An Evening in Gothenburg

This week I had the chance to visit Gothenburg. A beautiful city on the west coast of Sweden. I must confess, that I have traveled a lot in one year, but in Sweden, I have traveled very less. So it was the second city I was visiting after Stockholm and it turned out to be a nice experience.

Ironically, I was there on the day of winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. So I had not much choice than to wander the dark streets, which is not a problem for me as I’ve been wandering at nights all the time in Stockholm as well.

The city was beautifully decorated with all the Christmas lights and the streets were empty because of the holiday season: an Ideal situation for a photographer.

Norway #5: Sky • Sheep • Snow

The Glacier

Our initial plan was to hike up to Trolltunga, and we even completed a figment of the hike (though the toughest part), but then our preparations were not good enough for the weather and marshy conditions there, so we decided to keep it for the next trip.

Disappointed, we arrived at our cabin in Jondal. Turns out our host worked with a skiing company, so when he got to know about our failed hike, he suggested us to go to a glacier nearby where he takes people for skiing, turns out, this was Norway’s third largest Glacier – Folgefonna.

The drive towards the glacier was one of the most scenic.

Norway #4: Wheels • Waterfalls • Wanderlust

Estrella

If you ask me what I enjoyed most on this trip, I’d surely say Driving, who won’t enjoy driving on such scenic roads, especially when you are driving a V70, we ended up naming our car – Estrella. So here are some pictures with Estrella.

Norway #3: Routes • Rocks • Rain

Norwegian Routes

What’s the best part of a road trip, of course, ROADS! and when it’s Norway, it becomes even better, driving across Fjords, tunnels, bridges, narrow roads, valleys, it was all unforgettable. While I wasn’t driving, I was shooting 😉 here are some of the views of Norwegian routes. The most scenic was Route 5, Route 63, & Route 64.

When Norway starts resembling Iceland, somewhere on Route 63.

Norway #2: Cities • Cabins • Colors

Oslo

When it comes to exploring cities in Europe, I am a bit reluctant, especially when someone recommends going to the “old town” (I know there would be cobblestoned streets, a church, a town hall and a lot of expensive cafés).

However, Oslo turned out to be a pleasant surprise, a city flooded with modern architecture and music, we explored the area around the Opera House in Oslo for a couple of hours before setting off to our cabin in the countryside.

Norway #1: Friends • Fjords • Fun

I don’t consider myself as a person with a Bucket List, maybe, because I have a broken bucket, so whatever plans I put in there, just leak out and never happen. So as soon as I realized that it’s possible to drive around Norway with an Indian driving license, I planned a road trip with my friends. Although, when we started with the plan, we were 9 people, planning to take a big Mercedes Vito van and drive around Norway. But, by the time of the trip, it was just 5 of us. So we rented a powerful Volvo V70 and sailed on the road trip of a lifetime.

So in 5 days, we traveled a little shy of 3000 kilometers, drove through and explored over a dozen of cities, drove through hundreds of kilometers of tunnels. And saw such a heavenly country that you can never get tired of watching. I won’t bore you with this text, enjoy the pictures.

A “study trip” to VENICE !!

I remember that in my previous blog, my closing sentence was “I won’t go to Venice or Milan unless someone pays for my ticket”. Guess what, we got the chance to visit Venice for a “Study trip”. Currently, I’m attending a summer school in Italy at the University of Trento, which Includes a study trip as well, and luckily, the plant that we were supposed to visit was just 30 minutes away from Venice. I will skip the details of “Study visit” part of the day for obvious reasons.

Venice in Pictures

Venice is a totally unique place, I have been to places deemed as “Venice of the East”, “Venice of the north” and I used to proudly flaunt about those as well, but believe me “Venice is Venice”, irreplaceable. No matter how many times you have seen it in Casino Royale or The Italian Job, the real thing is totally dreamlike. Everyplace where one could imagine a road, lies a canal, with water all around. An island that looks like a fish on the map houses a plethora of colorful houses, cafés, and shops. There are a lot of magnificent churches as well, roaming around directionless in those narrow alleyways is a wondrous feeling in itself.

I’ll stop boring you with text and let the pictures do the talking.

Sun • Sand • Spain : #1 Barcelona

After my previous trip to Prague got screwed up, I had a couple of lessons, first was not to plan short trips and second was to see the weather forecast very carefully. On top of that, I realized that it doesn’t make much sense if I just go for a weekend to a place and complete a touristy checklist in a day or two and come back. I need to stay longer to soak in the beauty of any place. That’s why, this time, I planned a weeklong stay in Barcelona, most importantly, to satiate my craving for Sun.

I read it somewhere, “Barcelona assaults the senses in every possible way” (of course not the bad ways), and I found it to be absolutely true, the place is so enthralling that even a week after returning to Stockholm I find my mind wandering on the Catalonian beaches every now and then.

A mucked up trip to Prague

NOTE: For some reason, all the images of this post disappeared from my blog. I am trying to fix them ASAP. Meanwhile, please read the other posts

Plans and Screwed up plans

No matter how well you plan a trip, there are two things you can’t fight, bad weather and bad health. When it came to this trip, both these things were against me.

What I planned: I booked tickets to travel to Prague on my birthday and thought on to go further to Vienna from there before returning to Stockholm 4 days later.

What actually happened: I got sick just a day before I was supposed to go, and the flu was at its peak just the night before I had to go there, so I had to skip that flight and stay in Stockholm.

Reminiscing the Northern Lights

Being close to the arctic circle, Sweden is one of the best places to get visuals of the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). But as Stockholm is not in the very much northern part of Sweden, it’s kind of difficult to catch a sight of Northern Lights; within past two months, I missed more than 5 chances to see the northern lights because of the cloudy sky.

March is said to be one of the best months to sight Northern Lights, as, after April, there won’t be many dark hours. However, I had my first visuals of the green skies back in October, and luckily I had enough time to find a place to set up my camera before the visuals occurred again.

Here are some pictures: