Norway Road Trip

Posted on July 23, 2011 by minch

Else, myself and three friends spend seven days driving our cars around parts of the west coast of Norway. The places we stopped at along the way were, Geiranger, Aure, Namsos, Offersøy, Saltstraumen, Verdal, then returned to Oslo. It was around 3000 km of driving! For the full route check out the map below.

View Norway Road Trip! in a larger map

Highlights of the trip included:

Borgund Stave Church
Bøyabreen og Supphellebreen – glaciers
Gieranger Fjord – even though it was fogged in!
Trollstigen – one of Norway’s most famous roads
The Atlantic Road – another of Norway’s most famous roads
Route 17 – on the Norwegian west coast
Svartisen – Norway’s second highest glacier
Crossing the Arctic Circle twice
Midnight sun
The Seven Sisters – mountain range
Saltstraumen – worlds strongest maelstrom
Seeing the Hurtigruten boats at least four times
Twelve ferry crossings!
Getting a blow out 200 km from Trondheim and having to drive on the space saver spare tyre to buy a new tyre.
Nidarosdomen Cathedral

All the places we stayed at were great. It seems the secret to cheap accommodation in Norway is to rent cabins, which is exactly what we did! My favourite place to stay was Offersøy. Great cabin with a view over the water, and it was nice and relaxed! For those of you with access check out all the photos in the gallery here.

Also as a bonus I managed to make eleven different beautiful landscape wallpapers you can download at full resolution and use on your computer if you want! Get them here.

Majorca

Posted on June 20, 2011 by minch

Else and I just spent a week in sunny Majorca. Usually I like to stay in Norway during summer since it’s the best chance of the year for good weather, but since Else’s parents, sister and niece were also going I didn’t get much of a say! We ended up in Cala Bona on Majorca’s east coast in a group of hotels inhabited by scandinavians. Not as bad as it sounds, because once you walked a few hundred metres away from the resort you were surrounded by some Germans, and a lot of English tourists, so it was very easy for me.

On this holiday we decided to take the oppertunity to do abolutely nothing! We even ordered the meals, so most of them were taken at the hotel. It was nice to have a break where we really did nothing for a week. Other than nothing we sat by the pool, read some books, swimming, went to the capitial Palma for a day trip and took a boat trip down the coast visiting the Caves of Drach.

While on our day trip to Palma we took the tourist bus around the city. One of stops was at “Le Sue” or Cathedral of Santa Maria of Palma, which is a over 400 year old cathedral in the centre of Palma. You can see a picture of it above. For those of you with access check out all the photos in the gallery here.

New Photo Blog

Posted on March 20, 2011 by minch

Since swapping this blog back to straight wordpress, I’ve kinda been missing the Photo Blog we had before. So I’ve brought it back! But this time I’ll keep this standard blog for longer posts, and the standard photo section, for those of you have access, with all the photos. We’ll try to keep this blog a bit more up to date, since I see it’s been a while since we made a post. Until then go on over to the PhotoBlog (there’s also a link at the top)

Hell freezes over

Posted on October 17, 2010 by minch

That’s right I have done what I said I wasn’t going to do, I bought an iPad!

One of the main reasons I was against getting one was that the content you could view was going to be limited, because Apple has chosen to leave out a couple of web technologies that are very prominent on the Internet right now. But I guess in the end I decided that the convenience of a small device that could do my everyday tasks was better that sitting around with a notebook all the time. Also with the release of iOS 4.2 right around the corner, with updates like multitasking, I had decided that the platform had matured enough that it would be the right choice.

I’m pleased to say I was right. I have barely touched my notebook since I got this iPad a few days ago. (Note: I’m even writing this blog post using the WordPress app) It’s fast and can handle all of the everyday Internet tasks I can throw at it. I’m sure it will just get better as the software matures. Now I just have to figure out how to stop playing Angry Birds!

First trip in the new car!

Posted on August 22, 2010 by minch

Yes that’s right we have got a new(er) car! Even though the old reliable 1994 VW Golf was still going ok, it was heading towards the time where we would have had to spent some money on it. So rather than sink money into an old car, we bought a 2009 Diesel Toyota Yaris.

Summer is fading fast in Oslo, but as it was sunny today, Else and I headed out for a short trip along the Oslo fjord. We ended up stopping at the original house to Roald Amundsen. Who is Roald Amundsen I hear all the non-Norwegians say?

He was one of the original polar explorers and the first man to go to the North and South poles. You can read all about him here. Of course the Norwegian version of the same wikipedia page is twice as long!

It was a nice day out, lunch on the “beach”, and it was interesting to see so much memorabilia crammed into one house. First of many trips to come I hope! See you on the road.

WordPress is back!!!

Posted on August 16, 2010 by minch

After a couple of months and only three blog posts I have decided to drop Zen Photo and move back to the duet of WordPress and Gallery. So why?

The security provided by Zen Photo wasn’t quite up to the standard I expected to protect my on-line photos
WordPress really is getting better with every release (now at 3.0.1)
Gallery2 was pretty good, but complex, and now Gallery3 is in RC2 I thought it was time to try it.

Gallery 3, despite the fact that the developers hate my hosting service GoDaddy, really is looking very good. It’s a stripped down Gallery 2 with only the parts you need. It seems to run much faster than Zen Photo and does everything I need. One down side is that the WordPress and Gallery 3 log in isn’t the same so you’ll have to log in to see the photos, but then you don’t need to log in to see this blog! If you don’t have a log in just pop me an e-mail and I’ll make you one.

I have a couple of things to fix so enjoy the site until then. I’ll try to get back some of the pictures that are missing here, and get registration working on the photo site.

Oh yeah the gallery is here, or at the photo link at the top of the page.

Life with a Kindle DX

Posted on July 18, 2010 by minch

Amazon has just released an updated Kindle DX in graphite! Else got me one as a birthday gift considering I have been using Kindle 2 all the time. It’s a little expensive but it’s a very nice upgrade! Thanks Else!

If you want an e-book reader the Kindle DX is the shit and you should get one!

The Minchintons

Follow the lives of Adam and Else-Marie!