Category: Travel

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Monday/ sunset at Bathers Beach

The city of Fremantle is just south of the Swan River’s outlet into the Indian Ocean. We went there for fish & chips on Sunday night, and I had time for just a few pictures before it started to rain.

Bathers Beach is straight ahead, and to the left are eateries and the Two Fins fish & chips restaurant where we had a bite.
It was blustery as the sun was setting, and so the bathers at Bathers Beach were long gone!
Here is the old and the new in Cliff Street in Fremantle. To the left is a building that now houses the Western Australia Shipwrecks Museum, and to the right an administrative building of the University of Notre Dame Australia.
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Sunday/ a twilight cruise

On Sunday, we went on a twilight cruise on the upper Swan River ⁠— just a slow round trip at 5 knots, on the wide swath of river by downtown Perth.
Here’s where we went, and a few of the sights along the way.

We boarded the cruise boat at Barrack St Jetty, went by Heirisson Island, and up to The Royal at the Waterfront (upmarket condos on the water). We came back the same way, but the captain steered us by Mends St Jetty, and then on the Elizabeth Quay for a look at the city skyline, before finishing up at the Barrack St Jetty.
This is Barrack Square, close to the starting point at Barrack Street jetty. The Bell Tower (built in 1999) is now crowded a little bit by its new neighbors: two luxury condominium towers on the right, and a Ritz-Carlton Hotel on the left.
Across from the Bell Tower, a Double Tree Hotel is going up, with pressed metal plates creating a pattern on the outside.
These flood lights are standing like sentries at the stadium of the Western Australia Cricket Association. The burn rate is AUS$ 2,000 (US$ 1,400) per hour, when the lights are on.
Here’s a new suspension pedestrian bridge coming up, the Matagarup Bridge, spanning the Swan River. It opened Jul. 2018 at a cost of US$ 90 million. Its form symbolizes a white swan and a black swan.
Passing under the Matagarup Bridge. It looks like the bridge designers borrowed elements from the design of roller coaster frames.
The high points of the bridge frame stand at 72 m (236 ft).
Our cruise boat had mostly covered seats inside, with a small outside seating & standing area in the bow. The low profile of our vessel allowed it to go underneath all of the bridges on our tour. Here we were approaching the little Trafalgar pedestrian bridge by The Royal At The Waterfront condominiums. Prices range from AUS $1- $5m; that’s US$700k- $US3.5m.
This collared lizard artwork is at the Mends St Jetty. The Perth Zoo is nearby.
The national flag in David Carr Memorial Park (with its Union Jack and Southern Cross star constellation, of course). Australia Day is coming up: Jan. 26 every year. It marks the anniversary of the 1788 arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson, New South Wales, and the raising of the Flag of Great Britain at Sydney Cove by Governor Arthur Phillip.
Here is a little bit of the city skyline by Elizabeth Quay. The towers are the headquarters of mining giants BHP Billion (on the left) and Rio Tinto (middle).
Here is another pedestrian bridge that mimics a swan, the Elizabeth Quay pedestrian bridge. It is approached by a Transperth ferry, that will cross over to the other side of the Swan River.
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Saturday/ taking the train to downtown

It’s an easy 11 minutes on the train, going  from Bull Creek station where I am, to the Perth Underground station downtown.
So off I went today, to buy one more Christmas present, and then call it done. (The mission was accomplished).

Here comes the Transperth train, going north on the Mandurah line. (Mandurah is a city on the coast, a 45-minute drive south of Perth). The line opened 12 years ago, in Dec. 2007.
The Commonwealth Bank Building is a six-story stone-clad building constructed from 1930-1933. (So right during the time of the Great Depression, which hit Australia hard as well. There was no international demand for Australia’s important export industries such as wool and wheat). The water fountains were on, and the kids enjoyed the respite it offered in the 87 °F/ 31 °C weather.
Here’s the action at the Perth Underground station, as we were boarding to go south towards Mandurah, and for me to hop off at Bull Creek Station.
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Friday/ for my stamp collection

I stopped at an ‘Australia Post’ post office today.
I had the poor clerk behind the counter flip through the big album, full of sheets of stamps, so that I could pick out colorful and interesting stamps to buy. She was very patient with me!

