I ended up having another trip just a few days after getting back from Norway. I had waffled on whether to accompany Louie to another conference, but I decided to because 1) it’s summer and I am self-employed and 2) I found pretty inexpensive tickets to go for a few days. So we headed out to Austin on Sunday, and now I’m back, and I already taught a 6 1/2 hour day yesterday after flying home in the morning and have another one today. I figured the best of both worlds: get some travel in, get some teaching in as well.
I won’t go into many details at this time and instead will leave you with the vague promise of more details later.
From a “BBQ and Wine Tasting” Tour I took: me pretending to hang out on the back of a pickup truck.
Things I have learned though, from back to back trips plus COVID: I get more tired than I think I will, and the heat in Austin is no joke. I ended up needed to come back to the room by mid afternoon to rest. Was that the heat, was it getting old, getting over COVID still (I feel fully recovered, but who knows), or even the remnants of jet lag, or do I just overestimate my ability to sight-see and be out and about? Who knows! It was a nice relaxing trip, with great food, some good relaxation, time with old friends, and some cultural stuff too.
The Texas State Capital, where laws are passed or not passed so that children can be murdered in their schools in the name of freedom.
I am still feeling so incredibly lucky to have spent 2 1/2 weeks in Norway, and I miss it. It’s always lovely to be home after vacation, and the cats are especially feeling our absences, but it is nice to get away and see the world, and realize that not everywhere is the same, even though more things are the same than you think.
I hope I can follow Louie to more conferences in the future: he is finishing up his degree this summer and who knows what the future will hold. I had a great time sightseeing on my own and enjoying the downtime, and would enjoy it again in the future. It’s also nice to be able to meet up with him for dinner: it’s much like our regular lives in that sense, except I get to sightsee during the day rather than teach and play violin. It also told me that I would definitely consider doing solo vacations in the future as well.
We made it back home two nights ago! We both dropped right into work and such (laundry, house cleaning) but I thought I’d pop in.
If you are an instagram follower of mine you’ve been getting to see all of the wonderful pictures. Norway is gorgeous. It was a wonderful trip, with one major exception.
The major exception is that we both caught COVID on the trip (or likely, before the trip, in my case). So we fuddled through life the best we could, with poor information. And at the end, we had to change our flight to come back a few days later in order to ensure negative tests or a proof of recovery documentation for both of us, only to have the US change the testing requirement to mean we could have stayed with our original plans. Nonetheless the extra days were nice to make up for the sick ones.
So, 6 things things that were awesome about Norway:
In the summer it never gets dark! The sun goes down around 10:30 to 11 pm but it doesn’t go very far, and then it’s back up by 4 am.
Public transportation. In Oslo we used an app that you could buy tickets through as well as plan your route to wherever you were going. It was amazing to just step out on the street, walk a few blocks and hop on the bus or tram you needed.
There was a delicious bakery around the corner from our AirBNB in Oslo that we ate at too many times to count. Good cappuccinos as well as pastries and bread.
The people were wonderful and helpful. Everybody speaks English (they learn from a young age) and even though I felt guilty that I didn’t speak much Norwegian (really, any, more than a phrase or two) nobody seemed to be too bothered by this.
The fjords really are gorgeous, and the mountains. The train from Oslo to Bergen was more beautiful than we expected.
Boat rides: if you go to Norway, you MUST take a boat ride.
3 Things that aren’t quite as awesome about Norway:
Everything, especially food, is incredibly expensive. If you get a sandwich at a restaurant, it’s $25 to $30. Even the grocery store is more expensive that you’d expect.
It’s very far away. We had to take three flights, which on the way back meant going through security three times. There weren’t any reasonably priced options that didn’t have three connections.
We had to leave! They wouldn’t just give us an apartment and jobs and let us stay there. We may have to look into that further.
One of those expensive sandwiches. And it’s not because it’s shrimp, all of them are expensive. Shrimp is common food.Standing in front of Grieg’s composer hut. We saw a concert at the recital hall there.On the boat to Balestrand, going up the Sogneford. The view from our hotel in Balestrand. That is St. Olaf’s Church, and supposedly it inspired parts of Frozen.Jostadeen Glacier.Gustav Vigeland’s famous sculpture, Angry Baby.A Stave Church at the Norwegian Folk Museum, a wonderful open air museum.I loved all of the grass topped houses and want to live in one.
