I moved to Trondheim, Norway at the end of January, 2011, to be with my fiance, get married and commence the next adventure in my life. This blog records my adventure.
. . . Halloween! I promise to return to our trip to the States, but I had to show these photos looking out our windows last weekend. It had been crisp, clear and cool through most of October. Then WHAM! a front caused by low pressure over the Arctic dumped snow on us for two days. Sunday was beautiful but cold. Today, Monday, mostly the same. It is unusual to have so much snow so soon.
Heavy and wet snow on the bushes
That's a centigrade thermometer. To convert to farenheit, multiply by 1.8 and add 32. Or do what I do: double it, subtract 10% of the total and add 32. So that's negative -6 centrigrade times 2 equals negative 12 less 10 percent of 12 equals negative 11 (rounded off) plus 32 equals +21 farenheit.
We left Jim and Richard in Modesto and headed toward Napa, where we planned to visit some of the people who were exchange students from California in Bergen, Norway in 1973-74. Two of them live in the Napa Valley (Allison and Diane) and one lives in Sonoma County (Scott). Bruce lives just south of San Francisco near Half Moon Bay.
We decided to drive through the Sacramento Delta to get to Napa. I'm glad we did. It brought back nice memories of when I was a kid and we had a boat that we kept on the Delta.
I think that's Mt Diablo in the distance
There are lots of pretty sloughs throughout the Delta region.
We got to Allison's home in the early afternoon. The weather was gorgeous and Alli has a nice back yard in which to enjoy good weather.
Clockwise, Tove, Bruce, Alli's friends (don't remember their names), Diane's husband, Norm, Diane, Alli's son Erik, Scott, his wife, Jane, Alli's samboer, David, and Alli.
Erik has lived and worked in Trondheim. He speaks fluent Norwegian.
Jane and David appear to be engaged in serious conversation, but I think it was just a split-second image that could be misleading. I love the pic, though.
Napa Valley
Although the stay was all too short, we had a good time reminiscing with old friends. Tove had not seen Bruce or Scott since 1974, so it was especially fun for her. The next day we ambled up the Cal North Coast and spent the night in Eureka. Then we drove the Oregon Coast all the way to Newport, Oregon. Then it was on to Salem and more family get-togethers.
The video below depicts my brother John's first birthday in June 1951.
The kids in the film are my cousins Diane, Ellen, Stephanie, Paul and Jim, and, of course, the birthday boy. Although Paul visited me once in the late 70's and we met Ellen once at my Aunt Lorraine's house in Carmichael, I had no other contact with these cousins since my dad's funeral in 1968, at least, not that I can recall.
That all serendipitously changed this Summer when we visited Jim in Modesto. The serendipity occurred when I was on Ancestry.com doing research for a Norwegian friend who was trying to get a death certificate of an ancestor. While on the site I decide to see if anyone had done an ancestral tree for the family. I found a tree done by my cousin Jim.
I sent him a message through the website and he responded very positively, to say the least. It was truly wonderful. We made plans to visit Jim and his spouse Richard while we were in California. Jim invited his sister Stephanie to join us. We had such a good time catching up and reminiscing and eating Portuguese food prepared by Stephanie and Jim. We ended up spending the night in Jim and Richard's huge, nice motor home. We look forward to more visits. We've invited them to visit us in Norway.
Frank, Stephanie, Richard and Jim.
Their beautiful garden in Modesto. Richard has the green thumb I'm told.
Jim owned and ran a Cafe for years. He is a master barista (He makes a delicious cafe latte).
I used the remote on my camera for this shot.
Jim sent me family photos! I love them.
Back Row: Mary, Emily, Stella, Ludvina and Merc. Front Row: Louis, My Great Grandfather and Great Grandmother, and August.
I don't know everyone in this picture, but in front are, from the left, my dad, my grandfather, the girls could be my dad's twin sisters, Yvonne and Lorraine. I think that the woman in the center is my dad's aunt. The guy on the far right is August. Way in the back waving at us is Uncle Elan, Merc's husband. It could be Stella behind Dad.
After six days in Chicago, we headed west to Newport Beach. There, step-sister Shirley welcomed us to her lovely home in Newport Coast. We enjoyed our stay there immensely.
The entrance to Shirley's gated community
Shirley's "condo" feels more like a detached home.
Wonderful mussels and clams (Shirley is an excellent cook)
But I made the salad.
The sunset view from Shirley's terraced patio
We dined al fresco in the warm evening air.
Tove enjoys the night in Newport.
Ambience
If you have never been to Crystal Cove State Park between Newport and Laguna, GO. Especially fun is the restaurant, "The Beachcomber Cafe" right on the beach!
See the restaurant (Red roof, umbrellas)?
The shanties and bungalows were built by "squatters" on public land. They are now owned by the State and rented out by the week to the public.
The beach is nice and less crowded than the city beaches nearby. The water temp was about 72!
When I was a teenager I heard this song about Frank Lloyd Wright:
But I hadn't a clue who he was. Years later as a young lawyer, I got the chance to take the deposition of a percipient witness in a case I was handling. The witness was the trustee of some sort of trust that included a home in the Hollywood Hills designed by FLW. The witness lived in this unusual one-bedroom home that featured a reflecting pool around its perimeter. Thus, after the deposition, I at least had an inkling of what Simon and Garfunkel were singing about.
This summer, while in Chicago, we decided to drive to Oak Park to see many of the houses Wright built there, including his studio/home. It was very hot that day, but Oak Park is quite shady and the walk around Wright's neighborhood was very pleasant.
This was my favorite.
Statue at Frank Lloyd Wright Home
We discovered that Ernest Hemingway's birth-place was about 2-blocks away from FLW's house. We met a couple from Northern Scotland in the foyer of Hemingway's house. We were too late to tour the house but we had a nice chat with the Scots. Their brogue was so thick, I thought at first that they were speaking a foreign language.
