in honor of my dad/brother/sister-in-law/uncle hiking the pacific crest trail, I decided to head out on a little hike of my own. Near the town is a hike up sukkertoppen. The total distance to the top from my hotel is approx. 5.5 miles (11 round-trip) and gain in altitude of 314 meters (1030 feet).
Aerial view of the mountain:
a good sign I found the right path:
me on top:
the "other" view of Alesund:
view of the Aquarium:
sukkertoppen
i left my heart in san francisco
and really, with boys like this around, how could i not be smitten? papa just sent me some pics from our family roadtrip up to the bay area and these are by far my favorites. we went up for a winery wedding of an old family friend we had grown up with in fremont--it was everthing you could hope for in a wedding: gorgeous weather, tasteful bridesmaids dresses, a bride so raidant you can't help but cry with hope as she walks down the aisle, and a groom that knows he really scored. but it was really beautiful to be there with both michael and owen and my parents--i felt nostalgia for our own wedding, nearly a decade ago! and i remember the bride and her two brothers when they were owen's age. nothing like getting old and finding yourself saying "i remember when. . ."
but thanks to some radisson gold points and michael's expert travel booking we stayed in san francisco and he managed to sneak in an extra vacation before flying out of SFO back to AES. we stayed on an extra day before the mind numbing drive on the 5 fwy and had a great day touristing out at the piers. we started out at ghiradelli square and walked our way through fisherman's wharf where we enjoyed some artisan sourdough bread--owen got a mini turtle and was sooo excited to eat the little feet first!--and out to pier 39 to watch the sea lions and ride the carousel. we took the streetc
ar back to ghiradelli and indulged in some hot fudge sundaes to end a nearly perfect (we had dropped of michael at the airport on our way to all of the sightseeing) day! we enjoyed the city so much--i'm hoping we can find a way to spend another family weekend there (we didn't even get to ride cable cars although nana did buy owen one to introduce to thomas and friends, and there was a antique fire truck tour and more bread to eat) soon...
drive
so I have 4 suitcases and 2 large duffel bags full of my winter clothes, cara's sweaters, and Owen's toys. Since this is possibly my last trip to Norway (I start Sweden in September), I have to take the luggage with me this time. I'm thinking about taking next weekend and drive over a couple of suitcases and duffel bag and drop it off at the hotel I will be at next. I'm thinking about leaving friday after work and stay the night in Lillehammer, which is about half way. Saturday, I will wake up and drive the rest into Karlstad and spend the day/night there. Sunday, I will make the long drive back. I think it's totally do-able, and keep in mind that these roads are only open a few months out of the year. Comments welcome.
and the accompanying text
so i've always kept a diary, a journal, a transcription of sorts-- and there's always this point where you feel this need to "catch up" even when you're six or thirteen and writing what you've had for lunch or what judy blume book you'd read. it's all the same, really--and it seems like we've been doing so much coming and going and moving and not really much time to sit down and scribble. and i've been writing, mostly in my head, really, everything from how much i love fritattas, and making them for michael (there's a yellow sticky in my joy of cooking right above the variation on asparagus frittatas that says "i like a whole lotta frittata" and i think i'll never take it out) and how the entire world of words opened up for owen (he's reading, no really, i mean reading-- today in trader joe's "mommy does that say 'fresh eggs'" and holding up one of the new seuss library books i bought "and is this book called fifty trees?" and it quite simply astounds me) and how san francisco is much more an international city than london (we spent sunday at the wharf with nana and papa and i heard more french and italian spoken then 'american') and how the pigeon dove that has nested outside my bedroom window has had two baby birds and at three in the morning i woke up and watched her feed them from her mouth and there was my baby bird who had just crawled into my bed fifteen minutes earlier (and it made michael's empty side of the bed bearable) and really how freaked out i am about the new adventures, so to speak, but excited too (nightmares about preschool bullies and commuting to riverside five days a week and finding that someone broke into our storage cubicle and stole all of my old dusty teaching files). . . but i guess that's the rule, you just sit down and write. whether it's a diary entry or a disseratation and how there's nothing like the tappity tap of keys--even if it's just to say everything you haven't written, or to skip that and start from right now: where there's a fantastic breeze coming through my corner of the office at midnight and tomorrow we do a "practice preschool day" and i picked up 154 prints of our pictures from pairs and bought a crate of paper so gorgeous i want to paste it on my walls and so no, dear heidi we haven't abandoned post--but thank you for the reminder. the beach, as you can see was gorgeous, but seeing owen dance around the sand with his cousins, and haivng inlaws that i love, really love, was, you know, priceless ;)
new adventures
it's been a little quiet on the fidfam blog, but we've been busy re-nesting and gearing up for our next adventure: owen will start montessori preschool in the fall-- he'll be commuting with me out to riverside 3 days a week where i'll start as a full time lecturer at uc riverside. the offer came unexpectedly days (before) we arrived home and with my goal of finishing my dissertation this fall and getting back into academic life it seemed like a perfect opportunity. michael will be returning to alesund to help support the project with b&d and well, we'll just see what happens next.