So that’s the teaser post. I’ll write a bit more about in the next week or two about each location we visited (and of course share more photos): Bergen, Balestrand, and Oslo (where we spent over a week and really started to feel like locals, haha.) If you have an opportunity to visit Norway, I recommend you take it!
It’s been a minute since I blogged! I’ve been busy, tired, and burnt out, so I haven’t had much to say. Cats, teaching, worrying, planning for summer travel.
We had our big spring concert at my school last night. It was fun to see everybody all together! It was interesting to see how many people are absolutely okay being in a room, maskless, with hundreds of people…including other teachers. I wear a mask teaching, and have all year long. One of the schools that the kids go to is mask required due to the high number of cases, but those kids don’t have to wear masks other than at their own school, because…that makes sense.
Nonetheless, I have not been that worried about it lately. I have enough other things to worry about, and I just keep my mask on for work related things, because I decided awhile back if I was going to get COVID it would be NOT at work, but from doing something fun, and I’m sticking with that. I also wear masks at concerts and that sort of thing, because we are sitting there for 1-2 hours, side by side.
I digress a bit though. I didn’t plan to go on about COVID in this “post-COVID” world we are in, but it happens. I’ve been working hard collecting information about summer schedules for students, and tomorrow is the day I make the schedule, and I’m thrilled. I’ve been a little worried about it, but worst case not everybody will get a lesson every week they wanted it. I’ve taken on some extra summer students, and some of them have a lot of flexibility and it’ll work well, but others it turned out have less time and wanted two lessons a week during a 4 hour time period, and…we’ll see how that goes. I have decided not to blame people for trying, and I have learned a few more things about this year.
Okay, so I paused there for two days…in the meantime I got my summer schedule figured out and published to the online portal I use, woo hoo! Miraculously it mostly worked out and there were only a few days where I couldn’t fit everyone in, but mostly those students didn’t want a lesson every week anyway. I am coming up on the last regular week of teaching, then a 4 days “makeup week” for lessons missed during the semester (some were mine) and then, OFF TO NORWAY!
I’ve got a lovely trip planned for Norway. We fly into Oslo, spend one night there, then we take the train to Bergen. It’s supposed to be a really scenic train ride. We spend 3 nights in Bergen and then take a ferry to Balestrand as part of the “Sognefjord in a Nutshell” tour. We spend two nights in Balestrand, and will take an afternoon ferry trip to Fjaerland and the Glacier Museum, then finish our Nutshell tour with a ferry to Flam, a scenic train through the mountains to Myrdal, and then a train back to Oslo. We spend over a week in Oslo for Louie’s conference, and have a few activities planned there as well: a bike tour together (just regular bikes, not ebikes), and then I have two solo day trips planned while he is in the conference: a round trip ferry to Drobak and Oscarsburg, south of Oslo, and a bus trip that goes to Hadeland Glassworks and Kistefos Museum in Jevnaker. We are also planning to attend a few concerts in Bergen since we are there during the Bergen International Festival and we have tickets for Swan Lake at the Oslo Ballet. We may need a vacation from our vacation, (tripadvisor seems to think this is a bad thing, but I don’t, if it’s a sightseeing vation rather than a beach vacation) but I am so excited!
COVID gives us some worries of course, and we have to present a negative test to return home, which I think is ludicrous, but nonetheless still currently the policy. Why do I think it’s ludicrous? Because we aren’t required to follow any other COVID guidelines in the US,(such as masking on planes) and it seems completely outrageous that our own country could keep us from entering based on having a virus that…plenty of people here already have. So hopefully we won’t get COVID while we are there, because that would be a huge pain(especially as we are headed to another conference one week later) but I can’t worry about everything all the time! Norway has no entrance testing or requirements so that’s not a concern going there.
So that’s what I’ve been up to: teaching, finishing the semester, trip planning, scheduling, etc. Last weekend I finally got out in the backyard to do some weeding. I’m not sure my gardening plans this year: I keep thinking I’ll plant some things, but it’s looking less likely for this summer. We have enough travel going on that it will make it challenging to stay on top of things, though I still like the idea of fresh beans and maybe zucchini. I suppose I should decide and if so, plant in the next week!
