The Adventures of Lorie and Brian Groth

Today Daniel, Angelina, and I took the train one hour south to Brighton. It’s a pretty big town on the beach, which is rocky, not sandy. The best part is a huge pier with carnival rides at the very end of it. It stayed cold and sunny most of the day, but wasn’t crowded. 

 

 

This is an arial view of the end of the pier:

We saw Spamalot here in London and enjoyed most of it, but a few of the songs could have been cut. There were a few good scenes if you are a Monty Python fan and a couple of good songs. They even did the song "Always look on the bright side of life".

You can listen to it here while watching some football (soccer)

And you can read the lyrics here

We were finally able to get a car via our lease program (it was a pain) and while it isn’t the new Volvo C30 that Lorie really wants, it is a nice and sporty little diesel Mercedes-Benz. We got a black C 220 CDI

It can’t seat 4 people plus Milo, but it can seat 4 people or 3 pus Milo. It does have two sunroofs though! We didn’t get the in-car navigation system, because the TomTom that Lorie bought is way better than the built-in thing, which we started referring to as the Random Direction Generator (RDG) that was in the rental we were driving for a while. And when I say "we" were driving, I mean Lorie, since she is the rock-star driver and I avoid it. :-)

Absolute Vodka is from Sweden and they have a bar made entirely of ice called the Ice Bar. The only drinks they serve are made from Absolute Vodka and they give you large shall/blankets with hoods to wear inside. We went there after some good halibut and raindeer for dinner with the Swedish team.

       

So the ice bar is interesting, but certainly a toursty thing, since it is basically a very large walk-in freezer. The Ice Hotel though is a real structure made from ice that we would like to visit sometime.

After having had fresh lefsa in Norway, we took off to Sweden. After a day of work for Brian and a day of rest for Lorie (actually mostly Internet time for Lorie as she hunted down other airplane tickets for another trip), we spent Tuesday night walking around the old part of Stockholm.

We picked a place for dinner that looked like it had some traditional Swedish meals and good drinks. The owner makes his own snaps (basically what American’s call schnapps) and tonight it was raspberry and bitter (licorish). We really liked the raspberry snaps, and the barley wine was good too. So were the salmon, potatoes, bread, and chocolate truffle.

   

The lefsa on the left is fresh from a grocery store in Norway (Lorie had never experienced fresh lefsa before – she liked it) and on the right is a street in the old part of Stockholm.

By the way, Oslo and Stockholm are both like Seattle and London this time of year: rain 

There are new photos of our trip in the Scandinavia photo album.

Not too many places are open on a Sunday in Oslo, so we had a late lunch, which was simply a mix of grilled meats, then walked around in the brisk Norwegian air. But, we did come across a 7-11. Now I am sure you are thinking… oh no, Brian, you didn’t get lefsa at an America-based junk-food chain store!?!

Yes, I did.

      

As you can see, this isn’t the lefsa that Mom makes (for those of who who know who Mom is or for those of you who’s mom makes lefsa), or even what you can buy in some grocery stores in Seattle. However, I saw lefsa on the package and just had to try it. According to a free language translation site, "tykk" means "dense, stout, swollen, or thick", which is about right, because this was somewhat cake like. It also had a thin layer of a sweet cream cheese in the middle, or something like that.

I think it was basically a Norwegian Twinkie, because after eating it I sort of had a stomach ache, so it’s probably best that Lorie didn’t try it. I plan to keep looking for better tasting lefsa.  

The lights are out and the Christmas shopping seems to be in full swing. A variety of the streets also get all lit up – just see http://www.londontown.com/London/Christmas_Lights_in_London for an example.

The photos are of Harrod’s at Knightsbridge on the left and Marks & Spencer on Oxford Street on the right.

The lights are nice, but I’d like to see it snow!

The G-Wiz is the electric car that I see buzzing around London. There are a few in Fulham that I am always curious about. Tonight I found their website at http://www.goingreen.co.uk/store/content/gwiz/ 

Back seat passengers wouldn’t like a long trip though, since the front of the back seat touches the back of the front seat.

See a variety of photos at http://www.g-wiz.org.uk/gallery.htm. I haven’t seen any with extra fancy paint work, but check out the leopard and tiger paint jobs:

 

I often take different routes to the office and today I didn’t walk past the normal brick buildings that are all over London. I have no idea what this building is, but it has massive gold colored columns and was probably about a hundred yards long. It’s just packed in with the other buildings… nothing special. This sort of "odd building tucked in with others" is pretty normal in London.

Not all of the cars in London are new. Here is an older Jaguar that we spotted in our neighborhood on Saturday.