Top to bottom & left to right: Set of freshwater crayfish stamps by naturalist and zoologist Roger Swainston | ANZAC Day 2019 (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) mini-sheet | Celebrating marriage equality (the law was passed two years ago, Dec. 2017) | Little penguins, the smallest penguin species, found on the coastlines of southern Australia and New Zealand | 50th anniversary of the moon landing | Snorkeling, windsurfing, kite surfing and just old-fashioned board surfing, at Cocos (Keeling) Islands, a remote territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean.
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Tuesday night/ arrival in Perth

The scene out of the window, some 4 hrs into the flight, so that is probably an Indonesian island below.
A crossing of the equator means a change in hemisphere, and hey! midsummer down south. Wednesday will see 91 °F (32 °C), says the weatherman.

The 10 hours from Tokyo to Perth went by with the help of in-flight movies. Kudos to ANA for serving up a really nice meal, even to those of us in the back of the bus.

The flight was not even half-full, probably because it is a new route.

 

 

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Tuesday morning/ to Perth

I am at Narita Airport’s Terminal 1, getting ready to board for my flight to Perth. When I checked in this morning, the seating chart still showed lots of open seats on the flight.

Silk scarf with blues and greens and a pair of leopards, called ‘Jungle Love’, displayed in the window of the Hermès store at Narita airport (US $295). A perfect accessory for madame’s safari to Africa?
There are lots of All Nippon Airways tail fins here at Narita Airport’s Terminal 1.
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Monday/ the National Stadium and more

I went out to look at the new National Stadium today.
It has been shown to the media, and was officially opened on Sunday by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The general public still have to peek over the solid fencing around it to look at the outside shell of the stadium, though.

This is the entrance/ exit at the Kokuritsu-kyogijo station on the Toei Ōedo Line,  one of two subway stops near the National Stadium. This is the first of 6 sets of stairs & escalators that get one to the platform deep, deep below ground.
Here it is! The new National Stadium, replacing the old one that had been on this site for the 1964 Games. The photo is a panning shot I made with my phone held over the top of the silly fence around the stadium. The original design as well as its budget for the construction, were toned down a few times. Even so, the final tab still came to US$1.4 billion (¥157 billion). It is an all-purpose stadium that will be used after the Games, though. Cedar wood gathered from all of Japan’s 47 prefectures were used for the eaves that cover the three-tier stands as well as the pent roofs that surround the stadium.
What is this new impressive structure right across the street from the Stadium, I wondered? It’s actually a hotel, the Mitsui Garden Hotel chain’s Jingu-Gaien Tokyo Premier hotel.
I had to make a stop at the Harajuku station, and take a picture of the old wood-frame station building. Its days are numbered: it will be demolished a few months into the new year. There is a new glass-and-steel station replacement building under construction right next to it.
This bird handler and her owl (pet owl?) was right there on the sidewalk at Harajuku station. This one might be a barred owl. Japan does have native owls (fukuro in Japanese). Owls have night vision that’s estimated to be 35 to 100 times better than humans’. Their eyes are enormous, with very wide corneas that allow the maximum amount of light through to the retinas.
The circular and green coded Yamanote line runs to Harajuku station, and here is the sleek train arriving there, to take me back to Tokyo station.
Now to Ginza, to check on the Christmas decorations and the glamorous store fronts there. Department store Mitsukoshi puts up a billboard on the street corner every year. The advertising agency may have overplayed their hand a little, and put way too much into this year’s theme, though: ‘Nostalgic Merry & Delightful Future Christmas’. Whoah. That is a LOT to contemplate. P.S. Santa ditched his sleigh for a rocket ship!
Aw. I love romantic store window scenes such as this one from French luxury jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels. The guy has a rose behind his back (and a Van Cleef & Arpels engagement ring in his pocket?).
It’s Tiffany & love this time of year, says the window at jeweler Tiffany & Co. The recent $16.2 billion sale of America’s most iconic jewelry brand to European conglomerate LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton will end nearly 200 years of independence for Tiffany’s.
The lights and sparkle coming on as night falls on Ginza district. The building with the white facade openings with their green lights coming on is the Ginza Place building, completed in 2016. The facade is made with some 5,000 aluminum panels.
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Sunday/ Shinjuku & Tokyo Station

It was a very pleasant Sunday here in the Tokyo area: clear skies and 55 °F/ 13 °C.
I made my ‘obligatory’ stops at Yodobashi  Camera (by Akihabara Station), and the Tokyo Hands department store (by Shinjuku Station).

Here is the 2019 edition of the Godzilla monster (ゴジラ Gojira). Godzilla has been around a long time: the monster first appeared in the 1954 Japanese kaiju film (monster movie, kaiju really translates to ‘strange creature’, though) directed by Ishirō Honda.
I’m done shopping, and in the long check-out line at the 6th floor of Yodobashi Camera/  department store. Fun as it is, at some point ones’s senses can no longer take the overload of sights and sounds and throngs of people milling around, and then you know: time to get out, RIGHT NOW!
Here is a poster from the Shosen Book Tower, a play on the 1969 Beatles album cover for Abbey Road. The buff muscle guy on the left is Kinnikuman (Japanese: キン肉マン, ‘Muscle Man’). This is a manga series created by the duo Yoshinori Nakai and Takashi Shimada, known as Yudetamago. I believe they are the two in the middle of the picture. The manga series follows Suguru Kinniku, a superhero who must win a wrestling tournament to retain the title of prince of Planet Kinniku.
This is right by Shinjuku station, a view of The NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building: the 4th tallest skyscraper the city at 240 m (787 ft). It is built in the ‘art nouveau’ architectural style, completed in 2000.
By 5.30 pm the sun was long gone, and here is the NTT Docomo tower lit up and from a slightly different angle.
One of a series of Star Wars posters in the Maruzen bookstore in the Marunouchi Oazo building. The quote is by wise and powerful Jedi master Yoda, from the Star Wars movie Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. (Luke Skywalker, still becoming a Jedi, told him ‘I’ll give it a try’.)
And here is a Christmas tree in the Star Wars style, from the lobby of the Marunouchi Oazo building near Tokyo station.
Here is the beautiful old Tokyo Station Building, seen from the Marunouchi side that displays the original 1914 brickwork, that had been renovated from 2008 to 2012. (The other side is the Yaesu side, where the Tokyo Station Expressway Bus Terminal is located).
One of two beautiful restored domes inside the old Tokyo Station Building. I captured the dome’s detail by holding my phone flat towards it, and then panned down to the floor in panorama mode.
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Saturday night/ arrival into Tokyo

The Japan Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner at the gate at Narita Airport’s Terminal 2.
We flew west across the international date line (thin red line), catching just the last sunlight of Saturday afternoon in Tokyo.

I made it into my hotel in Tokyo, got a bite to eat, and now it’s way after my Seattle bedtime.

Here comes the Narita Express. It arrived at 4.46 pm, stopped for barely two minutes for us on the platform to clamber on, luggage and all, before the doors closed and it pulled away at 4.48 pm sharp, as scheduled.

The flight went without incident, and we arrived at Narita Airport’s Terminal 2 at 3.30 pm local time.
Got my luggage, and took the Narita Express into Tokyo as usual. It runs without stopping at a single station in between —from the airport to Tokyo Station.

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Friday morning/ at Seattle-Tacoma airport

I am at the aeroporte, camping out at the gate here in South Terminal for my flight to Tokyo.

Here’s my Japan Airlines Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner that will fly to Tokyo. I went into ‘aviation geek’ mode and looked up the details for the air frame registration code on the tail (JA842J). The air frame is 4.6 yrs old, and was produced in Everett right here in Washington State.
Here is the sky bridge that is under construction, as seen here from the South Terminal. The span of the bridge is 900 ft, and it sits 85 ft above the active taxiway below. The construction is a little bit behind schedule; it was supposed to open late this year. The sky bridge is part of improvements for the International Arrivals Facility.
Here is an artist’s rendering of the completed sky bridge. Arriving passengers at South Satellite terminal (the planes parked on the left) will go across the bridge and over Concourse A (bottom right) to customs, inside the IAF (on the far right). The bridge is 900 ft long, and 85 ft above the active taxiway below.
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Thursday/ 10 to Tokyo, 10 to Perth

My bags are packed (well, almost), and I am Tokyo-bound on Friday.
It’s 10 hours-and-some to Tokyo. I will stay over a few nights, and then do the next 10 hours to Perth.

I’m flying with Japan Airlines to Tokyo this time, instead of with All Nippon Airlines. The trip to Perth, is a new direct route started by All Nippon Airlines. So no stop-over in Hong Kong like I used to do.

Tokyo is a very convenient stop-over between Seattle and Perth. It almost makes for a straight line of flying altogether, all the way from the Pacific Northwest to the edge of the Indian Ocean down south. 
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Tuesday/ a train car with a snarl

I made my weekly jaunt up to the University District today, using the the light rail train to get there, and the No 48 bus to get back home.

Here’s the Capitol Hill station platform. I am just stepping onto the northbound train. The northbound & southbound trains do not always arrive at the same time, but today they did. The northbound train (left) runs to the University of Washington. (The line is being extended by three more northbound stations, completion due in 2021). The southbound train runs to Seattle-Tacoma airport and Angle Lake.
Rowr! Here’s a car named the ‘Coug Car’, at the front of the train about to depart the University of Washington station. The cougar is the mascot of Washington State University in Pullman, Washington.  Pullman is all the way over on the eastern side of the state, some 300 miles away.
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Saturday/ Venice, battling the rising waters

Here’s a little wry cartoon from German weekly magazine Die Spiegel, about the rising waters engulfing Venice. (The city is experiencing its worst flooding in 50 years).

‘Fantastic! Through climate change and high tides we can now come much easier and closer to Venice! [Cartoon by Klaus Stuttmann of the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel].
Happier days for the famous Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square). This is circa 1979, where scenes from the coming-of-age movie ‘A Little Romance’ was shot. This is Diane Lane, making her movie debut as Lauren, the girl that falls in love with French boy Daniel (Thelonious Bernard).
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Saturday/ unpacking my bags

As usual, my luggage was filled with books, and with little nothings and souvenirs. Here are some of the items.

From left to right: ‘Carnaval of the Animals’ (Afr. Karnaval van die Diere), satirical sketches & rhymes | Tintin postcard pictures and Tintin double book ‘Tintin and the Moon’ (Dutch. Kuifje en de Maan)’ | Norwegian Fairy Tales | from South Africa: Fritz Deelman, Agaton Sax & Vonk de Jongh books.
From left to right: Polar bear from the Museum of Natural History in Oslo | Unusual new LEGO bricks from the LEGO store in Hamburg  | The Groke mug (a Moomin character from the comic strip by Swedish-speaking Finnish illustrator Tove Jansson) | vintage LEGO doors from a second-hand store in Hamburg | a little piece of polished obsidian, a naturally occurring type of molten volcanic glass that has become solidified rock | Okapi & snow leopard from a toy store | Five Roses tea from South Africa. ‘Nobody makes better tea than you and Five Roses’, was what the print ads would say many years ago.
‘Norwegian stamps – Norway in miniature’, says the lettering on the envelope they gave me to put the stamps in. The 26 kr stamp has Harald Oskar Sohlberg, a Norwegian neo-romantic painter, below it the 38 kr stamp has Norwegian lumberjack Hans Borli who was also a poet and writer. The little bird at the bottom left corner, is Norway’s national bird, the white-throated dipper. There are no penguins in Norway, though – that chinstrap penguin on the other 38 kr stamp is from Antarctica.
And here is some Norwegian krone banknotes and coins. On the 50 kr is Utvær Lighthouse, the westernmost coastal lighthouse in Norway, on the 100 kr is the Gokstad Viking ship, a 9th-century ship currently on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo (I did not make it out there), on the 200 kr a codfish, and on the 500 kr a lifeboat (rescue vessel) called RS 14 Stavanger.
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Friday/ home

It’s been a long day, with a 2-hr delay starting out of Amsterdam to Seattle, but I made it home early evening Seattle time on Friday. East, west, home best.

Here’s a Ukraine International Airlines plane (this is a Boeing 737) at Schiphol airport. UIA does fly into the United States: Atlanta, New York, Los Angeles, San Diego & San Francisco.
Here is the view as I was stepping into the Delta Airlines Boeing 767 at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport.
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Thursday night/ in Amsterdam

I’m in Amsterdam, ready to go home tomorrow.

This is Oslo’s Gardemoen airport, and those of us in the back rows, got to step in at the back door of KLM’s The Flying Dutchman (it’s a Boeing 737-800).
Here’s Damrak street, as I walked back to Amsterdam Centraal station to get back to my hotel by Schiphol Airport. Watch out for those fietsers (bicyclists), and especially for the street cars!
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Wednesday/ last day in Oslo

Today was my last day in Oslo.
I will return to Amsterdam tomorrow, and then go home on Friday.
I made it to the Munch Museet (museum) today, and hey! I found the Tintin book I was looking for in a great bookstore called Tronsmo.

This colorful passageway is on the way to the platform of the Stortinget T-bane station.
Man! A sight for sore eyes: just about every Tintin book on display in Tronsmo bookstore, and yes, all in Norwegian. When I find Tintin books in a foreign language, I try to buy ‘King Ottokar’s Scepter’, and they had one. Norwegian is a Germanic language, and a Germanic language speaker can definitely recognize some of the titles.
Eeeee! Here’s The Scream (one of them*), the famous work from Expressionist artist and Norwegian, Edvard Munch, a pastel done in 1893. The original Norwegian title: Skrik. It seems to me The Shriek or Fright would be a better translation than The Scream. The pastel was dimly lit, and I did not retouch this picture from my iPhone. *There are two pastels (1893 and 1895), and two paintings, of The Scream (1893 and 1910).
I like this one from Munch, called Erotikk i sommekveld Eng. ‘Eroticism on a Summer Evening’ (1893).
One more: Høysommer Eng. Midsummer (1915). Munch was a prolific painter, and bequeathed a large collection of his paintings to the Norwegian government upon his death.
This is one of many large sculptures from Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland in Vigeland Park.
Norwegians need their milk and bread like all the rest of us.
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Tuesday/ central Oslo & Aker Brygge

I spent the day running down the interesting architecture sights around central station, and the Aker Brygge (Aker docks), a little further along the waterfront.
I also checked into some stores and some bookstores.
I have so far come up empty handed, as far as finding Tintin books in Norwegian, to add to my collection.

Brunost cheese on display at breakfast here in the hotel. It’s a cheese made with whey, milk, and/or cream .. and it is very tasty.
Here’s the type of tram that gets one around central Oslo. Lots of buses available as well.
A selfie with the help of a food truck’s polished surface . I’m on my way the Astrup Fearnley Museum, the structure in the distance.
Find the mechanical reindeer in the picture! Polished marble and glass in the modern office and apartments around Aker Brygge.
Here’s the Astrup Fearnley Museet, a museum of  modern art. It’s been here awhile (since 1993), and was designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano.
Melkesjokolade .. hmm, yes, a very large slab of milk chocolate, and spelled almost identically to the way it is in Afrikaans: melksjokolade.
And a stuffed reindeer.
The Stortingsbygningen (Storting building) in central Oslo. It is the seat of the Storting, the parliament of Norway. It was designed by the Swedish architect Emil Victor Langlet and taken into use in 1866.
Here’s the regional train called the T-bane (so no U-bahn in Oslo!), coming into Carl Berners Plass station (Carl Berner plaza station).
I’m standing on the Akrobaten pedestrian bridge close to Central Station, and watching the trains come in. That’s the Nordenga road bridge in the distance. It opened in 2011.
To my left is the Akrobaten pedestrian bridge that I am standing on. The buildings on the other side of the tracks are called the Barcode buildings: twelve narrow high-rise buildings of different heights and widths.
Just a closer view of the glass, brick and steel of another one of the Barcode buildings.
Here is the new building for the (Edvard) Munch Museum, scheduled to open in spring 2020. The Munch museum collection, that includes the famous ‘The Scream’, is currently located in Toyen. (Is the building craning its neck to take a closer look at the water?).
The Oslo Opera House, at the head of the Oslofjord (but just a stone’s throw from Central Station, actually). It opened in 2008, and is the home of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet, and the national opera theatre in Norway.

 

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Monday night/ arrival in Oslo

My Norwegian Air flight had an hour delay out of Hamburg. There was a baggage mix-up in the airplane cargo hold that had to be resolved, but we made it into Oslo with no incident, after that.

The express train from Oslo Gardermoen airport to Oslo Sentralstasjon (central station) took only 21 minutes. The central station is so modern and sleek inside, that it has the same feel as an airport.

Here’s the view from the train coming into Oslo central station, some modern buildings lined up in the background.
Here’s our sleek express train called Flytoget at Oslo Central Station. It’s a GMB Class 71 electric train, capable of 130 mph (210 km/h). It is the only high-speed rail service in Norway, though.
I took a quick walk around the central station before the sun set completely. This is the town square right by the central station. Look for a big bronze tiger at the bottom right.
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Monday morning/ last stop: Oslo

The flight to Oslo on Norwegian Airlines is almost due north, and 1 hr 25 mins.
The S-bahn (regional) train at Jungfernstieg station. It pays to read the overhead sign: it says the first three cars go to the airport, and the others to Poppenbuttel.
Der Spiegel cover at the newsstand: ‘One Deal Too Many: Why The Ukraine Affair Could Cost Trump The Presidency’.

I am at Hamburg airport, on my way to Oslo for a few days. It will be my final stop before going home.