The semester schedule, especially for college, often just seems like a mad dash from beginning to end. It’s slightly less so for school before college since the semesters are longer, but there’s still that same feeling.
The days are longer, the birds are louder, the air is warmer, it was Spring for a few days, and may be almost there again now.
Life: life is hectic and busy. Louie is completely overworked right now, but his sprint only goes through the end of April. Mine goes longer, but I’m not as overworked. Still time to read, to plan upcoming trips, to relax.
I haven’t felt like getting into the garden yet this year. I’m not sure if I’ll do it or not. I think I’ll probably plant at least a few things, maybe beans and zucchini, but since we’ll be gone I want to time it so that hopefully it’s okay if I wasn’t there the whole time.
It’s been a tough semester, with some work reasons I won’t go into here. I will say: I’ve been working hard on envisioning my own life, what I want the rest of my career to look like, and coming to terms with the fact (probably 20 years late!) that what I see as success and happiness in my career is what matters, not what other people see as success, especially colleagues who may have very different world views. I am not teaching in order to make my students into competition winners or performers, I am teaching because I want them to love playing the violin like I do, but I also know that for most of them, this is one part of their lives, and that’s okay. I want it to be a good part.
The same with performing: I can’t do everything. I have said repeatedly that I’m glad to be doing less, and I’m still playing for sure. I’m saying yes, I’m saying no, making decisions for myself. Do I get feelings of jealousy when I see what other people are getting the opportunity to do? Yes, sometimes. And sometimes those pangs are very fleeting, because then I remind myself, you chose a different path, you had a lovely evening, you played that other job, you already turned that gig down because it conflicted with something, or whatever. You can control your second thought.
Maybe they are just bragging on social media to make themselves feel better anyway, because they are missing something in their life, or because the freelance game is like the Game of Thrones.
Or, maybe they are genuinely happy and sharing because of that, it’s possible! There is room for all of us, their happiness doesn’t take away from mine.
I got new hiking shoes! I am trying a zero drop shoe. I thought that I didn’t need new hiking shoes for the summer and then I realized that my shoes were actually falling apart and worn down. We went on the Lime Kiln trail last weekend, and my calves were working hard on the uphills, but otherwise I loved them. I’ll need to build up those muscles.
New hiking shoes!
My old shoes treated me well: I hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, all over Utah (we did 5 parks in one trip!), Colorado, Missouri, and more. These shoes are more trail runners, so they are lighter, and probably won’t last as long, but the lightness is a nice feature as well. They are the Altra Timp 3 Trail Runners.
You can see my old shoes in these photos: With Louie at Delicate Arch in Arches National Park, me hiking up to Mills Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, and relaxing by Mills Lake in RMNP on my 40th birthday.
I’ve been reading the Inspector Gamache series of books lately by Louise Penny. I happened into the first one somehow and then have been reading as many as I can. TV wise, we’ve been watching Occupied, which is a Netflix show in which Norway is occupied by Russia for their gas…it really takes on a whole new level watching this show during the current atrocities Russia is committing in Ukraine, but the show is good and making us excited for visiting Norway.
Food wise: we attended a Wine Dinner at the Whittemore House last weekend. It was a pairing of Moroccan food and wines (not Moroccan, but just to pair.) We had a great time. I haven’t been cooking anything super fun lately, just quick dinners to get by, like frozen pizza, fish and roasted vegetables, pasta, that sort of thing. Oh, one favorite recipe lately is Black Pepper Tofu and Eggplant from the Smitten Kitchen.
We only had a weekend to getaway over our respective Spring Breaks, and didn’t want to drive too far, so I decided to figure out a trip that would take us to do some interesting hiking. I also wanted to stay somewhere reasonably interesting, which ended up being a bit of a challenge. We settled on visiting the Garden of the Gods (in Illinois, not Colorado) since we had heard wonderful things about it and knew a few people who had gone. I couldn’t find much information about what to do online, so I hope this post will be helpful to you if you plan a trip!
