all offer tours according to the Norwegian paper VG. But seeing Michelangelo’s masterpiece after hours does not come for free of course – you have to be prepared to pay about 300€ per person for the touring service. So if you have the money you can now enjoy the view of this beautiful chapel more or less in peace.
I think most of us have been there…you are on a looooooong flight and you are stuck in economy class between a couple of strangers. After trying 50 different positions in the seat you discover that it is very, very difficult to get some decent sleep. Well, today newspapers reports that Air New Zealand has come up with a clever “inventions” to also allow economy passengers a good night sleep in something that resembles a bed. So the deal is that if you are flying as a couple you can book a third seat for an extra fee and then the three seats are turned into a bed when you want to sleep. Based on the photos it looks a lot more comfortable compared to sleeping in an upright position. Anyway, the airline also adds that this is not an invitation to join the mile high club Read more about it in Mail Online. So if you are going from the UK to New Zealand in 2011 you might be one of the lucky ones that can catch some Z’s as you in the air.
When I travel I’m always surprised to see reminders in hotel rooms that e.g. the robes are not meant to be taken home with you. I guess it must be a problem as some hotel rooms have a price list for almost everything in the room Here is an article about top 10 items that people steal from hotel rooms. Here is another article called “When stealing from a hotel is OK” that talks about the same subject. So have you ever taken something from the hotel room? I have to admit that I do take bathroom amenities that I have started using…like shampoo, conditioner and mouth wash. But apart from that I can honestly say that I have never stolen anything from a hotel room….well, as far as I can remember So what about you? Are you a thief?
As it is a new year there are articles popping up suggesting where to go and places to see. I never quite understood these lists as it all depends on what you want to see and what budget your are on. But anyway; New York Times have printed this article called “The 31 Places to Go in 2010” and it includes places like Sri Lanka, Patagonia Wine country, Seoul (apparently Tokyo is soooo 2009), Mysore in India, Copenhagen, Koh Kood in Thailand (the next Samui?), Damascus in Syria (the next Marrakesh), Cesme in Turkey, Antartica??? and Leipzig.
Condé Nast Traveller has also published a list of places you want to stay at in 2010. The list is called “The Gold list 2010” and it covers more than 100 recommended hotels. The “winner” this year is Cliveden in Berkshire followed by the Ritz in London, The Balmoral in Edinburgh, Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris, Hotel Cipriani in Venice, Hotel Adlon Kempinski in Berlin, Ellerman House in Cape Town in South Africa (now we are getting somewhere ), The Ritz-Carlton in Dubai, The Oberoi Mauritius and The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Mumbai. I don’t think I have stayed at any of these hotels…I get a feeling that most of them are on the expensive side Have you stayed at any of them?
We have started thinking about where to go during Easter but we can’t make up our mind. We would like to go for a week or two so we probably want to keep the flight less than 6-7 hours and we would also want to avoid a big time difference in order to not be too jet-lagged We have been thinking of places like Istanbul in Turkey, Egypt, maybe Madrid and Barcelona in Spain. maybe Portugal. So have you got any great recommendation on where to go during Easter (around April 1st 2010)? Have you been to any of the places that I have mention and would you recommend it?
It seems like the photos have been taken on a pretty nice autumn day last year and you can walk around a lot of the streets in downtown Stavanger. So the only thing missing now Google is a good satellite image of the city center itself!! So start by a walk from the Norwegian Petroleum museum, Or maybe walk past the iron age farm, check out the beach at Sola, check out the view of the city from the bridge leading over to Hundvåg etc. Welcome to Stavanger…both virtually and in real life 
My wife and I went to Tromsø in the end of Janauary 2010 and I have made a trip report with some photos and you can find it on 
