Okay Britain

Here’s looking at you, Southern England.

britain_01

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / A henge

britain_02

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Learning to swim

britain_03

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Cricket #1

britain_04

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / UK’s no. 1 suicide spot

britain_05

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / An ice cream truck in a national park

britain_06

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Summer night

britain_07

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / England’s largest swannery has 800 swans and a pedal kart track

britain_08

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Low tide

britain_09

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Posing at Land’s End

britain_10

Photo by Eivind Senneset (© All rights reserved) / Cricket #2

Bitey, Not Tasty

Pike. Bitey, according to some sources.

“That’s a pike. I don’t like pikes. They’re bitey but not tasty.” (American tourist couple overheard at the local public aquarium.)

Sea Lion. Fond of water. Which is one of the things that sets it apart from its African cousin; the land sea lion.

Herrings. Not red

Cayman. Also bitey

Green anaconda. Doing pilates, slightly out of frame

Queue Vadis?

The Great Wait #1

The Great Wait #1

Since acquiring its very first marble sculpture 500 years ago, the Vatican museums have grown to become one of the largest museums in the world with over 70,000 works attracting some 28 billion visitors a year.*

The Great Wait #2

The Great Wait #2

Behold the Laocöon sculpture, the Raphael rooms, the Transfiguration, St. Jerome in Wilderness and the ticket line longer than the 3.2 kilometre Vatican state perimeter!

The Great Wait #3

The Great Wait #3

See the Sistine Chapel with its ceiling and Last Supper by Michelangelo and its silence continuously broken by guards shouting Silenzio!

See the crowds, see the back of the person in front of you, get a contraband selfie stick poked in your ear.

The Great Wait #4

The Great Wait #4

So I recently visited the Vatican Museums for the first time in ten years. Not much have changed since my last time. I still love the place. I still tried to beat the crowds. I still failed spectacularly.

* number based on a rough guesstimate.

The Great Wait #5

The Great Wait #5

The Great Wait #6

The Great Wait #6

The Great Wait #7

The Great Wait #7

The Great Wait #8

The Great Wait #8

The Great Wait #9

The Great Wait #9

Rock Bottom. Fondling It.

Vigeland #1

Vigeland #1. (Among all the giggling tourists, this lady closed her eyes and put her head against the rock baby’s back, like if she was listening for a heartbeat.)

Giddy tourists petting stone genitalia. Families collecting pokemonkeys. Terrified small children whose fathers, inspired by the sculptures, try to juggle them. Yup. It’s the Vigeland sculpture park.

Vigeland #2

Vigeland #2

Vigeland #3

Vigeland #3

Vigeland #4

Vigeland #4

Vigeland #5

Vigeland #5

Vigeland #6

Vigeland #6

Vigeland #7

Vigeland #7

Vigeland #8

Vigeland #8

Vigeland #9

Vigeland #9

1:1280

Geiranger #1

Geiranger #1

That’s the ratio between townsfolk living in Geiranger year-round and cruise passengers visiting during the tourist season.

Geiranger #2

Geiranger #2

When Wikipedia declares the place a “tourist village” you know it’s going to be bad. Cruise tourism in Geiranger can be traced back to summer of ’69. That’s 1869, of course. Since then, Geiranger, with its year-round population of 255, has grown to be the second busiest cruise port in all of Norway, with an estimated 320,000 passengers from close to 200 ships. Jeez.

Geiranger #3

Geiranger #3

Geiranger #4

Geiranger #4

Geiranger #5

Geiranger #5

Geiranger #6

Geiranger #6

Geiranger #7

Geiranger #7

Geiranger #8

Geiranger #8

Geiranger #9

Geiranger #9

Geiranger #10

Geiranger #10

Geiranger #11

Geiranger #11

Geiranger #12

Geiranger #12

Tower Hour

A trifle tower #1

A trifle tower #1

Paris is trying to one-up their competitors by building their own “Eiffel tower” three times the size of the original monuments in gambling cities Las Vegas and Macau. Tourists are thrilled though.

A trifle tower #2

A trifle tower #2

Pardon the sillyness. But really. Not five minutes had passed before a timid, young Hong Kong-fellow had asked me to help him frame his Eiffel-tower-as-erect-penis-selfie. Classy. And classic.

A trifle tower #3

A trifle tower #3

A trifle tower #4

A trifle tower #4

A trifle tower #5

A trifle tower #5

A trifle tower #6

A trifle tower #6

 

Cherry Blossom Beauty

Picnic Area #1

Picnic Area #1

The Japanese tradition of hanami – the celebration of the transient beauty of flowers, observed through enjoying a nice picnic in the shade of a cherry tree – is a brilliant concept that lends itself very poorly to Norwegian weather.

Picnic Area #2

Picnic Area #2

Picnic Area #3

Picnic Area #3

Picnic Area #4

Picnic Area #4

Picnic Area #5

Picnic Area #5

Picnic Area #6

Picnic Area #6

Picnic Area #7

Picnic Area #7

Picnic Area #8

Picnic Area #8