in the meantime i've enjoyed the california coastal weather and eating al fresco. we're packing packing up to spend a few days with the fids up at the washington coast where we'll get to spend some time in the sand and around the beachfire. we can't wait!!
why you should take your three year old to paris
on our first afternoon in paris i was writing a blog in my head that started something like this-- paris is a life-long love afair. if you're lucky your favorite auntie takes you when you're twelve and the world is not fancy enough (see fancy nancy), and when you've read all your hemingway and stein and go as a romantic twentysomething college student, and you go with your first love because theres a $199 one way ticket, and then you go for your honeymoon, and then of course with your three year old, and you go with your girlfriends, and you go again with the love of your life, and you take your niece when she's twelve. ok, maybe you don't go all those times. but it felt like you could. like there was a little paris for everyone at everytime. because despite the fact that all of the paris souvies are better bought here back in the states--it still fulfills our romantic ideas of what europe should be, or could be like. because there are avenues of bookstores. because there are art museums with wings for children. because there are ferris wheels that let you see remy's paris. because there are wooden carousels and toy boats you can rent by the half hour. because there is a cafe in the tuilleries garden. because laudree on bonparte street really does have the best macroons in the world (i would go back for the blackcurrant). and because you really can take the metro anywhere. and although we've been home weeks and the thought of another transcontinental trip makes my head spin i'd go back tomorrow with any one of those possibilites above. and the pictures of course, are why you should take your little one even if he only remembers the eiffel tower, metro line 9, and chaud chocolat when he is old enough to rembember.
we're home!
thanks to everyone who made the coming and going possible! getting settled in--unpacking boxes and suitcases and sorting through buckets of mail. updates and of course more pics soon! love to all!!!!
no kidding
we were just charged 980 NOK to wash a week or so worth of underwear. that's roughly $191.
the return of the dinner party
we had the honor and good fortune to get invited to rosemari and nil's for dinner last night--and thanks to the generous hotel staff we also had a volunteer babysitter so we could enjoy a proper adult dinner party--complete with golden goblets, jeweled candelabra and fancifully folded napkins. and it was amazing--rose and her cousin "whipped up" an aromatic feast. there was baba ganoush with subtly smoky eggplant and the creamiest humus i've ever had with rich olive oil i didn't know existed in norway. there was a nutty chickpea dish with toasted pine nuts and walnuts and some kind of creamy cheese sauce that pulled it all together alongside a tangy fava bean dish. the main course was a tomato and potato bake over a savory minced meat and a spicy lamb and green bean entree. there was italian wine and spanish wine and caroline came with sweedish green wine and there was conversation and more wine and then liquer soaked strawberries and cream. absolute heaven!
owen the museet curator
after spending the morning waiting around for DHL (who never came) and dealing with foreign shipping paperwork and navigating tourbus and cruiseship traffic to pick up pullups and other essentials we indulged in our last piece of rosemari's moka cake and went to the kube to check out janniche & her sister lilian's exhibit "stoppested jante" --a visual de-mystification of the scandanavian law of jante. they play with the grey area between sticking-your-neck-out and sticking-your-neck-in-the-sand and the result is a larger than life commentary that at the very least has owen dancing around monolith medalions and peeking through statues. there was also a mini-version of the scandanavian design in the milennium exhibit which i must confess felt a bit like a high end ikea showroom. the most fun for owen though was the rhythm 69 william morris/art nouveau exhibit. but i'll let owen show you around:
here's a loose captioning: after owen muses on the pictures,"those are sculptures mama" (we had just left the sculpture room) he does some counting and points out some cauliflowers i ask him which is his favorite and he runs up to a white floral print "cause there's flowers on it." he then quickly runs across the room and tells me "this is a button" pointing to a circle on the floor. owen then explains "when you push a button the pictures will turn red and when the pictures turn while there will be flowers." now if that isn't propaganda on why children SHOULD be allowed to run amok among art. . .
