Monthly Archives: July 2019

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31 July 2019:
Reykjavik, Iceland:
Back on the Island

By Corey Sandler

Welcome aboard.

We are back on Silversea Silver Wind for a series of loops that will begin in Iceland, which is an anglicized version of the Icelandic name, Island.

There is ice in Iceland, up in the glaciers and snowfields year-round and most everywhere in winter. But in summer, it is a very green, very large island, the second largest island of Europe after Great Britain.

It is also a hot place, in places. At the place called Geysir–the source of the word geyser–people come from around the world to wait for eruption of a plume of water. Elsewhere on the island of Iceland, people wait for or watch for or hope to avoid the fairly regular eruptions of the many significant volcanoes.

A bit less dramatic, but an easy close-up thrill, is a visit to Geysir to see the geysers. They burst forth every few minutes, starting with a little burp and then rising to a hot fountain. Each time is slightly different from the one before, and so we all stand there for a few dozen episodes.

We leave the capital city of Reykjavik tonight and make three stops along the coast of Iceland before heading east on our tour of islands to visit Torshavn in the Faroe Islands, then Lerwick in the Shetland Islands, Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands, and then to the United Kingdom to visit Edinburgh, Scotland.

The last scheduled port of call on this cruise is London, and we are due to arrive late at night at the capital city and sail through the Tower Bridge.

I hope you’ll join me here. Here’s our plan:

All photos and text Copyright 2019 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. See more photos on my website at http://www.coreysandler.com

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE ANY PHOTO OR AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF ONE OF MY BOOKS, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

SEE THE “How to Order a Photo or Autographed Book” TAB ON THIS PAGE FOR INSTRUCTIONS

Now available, the revised Second Edition of “Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession” by Corey Sandler, for the Amazon Kindle. You can read the book on a Kindle device, or in a Kindle App on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Here’s where to order an electronic copy for immediate delivery:

Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession: The Tragic Legacy of the New World’s Least Understood Explorer (Kindle Edition)

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6 July 2019:
Copenhagen, Denmark:
The Third Loop Completed

By Corey Sandler

We’ve completed our third loop of the summer: London to London by way of Norway; London to London by way of France, through the Kiel Canal to Scandinavia, and this cruise from London to the top of Norway and then down and around to Copenhagen, Denmark.

It’s time to head home for a change of socks. We’re due back on Silver Wind in a few weeks for explorations of Iceland, the United Kingdom, and then a transatlantic crossing to Canada and the American Northeast Coast.

Safe travels to all. See you again here soon.

Copenhagen

The Little Mermaid is smaller than most people imagine, and she receives almost no privacy at all.

All photos and text Copyright 2019 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. See more photos on my website at http://www.coreysandler.com

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE ANY PHOTO OR AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF ONE OF MY BOOKS, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

SEE THE “How to Order a Photo or Autographed Book” TAB ON THIS PAGE FOR INSTRUCTIONS

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Now available, the revised Second Edition of “Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession” by Corey Sandler, for the Amazon Kindle. You can read the book on a Kindle device, or in a Kindle App on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Here’s where to order an electronic copy for immediate delivery:

Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession: The Tragic Legacy of the New World’s Least Understood Explorer (Kindle Edition)

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4 July 2019:
Bergen, Norway:
The Hut of the Hall of the Mountain King

By Corey Sandler

Bergen, the second city of Norway, is a gem that has managed to hold on to much of its character even as it becomes more and more popular with cruise ships and overland visitors.

It is one of our favorite places to walk: from the cruise terminal to town, from town up one of the seven hills, into the university district, and into corners and neighborhoods off the tourist track.

Grieg’s Troldhaugen

On this trip, I went with guests to Troldhaugen, the former home of the great composer Edvard Grieg, best known for “The Hall of the Mountain King”, “Peer Gynt”, and other masterworks.

It was a beautiful day, a beautiful trip, a beautiful conclusion to this cruise. In addition to touring his home, we also enjoyed a concert of works by Grieg, performed by a young Japanese pianist who won Bergen’s Grieg competition in 2018.

Here is some of what we saw today at Troldhaugen:

Grieg’s house, Troldhaugen
Grieg’s composing hut, down by the water. The diminutive Grieg would often sit on a thick volume of music by Brahms to reach the piano he had here.