So the Garden of the Gods is a Wilderness area in the Shawnee National Forest, and honestly, we barely tapped the surface, but I’ll tell you what we did. But first, let me tell you where we stayed!
I had looked at some cabins closer to the Garden of the Gods, but they were either too expensive or already booked up. I realized that there were a few options in areas overlooking the nearby Ohio River though, and settled on a place with a jacuzzi and porch overlooking the river. That location has several varying options, and they are all part of the same place. (It is a former Catholic Retreat called San Damiano.)
It was about a 3 hour drive for us, which is about right for a weekend. We left around lunch on Friday and arrived mid-afternoon. Check in was easy (key in our room), and we immediately found that yes, the view was as advertised.
The place itself was…quiet and isolated. There were a few other cars there and we saw a couple out walking their dog, but otherwise it looked run down and abandoned (there was a large building that used to be perhaps a conference center, which looked simply closed during our visit, but maybe closed for good.) We unpacked the car and then took a walk, following a sign that said “to the Ohio River 1/3 mile”. Indeed! It was a trail that went around the bluffs, really a road, and then we were closer to the river level. We walked for about a mile, and kept thinking maybe somehow it would circle back around, but it didn’t, so finally we reached what seemed to be “the end” and turned back. We also explored a bit around the building we were staying as well, as there were some benches, statues, etc. to walk around and look at.
Part of the road might have been a boat ramp at one time, but looked a bit flooded.
We got back up to our room and went out on the porch for “Happy Hour” of cheese/crackers. The porch wasn’t entirely private, but we had our own space. The room we had was part of a building with four rooms, but only the one on the opposite end was occupied. There was a nearby building that had a couple on the end as well, and at this time everybody seemed to be out enjoying the view.
It did get a little chilly however, so we went inside and turned on the gas fireplace and started cooking dinner. We had what we needed to cook, but nothing extra! There were no wine glasses either, which I figured just meant that the place was tired of people breaking them, since they did have a wine bottle opener.
At one point, we saw our first barge!
You can see our excitement!
It was exciting, because we could see the barge from afar, coming around the bend, but then it slowly got closer and closer.
We went to bed early, after watching a few shows on Netflix: there was a tv but no internet, so I assume just a few local channels. Do bring your own downloaded entertainment!
Oh, and barges make more noise than you might think. After dark, we would hear them coming up and down the river.
The next morning we enjoyed coffee and watched the river more. It was a bit chilly and rainy so we mostly watched from inside.
Our next plan was to visit the Garden of the Gods. We did two hikes there, which I highly recommend. We started with the Observation Loop, which is a must do hike in the area. It’s short and quite easy: there’s a mostly stone path to follow, and you can go off path and climb more rocks, or you can just stay on the path.
These rock formations were huge!This one looked like a turtle.I think this was called the Devil’s Smokestack, but there’s a 40 percent chance that is just in my head.
After we hiked the Observation Trail, we drove to the Indian Point Trailhead. It was a smaller parking lot, but was pretty crowded. This hike was around 2 miles, and was very enjoyable. We went counterclockwise. It was a little muddy starting out, but wasn’t bad overall.
The views at what I assume were Indian Point were very nice.
Not a bad view!
And then the trail goes by a bunch of rock formations, some with crevices and cave-like features that likely more adventurous people than me crawl all over. We really enjoyed this hike, and also the solitude of it. It was easy to follow and was well marked, though I’d downloaded it on Alltrails as well.
After that, we knew there was more to do at the Garden of the Gods, but nothing that we really felt like we knew enough about. So, if you have been and have recommendations for next time, please tell me! It looked like there were some longer hikes, but all the All trails reviews mentioned horses and being poorly marked…and we just didn’t want to deal with it. So do the Observation Trail and the Indian Point Trail, and then drive to Rim Rock Trail, which is about 15 minutes away, and will be awesome…when they fix the stairs.
The stairs look amazing. And they were closed for repairs.
We enjoyed about a 1 mile hike around the Rim Rocks Trail, but couldn’t do what looked to be the highlight of the Trail, going down those stairs into the rock formations down below! I would highly recommend all three of these trails, and none of them were particularly difficult–the Indian Point Trail was rocky and you’ll want good shoes for all of them.