happy birthday america!
we celebrated sans fireworks but with a lovely bbq with some locals and their tots. owen had a great time drinking fizzy drinks, coloring with sidewalk chalk (he told me that janniche lived on "norwegian sesame street") and getting to know elias the norwegian tug boat in the wading pool. there was also a silly seagull who jumped into the potato salad and a gorgeous view of the water and the yellow schoolhouse. on the way home we ran into some of our other friends who invited us for dinner at 
their place on tuesday. so it goes, just when you make a new place your home it's time to return. perhaps that's a sign that you've earned the ticket back ;)
american as apple pie, norwegian as
jordbaer. . . grown locally here and so sweet they melt in your mouth. we've indulged in these sweets all week--we bought some from a little jordbaer stand out on our afternoon walk and then had a strawberry picnic. when michael and i had our anniversary date the featured dessert was pepper marinated strawberries with fresh mint and vanilla ice cream--which was nothing short of culinary ecstasy! and while we enjoyed a big bowl of fresh fish soup on our stop in ona, the chef made owen his own bowl of--strawberries and cream of course!
james the red engine and his spaghetti adventure
owen has become quite the reader, here he is telling HIS version of the story of james from the thomas the tank engine books (a reprint of the original 1948 The Railway Series set):
happy birthday grampa!
we got you some cake. it was sooo delicious and tasted good and we sang happybirthdaygrampahappybirthdaytooooyouweloveyou!
but then we had to eat the cake all up!
love owen
quote of the day
it's been crazy over here with michael working 15+ hour days and we're all tired and hotel-weary. so this afternoon (after we missed breakfast) we all managed to sneak in a family lunch at invit. we indulged in gourmet sandwiches and smoothies and then ordered ourselves a french press pot of coffee and all shared a flourless chocolate cake with melty vanilla icecream. covered in chocolate bliss owen exclaims:
we're having a breakfast party!
indeed :)
friday five!
so while we're not exactly sitting poolside, here are five signs it's summer in ålesund:
1. pickled fish has made room for kiwis and almond pastries at breakfast.
2. "turists" are out taking pictures of the judgenstil from the bridge.
3. ding ding! the bytoget train-bus is taking sightseers around town
4. strangers offer to take your picture
5. the radisson wii room is officially open
owen the fearless wee-king
today owen and i hopped on the 18 bus and went out for the SUNNMØRE museum viking day.
we didn't actually know it was "vee-king" day so it was just bonus fun. we were equipped with a completely unreadable map for a dozen or so activites, but owen just had fun shouting out numbers and very seriously saying:
"ok mommy, now go up this very bumpy hill and past these GIGANTIC conifer trees."
(i'm realizing that hypertext is perhaps the best way to decode three-year-old speak).
the weather has been pretty miserable all week so i was excited to see sun in the forecast. it rained, of course, on our way to the bus station but cleared up and we had crisp blue skies when we set out in viking land.
first we found this boat-ish teepee-ish thing that owen said was a spaceship boat and i tended to agree.
at this point i realized my camera battery was completely dead and then thought what luck! i have owen's camera. but, alas, his battery had died too. go figure. anyhow, we climbed down into what seemed a viking-ish ship and got a seat right on the front bow peering into the water. i pulled out my sunglasses, held tight to owen and then the rain started. i also realized that what i thought was a fun tour around the harbor was an hour long boat trip in the now pouring rain. being a viking, i think, couldn't have been that cozy. luckily we had an umbrella and despite my eventual seasickness and sogginess we did join the other reckless norwegian kids running around the boat and posed with viking man on the bow and enjoyed quite an adventure. an american couple (who funny enough thought we were norwegian) thought owen was too fun and thought it was a travesty they couldn't take a picture with our camera so they snapped one with their telephoto lens and got our email--so look for the bonus picture in a post in a month or so. . .
norwegians like to party in the rain
check this link out for the solstice festivities (these are the same pyres we snapped the day before--see post below)
a weekend of sand and stairs
it's been a stormy weekend out here in norway and not a lot of signs of summer--at least not until this afternoon when the rain stopped, the clouds broke and we headed up to volsdalen for our sunday picnic. there are camping cabins around this little sandy beach area and we found a great blanket spot just up the rocks. owen quickly scrambled down to the sand and went to work with his bucket and spade. note the two gleeful children in the background who are definitely taking advantage of this fleeting summer sun--yes, swimming and jumping off the rocks. our norsk picnic skills are getting much improved as we made some grilled shrimp and asparagus and even found some proper blue and cheddar cheeses (a nice diversion from the ubiquitous white cheese that's simply "norwegian).