The Beauty of Bergen

We’ve been in Bergen winter, spring, summer, and fall. Here are some of the city sights:

The Bryggen district, former home of the Hansa merchants in Bergen.
The Bergen train station
Winter in Bergen, on a previous trip

All photos and text Copyright 2019 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. See more photos on my website at http://www.coreysandler.com

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE ANY PHOTO OR AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF ONE OF MY BOOKS, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

SEE THE “How to Order a Photo or Autographed Book” TAB ON THIS PAGE FOR INSTRUCTIONS

————-

Now available, the revised Second Edition of “Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession” by Corey Sandler, for the Amazon Kindle. You can read the book on a Kindle device, or in a Kindle App on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Here’s where to order an electronic copy for immediate delivery:

Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession: The Tragic Legacy of the New World’s Least Understood Explorer (Kindle Edition)

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3 July 2019:
Olden and Loen, Norway:
The Sky Above, The Fjord Below

By Corey Sandler

Norway is a relatively small place, but Olden…well, it’s a tiny place in a grand setting.

Think of the Halls of the Mountain King and glaciers and trolls.

Olden is a village in the municipality of Stryn at the mouth of the Oldeelva river on the southern shore of the Nordfjorden, the North Fjord.

On this visit we anchored offshore of a nearby tiny village called Loen, which two years ago came onto the world stage with one of the most spectacular mountain gondolas in the world.

The Loen Skylift rises 1,100 meters or 3,317 feet from sea level at the fjord to a wonder world up above. Opened just two years ago, it is one of the three steepest gondolas in the world, with the last stretch nearly vertical.

Silver Wind from on high.

Each of the two cabins can accommodate 35 people, and the trip takes about five minutes in each direction. The cable car also serves hiking trails and winter ski trails.

We began on a light drizzle at our ship and ended up in a snow storm. I’d like to show you some beautiful views of the fjord and the glacier, but you’ll have to settle for a whiter shade of pale. On July 3…

Nordfjorden is one of the longest fjords in Norway, with its main arm extending eastward from the sea about 106 kilometers or 66 miles. The fjord starts as runoff from the Jostedalsbreen, Europe’s largest mainland glacier, in the east and it flows west.

Snow squall in July

That said, the glaciers of Norway are mere shadows of their former grandeur. The Briksdalsbreen glacier, a popular hiking destination, is located about 25 kilometers or 16 miles south of Olden; just a decade ago it was a broad blue belt of ice. Today it is more like a dirty string tie.

All photos and text Copyright 2019 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. See more photos on my website at http://www.coreysandler.com

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE ANY PHOTO OR AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF ONE OF MY BOOKS, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

SEE THE “How to Order a Photo or Autographed Book” TAB ON THIS PAGE FOR INSTRUCTIONS

————-

Now available, the revised Second Edition of “Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession” by Corey Sandler, for the Amazon Kindle. You can read the book on a Kindle device, or in a Kindle App on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Here’s where to order an electronic copy for immediate delivery:

Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession: The Tragic Legacy of the New World’s Least Understood Explorer (Kindle Edition)

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1 July 2019:
Hammerfest, Norway:
Everything Old is New Again

By Corey Sandler

Hammerfest is very Norwegian, with the same sort of end-of-the-world feeling as most of the other places we visit in northern Norway, inside the Arctic Circle.

And yet it also feels different.

500 kilometers or 312 miles inside the Arctic Circle, this is a place of very severe weather.

Hammerfest is an old settlement with evidence of inhabitation going back 10,000 years, the ancestral home of the Nordic Sea Sami people, and beginning in the early 19th century a settlement of European and then North American traders attracted to the ice-free harbor that is tempered by a finger of the Gulf Stream.

This is not a town of old clapboard houses and time-worn storefronts. You’ll find contemporary office and apartment building, state-of-the-art oil and gas terminals, and a church on Kirkegata shaped like a space rocket.

All right, not really a rocket ship: it is supposed to pay homage to the traditional triangular drying racks for stockfish or bacalao.

It is also home to the famed Struve Geodetic Arc Monument, a point of measurement along a meridian line from the 19th century, one of the first scientific efforts to determine the size and shape of the globe.

The Struve Geodetic Arc Monument

But why is Hammerfest so relatively modern?

The first reason is that old Hammerfest has had a very hard time over the years. The town has been knocked down, burned down, and bombed and rebuilt many times.

The second is that it is the recent beneficiary of massive investment by oil and gas producers working even farther north, in the Arctic.

All photos and text Copyright 2019 by Corey Sandler, all rights reserved. See more photos on my website at http://www.coreysandler.com

IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE ANY PHOTO OR AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF ONE OF MY BOOKS, PLEASE CONTACT ME.

SEE THE “How to Order a Photo or Autographed Book” TAB ON THIS PAGE FOR INSTRUCTIONS

————-

Now available, the revised Second Edition of “Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession” by Corey Sandler, for the Amazon Kindle. You can read the book on a Kindle device, or in a Kindle App on your computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Here’s where to order an electronic copy for immediate delivery:

Henry Hudson Dreams and Obsession: The Tragic Legacy of the New World’s Least Understood Explorer (Kindle Edition)