Friday, August 23, 2019

Gdansk, Poland

August 12, 2019

Gdansk is a large port city in Poland on the Baltic Sea. The city was reconstructed after it was destroyed in WWII. The first shots of the war were fired here. Now it is a very popular tourist destination. There were crowds of people. We took a historical walking tour . It was very informative and helped to better appreciate what we were seeing. Again as with most large cities we could have stayed longer, visiting a lot more things, but the crowds were draining. August is not a good time to visit Gdansk or anywhere along the Baltic Sea. It was a 3 day traffic jam just trying to get from Germany to Gdansk.

View down Long Market, a very busy pedestrian street.


The exterior of many of the buildings were beautifully decorated.



More views of Long Market.


Inside St. Mary's Basilica


Arts and crafts were for sale on all the pedestrian streets.



Lots of fresh produce for sale.

Long Riverfront - another pedestrian street along the Motlawa River.


The Crane - restored 15th century port crane powered by 2 giant treadwheels.

Love lock bridge in Gdansk.


Sunday, August 18, 2019

Drive through Sweden

August 3 - 8, 2019

Our drive through Sweden was beautiful. The first day we drove on the highest road in Sweden. We worked our way south through the moutains, high tundra plateau and river valleys to farmland and eventually the coast. A very scenic route.


We drove Flatruetvagen, the highest public road in Sweden. It is about 100 km of good dirt road across a high mountain plateau populated with lots of reindeer.



Road art on Flatruetvagan.

We stopped along the drive to follow the trail you see in the distance. 

View along the trail.

View along the trail.

High point on the trail.

We drove Hwy 535 passing many lakes.

Fishing boats were available on a lot of the lakes.

We camped beside this lake.

Another free camping spot on a lake.

Rest area next to a river.

Campground on Lake Siljan in Rattvik. They had a very long pier out to a small island. The water was very shallow so the pier was needed to get out to deep water for swimming.

Friday, August 16, 2019

Stavanger to Arneberg Norway

July 26 - August 1, 2019

We saw a lot in our last week in Norway. When we came to our border crossing point into Sweden, we weren't ready to leave. We decided to stay in Norway for a few more days and turned north. It was wonderful.

City park in Stavanger

It was the first day of Gladmat, the annual food festival, when we visited Stavanger.

Of course lefsa was available. We have been eating lefsa for the past month. It was sad when our last package was gone.

Street art along the waterfront

Gamle Stavanger - old town filled with 18th and 19th century wooden houses.

We visited our friends Erik and Randi for a couple of days. We were very lucky to enjoy delicious home cooked norwegian meals.

Madland Havn - our free camping spot in a small harbor along Hwy 44.

Huge boulders were used to fence the pasture just behind our parking spot.

We watched a beautiful sunset.

Sogndalstrand - love these seaside villages.

Many of the houses in Sogndalstrand had small lending libraries on the front of the house.

 

Hwy 44 - this section of the road uses tunnels and cliff hanging switch backs to get to the fjord below.

House under the mountain.

Hwy 44 - some stretches of the road are very narrow.

Wildflowers in every direction at Molen.

Flekkefjord - We arrived in pouring down rain, but luckily it stopped so we were able to get out and enjoy the town.




Wooden boats in Stavern

Trail out to Verdens Ende - The World's End translated to english.


Vippefyret - a replica of an old lighthouse.



Hof Church

Arneberg Church - Hof and Arneberg is the area that Patti's family immigrated to the US from.