we also sighted the preparations for summer solstice--the tall tower in the background of the next picture is actually a pyre for the bonfires that will commence tomorrow evening to celebrate the longest day of the year. after tomorrow, however, the days will get shorter. i doubt, however, that we will see dark evenings (unless the clouds come in). and the last picture was right in the middle of the park. we did note 
that the fire department was conveniently right around the corner.
the rest of the weekend had been pretty quiet. owen and i are recovering from nasty colds and michael's getting ready for the big "go live" next week. friday we joined a dozen or so of michael's colleagues at XL for some superior bacalo and owen couldn't have been more of a gentleman. of course, the new lego firetruck bribe helped ;) on saturday we joined what seemed like all of sunnmøre at møa--the mall outside of town. we wanted to get some provisions from the coop (the mega grocery store pronounced like chicken coop not co-op) and escape the miserable weather. the highlight, though, was walking up the escalator and hearing owen say "oh? what's this button?" and suddenly the escalator stopped. the funny thing about that was that nobody seemed fazed. i swear had he pulled the emergency switch out in a cali mall we'd still be filling out forms. when discussing the incident this afternoon owen said, oh mommy, it's ok. i just made stairs. and you can't really argue with that. . .
speaking american
i've been (re)reading the book of salt, a fictional account of gertrude stein's vietnamese cook at 27 rue de fleures in paris and there's a great passage about stein's relationship to a particularly american english--it has become something she wields with authority, something she has developed an intimate relationship with as she no longer hears it spoken (and her command of french is awkward, and unsophisticated to say the least) but only reads it in her detective novels and in letters she holds in her hand. i love this passage (and the entire novel is truly a feast of language) and have been thinking about "american" english.
a few weeks ago i arranged a playdate with a woman i had met briefly on our stay here last spring. we had planned to meet up at the playground and i described myself and owen in case she didn't remember our meeting and she laughed and said--don't worry, you'll be the only one speaking american. and like stein i realized i don't actually hear american spoken--everyone here speaks to us in english but we are accustomed to the sound of norwegian conversation, the emphatic verbal gestures of another language. last spring we were regulars at the jugenstil museum cafe and the young art student that worked there apologized for his english--we don't usually speak english here until july. and later that spring we met the goalie of the alesund team at invit when he overheard me talking to owen and said "from california? don't meet too many of us around here." so all that to say is that it is july here and officially cruise ship season. and at breakfast yesterday there was a loud, jarring sound coming from a table across the room. american! how foreign and familiar it all sounded. and yesterday while reading said book in the cafe i peered up from my very american words to hear americans exclaiming over rosemari's chocolate cake. it gave me the odd feeling you get when you hear yourself on an answering machine and you ask--do i really sound like that??
thoughts on going home after five cups of green tea while owen assembles "the longest words" using magnet letters with no magnet board
so we booked our tickets home! i'm excited but also realized we've fallen into a comfortable routine here, made our little boatroom home and this town our little neighborhood. when we're out on our afternoon walks we are no longer among strangers--we get a nod from tom the artist with his dog at the crosswalk, we chat with ingrid from reception in the bytunnelen, and we stay after the hand-written "close" sign is flipped for extra strawberry cake and coffee at rosemari's. and our daily route too has become a familiar part of the aalesund landscape. i guess that's the lesson about travel, right? wherever you go you make it your world, you adapt, you adjust, you learn, you leave your imprint, you leave. we're not packed up yet, and indeed we have several more weeks here which is certainly longer than your casual visit. but i am at the point of making lists of places i want to see, shops and msueums i want to be sure and visit, boat rides to take. of course the rain always makes me a litle melancholy, a little philosophical and a bit on the side of whimsical. and the cargo ships off in the distance do indeed look like pirate ships coming out of the misty fjords.
"orange pufferfish in big water"
it's been a typical week in aalesund, overcast and drizzly and we've been doing a lot rainy day activities. which i have to say, is nice. owen did a mixed-media painting (my fancy term for part watercolor, part fingerpaint) of the fish on his favorite teeshirt and over our window it does look as if his little pufferfish is indeed swimming in the big water.
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