After that, we decided to visit the nearby towns. We started with Golconda, which was technically the mailing address of our retreat. It was a little tiny town on the Ohio River, with a history of being a place where the Trail of Tears went by. The Wikipedia page tells the story, of a ferry man who refused to help the Indians cross the river, and made them wait in a cave and many of them died there. The town itself was quite run down (though to be fair, so are parts of my city) but the river was nice: we drove up on the levee and went down as far as we could. Oh, I considered renting an airbnb on the levee here with a lovely porch to watch the river, but I’m glad I chose the one I did, with the jacuzzi, and being further from town. There wasn’t much to do there, though there was maybe one little restaurant.
We also visited two other nearby towns, named Rosiclaire and Elizabethtown. We had thought if we saw a fun looking restaurant we might have dinner in town, but didn’t see anything that appealed. (We also get a little uncomfortable with all the political signs in these areas, to be honest, and that makes me not want to spend any more money, as well as concerns over health safety.)
So, we headed back to be on barge watch! And by that I mean, more cheese and crackers, and the sun even came out for a bit.
There was no outside table so we had to improvise.
And then we cooked dinner and relaxed.
One interesting thing that happened in the early morning was that we heard a barge blowing its horn, over and over. I was tired and chilly and didn’t get out of bed, but I chatted with the neighbor later and she said it was a foghorn–that the fog covered the entire river and there were two barges passing one another blowing their foghorns at one another. I should have gotten up!
Anyway, we took our time getting going in the morning, but left around 11 am. On our way out we stopped by the outskirts of the Retreat center to do a short walk in the woods and visit a giant statue.
The walk took us to an old cemetery, a pet cemetery (it was sweet but if you read Stephen King you will get shivers reading that phrase) and what looked like it used to be a place with statues but was now just old wooden posts and cement block with broken bits. I think it was a place to visit the Stations of the Cross and I don’t know if it was taken away or vandalized, or what, but it wasn’t anything anymore. We did see a few deer as well.
The main building, which looked to be closed, perhaps abandoned?
I hope you get a chance to visit the Garden of the Gods sometime, or visit the Ohio River. We definitely enjoyed our stay and would go back again, especially to hike the Rim Rock Trail with the stairs fixed and maybe another longer trail in the Garden of the Gods area.
It was an easy drive home, less than 3 hours and the cats were happy to see us.
Question: are you familiar with the saying “March comes in like a lion, but out like a lamb?” Answer in the comments!
Okay, so things are busy here, as usual: gigs are heating back up, lots of Lent and Easter stuff happening, oddly a few new music concerts, and travel planning…because now we are going to NORWAY in late May/early June.
Louie is presenting at a conference, and we are taking advantage to visit Norway. I had actually been planning a different trip to New Mexico/Colorado, so I had to change gears, cancel some reservations, etc, and now I’m fully on board with our new planning. I was a little stressed at first, because I am not that great with change, but once I got my bearings, realized the planning is the same except it’s like, farther away, and started on my research…I’m so excited.
It is worth noting that is it much more expensive planning an international trip rather than a domestic trip with lots of camping. But luckily Louie’s work will reimburse parts of our trip (the conference lodgings, his plane ticket) and that does make it more reasonable.
Otherwise, I’ve been teaching, practicing, scheduling, looking forward to Spring Break. We are getting away for a weekend around Spring Break (unfortunately Spring Break, yes, always must be capitalized is actually two different weeks in our household, hence the weekend trip) to the Garden of the Gods area in Illinois. We’ve reserved an AirBnb overlooking the Ohio River and look forward to getting some hiking in, hopefully with good weather and not like, constant rain or something. Who knows!
So that’s where I’ve been. We’ve also been doing some nice stuff: Great Artists Series Concert, had a movie day where we watched TWO MOVIES in one day, hunkering down during an ice storm, enjoying 80 degree weather on the same day one week later, and more.
Image of roasted cherry tomatoes with cheese.
I heard about and then made the “famous” tiktok tomato feta pasta. Google it, make it, enjoy it.
Have you been to Norway? We are doing Bergen, Balestrand, and Oslo. Any suggestions are welcome!
