The Grand (Bicycle) Tour

 Western Netherlands - trip 3, week 1

Without really consulting the calendar ahead of time, we ended up flying into the German-hosted Euros and will still be here when the Paris Olympics start. So, in the words of every public transport site: "Expect delays".

Yolanda arrived first to take a bike tour with her high school friends - the Wildcats! - to celebrate a certain not-to-be-named milestone birthday year. They chose a bicycle tour through several Dutch towns - they cycled while their luggage was transported for them. They saw various towns and the landscape between them, including Leiden (home of the oldest University in the Netherlands), Gouda, and Haarlem. Because the tour operator booked the rooms and suggested the restaurants, they ate well - surely earning good food after all that pedalling!

 

Other than the scenery of the bike rides and walking around the various towns, highlights included the cheese market in Gouda, a tour of a waffle-making factory (also in Gouda), and windmills too numerous to count.

So those aren't real people?

 Liverpool - sabbatical 2, week 7

Back to work for Craig in Liverpool, with a couple last sites to see on the weekend.

A short train ride up the Mersey estuary to where it turns into actual coast is Crosby Beach.  When the tide is out, the mud flats stretch literally for mile(s) out to sea, but are pretty treacherous - Craig sank down almost to his knee at one point (still close to shore).  Most notable is the art installation on the beach.  Dozens of human-sized iron sculptures  have been erected across the 3 miles of beach, facing out to sea (or to the wind farm offshore).  Called "Another Place", it is the brainchild of artist Antony Gormley and was originally meant to be temporary, but proved popular enough to made permanent.  Incidentally, if you are taking the train there, a convenient method is to go from Liverpool Central up the Northern line to Crosby (actually Blundellsands and Crosby).  Head north up the beach (water on your left) to the northern end, where you'll find ice cream and porta-potties (if necessary) and Hall Road station, which will take you back to Central.  Don't expect to be able to swim - the signs strongly advise against it (and, if it's low tide, there's no water anyway!).

More traditional art can be found at the Walker Art Gallery, with various rooms dedicated to various periods (impressionists, pre-Raphaelite, etc.) there are pieces by Rodin, Matisse, Pissaro, Turner, etc.  Craig spent a few hours going through the manageably-sized collection of mostly paintings and classical-style sculptures.

Splitting up

Styrsö Island (a little windy!)

 Göteborg - sabbatical 2, week 5

Now at the end of two weeks in Europe, it's time for Yolanda, Andrew and David to head back to Thunder Bay.  Craig is carrying on to Gothenburg, better known to the Swedes by its real name of Göteborg, to visit his cousin Scott.  So he boarded the train in Uppsala after seeing the car off with the other three.  (they made it home safe and sound.... 20+ hours later)

Craig stayed the first night in a hotel but then moved in with Scott, his partner Monika, and their 11-year-old chihuahua Maya (sp?).  The next couple days were spent with Scott (and sometimes Monika) playing tour guide on various walking tours around town.  Craig doesn't remember half of what he was told, but it was a good way to be introduced to the city.  Some highlights of mention:

Skansen Kronan (Crown Redoubt)

- Monika's real honest-to-goodness homemade Swedish meatballs (with lingonberry jam!)

- a ferry ride out into the archipelago and a walk around one of the islands (Styrsö) with a picnic lunch

- up a hill to an old defensive tower, defending a corset factory at the bottom of the hill (and, incidentally, the river and the town....)

- the old town of cobbled streets and the largest cinnamon buns known to humankind

- and the various gardens and green spaces along the river and elsewhere 

- a free Princess Cake from the grocery store where they have a loyalty card..... because it was Scott's birthday

After celebrating Scott's birthday with BBQ steaks and the aforementioned cake, they went above and beyond, getting up at 3 am to take Craig to the airport in time for his flight back to England.

Yet another pagan burial site

The Bishop-controller battery

 Uppsala - sabbatical 2, week 5

We primarily rented a car in order to be able to go see Yolanda's Aunt Saara, who still lives on her farm outside Uppsala.  One day was mostly taken up with this visit; Yolanda's cousin Kristine and her daughter Josephine were also able to attend.

The rest of the time was spent touring some of the sites of this old Swedish city.  Its fortunes have ebbed and flowed, sometimes in conjunction with the religious upheavals of the country as Uppsala (both versions - see below) was an important ecclesiastical town.  Its university, for example, is the oldest in Sweden, but the city suffered decline during the Swedish Reformation when the crown confiscated Roman Catholic lands and funds (and naturally sent the wealth to Stockholm).  Thus, we have the curious site of a bastion in the city castle's fortifications built to command the cathedral - the Bastion Styrbiskop - literally the "Bishop-Controller".

Moving back in time are the iron-age burial mounds (the "Royal Mounds") in Gamla Uppsala ("Old" Uppsala).  Once the largest town in the region and a pagan religious centre before it was a Christian religious centre, its people (and bishop) largely migrated to Östra Aros when the river became unnavigable.  The Pope, perhaps finding it too inconvenient to change his address book, ordered that the town of Östra Aros be renamed Uppsala, and thus we have "Gamla Uppsala" a few kilometres down the road from plain "Uppsala".  Interestingly, the church in Gamla Uppsala contains a runestone incorporated into the wall commemorating the locals' conversion to Christianity.  Another interesting tidbit: the church is literally half a cathedral - half was torn down when the bishop moved to Östra Aros; the part that wasn't torn down was re-enclosed to become the parish church.

One of the Royal Mounds

And of course, being scientists, we had to pay homage to Carl Linnaeus, popularizer and formalizer of the binomial Latin names for organisms still used today.  This excellent specimen of H. sapiens is interred in Uppsala Cathedral (near the entrance, on the left side facing the alter). His "estate" is also preserved as a park/tourist attraction, about half-way between Aunt Saara's and Uppsala.

 

On to Sweden

 Stockholm - sabbatical 2, week 5

And so we parted ways with Great Britain (for now!) and hopped across the North Sea to Sweden.  Since the Swedes (a) drive on the right and (b) charge a reasonable price for a car rental, we picked up our Volvo XC90 at Arlanda.  We didn't book so large a vehicle, but no one else wanted it either so it was a free upgrade (and we also got GPS with it, a nice bonus!).  We tootled into Stockholm for a quick look around, eventually stopping on Djurgården Island where we were serenaded by an ABBA tribute band across the water from the ABBA museum.  We made our way around the grounds of the Waldermarsudde and took in the sites over the water, including a cruise ship departing the city.  We returned to a parking ticket (because we couldn't figure out how to pay in the parking lot) and made our way up to Uppsala to our hotel.

"Tam tint his reason a’ thegither, / And roars out, ‘Weel done, Cutty-sark!’"

Greenwich - sabbatical 2, week 5

Coming back to England, we chose to visit the Greenwich Observatory for our last full day in London.  We first boarded the Cutty Sark, a preserved tea fast-clipper named for a character in Robbie Burns's poem "Tam o'Shanter."  It is out of the water and has no sails, but otherwise complete, with a paint job that emphasizes the original braces in the hull and what was later added in restoration.  Craig chatted with the guide on deck, a grizzled old sailor who knew all about the Bluenose and her exploits - another ship renowned for her speed. (If you're interested, Cutty Sark means "short skirt", which is what the witch was wearing when she chased Tam o'Shanter.  The reason the boat is named for this witch is because she could run as fast as a horse, almost catching Tam and his trusty steed before they got to the bridge - like the Headless Horseman, Cutty Sark cannot cross running water.)

On the Prime Meridian

We then made our way through the very yellow grass up the hill to the Greenwich Observatory to stand on the Prime Meridian and to tour through the historical buildings.  They include the Royal Astronomer's residence and the observatory itself, which still contains the largest visible light telescope in the U.K.  The Royal Astronomer does not still live in the residence.

For the information of future travelers - it takes a long time to get out to the Observatory, with multiple train changes.  We also talked to 3 or 4 employees of the underground who all gave us different advice on how to travel.  As a result, the trip from our Heathrow hotel to Greenwich cost us £60 and took over 2.5 hours.  The trip back was £22 and took 90 minutes.  And we took all the same lines, just changed at different stations.