Travels – Page 2 – Slow Lane Musings

A taste of coastal Norway

Sometimes we are attracted to a place because of the people we meet who come from there. Many years ago, we met a lovely couple from Norway, a country we knew little about. Over time, the stories they told us created images in our minds and our curiosity grew.

What is it like to live in the Arctic Circle? What scenery do they see on their way to work? What do their grocery stores look like? Do they get to watch the Northern Lights dancing in the sky before going to bed? Simple things of everyday life that add texture to our connection to people we like. This November, we seized an opportunity to visit.

Norway is a narrow and elongated country, stretching between 58 and 71 degrees north, or approximately 1,750 kilometres. This is about the same distance as between New York City and Miami, Florida. Our friends currently live in Tromsø, the largest Norwegian city north of the Arctic Circle. The further north we went along the coast, the sparser was the vegetation but the tranquil scenery and the fading blue afternoon light were enchanting.

The long span of history

Throughout its history, the Iberian Peninsula has been a land on a crossroad: between Western Europe and Africa and between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, as far as the New World. Today’s Spain has been shaped by groups of hunter-gatherers, explorers, conquerors, traders and migrants from around the world. It has been ruled, in turn, by Roman emperors, Christian Visigoths, Muslim Moors and Catholic monarchs.

Recently, when we walked through the historic districts of Toledo, Seville, Granada, and Cordoba, we saw Roman ruins, Moorish palaces, evocative monuments, ancient mosques, synagogues and monasteries and several treasure-laden churches. We experienced the richness of Spain’s intricate past but we also felt the weight of its history.

From our perspective, the perfect place to get an appreciation of Spain’s complex history is a walled city called Segovia. This small city is just an hour by bus to the northwest of Madrid, in the region of Castile and León. Segovia is worth the detour.

Sights and Sounds of Madrid

We roamed around Madrid for four days this March. The city was enjoying an unusually warm Spring season, and the streets were alive with people going about their business, groups of kids walking to and from school, families and friends sitting together at outdoor cafes and, of course, many tourists like us.

Madrid is graced with majestic architecture, elegant streets, expansive parks, large public squares, imposing monuments, and beautiful fountains. The centre of Madrid has several lively pedestrianized areas, and it is incredibly clean. In many key downtown locations, we came across street musicians. We believe that their presence adds significant charm to the city.

A taste of Costa Rica

As we mused about our travels over recent years, we realized that we have been inclined to gravitate towards North America for nature-focused trips and Europe for culture and history. We have tended to return to a handful of favourite countries to explore them in more depth.

This year, we resolved to visit at least a few new places that are out of our comfort zone while we are still capable of travelling. We weighed concerns about long flights, an unknown language, the hassles associated with making local arrangements, and safety, against the opportunity to discover a new country. The wide variety of organized tours available to any destination in the world was a convincing argument for taking a new approach.

Over the years, we had heard many accounts of the natural beauty of Costa Rica, so we decided to go there. We opted to join a group tour and prepared, as usual, with a good guide book and videos.

Lively Barcelona

Barcelona, the capital of the autonomous region of Catalonia in Spain, really came to the world’s attention when it hosted the 1992 Summer Olympic Games. Since then, the city has attracted an ever-increasing number of visitors, especially during the summer months. With a population of just over 1.6 million, Barcelona had a total of 9.7 million visitors in 2022.

With the availability of cheap flights from many other European cities, it has become a favourite destination for a short break. In addition, numerous cruise ships make a stop there. While tourism has brought tangible economic benefits, overtourism has led to some locals feeling crowded-out in their own city.

We had bought a guidebook on Barcelona in 2003, had watched many documentaries and knew that we would like to visit, but never did. We had some unease about the city being thronged with visitors and were reticent to add to the overtourism problem. That is what has kept us from going back to Venice, a city we love, but that also suffers from being too popular.

Our mindset changed this past year. We came to the realization that there is no sense in delaying the good things until it is too late. Knowing that there were fewer visitors in Barcelona during the winter, we bought a new guidebook and booked flights and a hotel.

We soon realized we should not have procrastinated for so long. We had a wonderful time. The sun shone every day and, like so many before us, we fell in love with this wonderful city.

Awesome Central Park

Even if you have never visited Central Park in New York City, you may be able to see it in your mind’s eye. Its extensive lawns, winding paths, rustic bridges, rock outcrops, ponds and lakes, all surrounded by towering skyscrapers, have featured in hundreds of popular films. Central Park not the largest park in NYC, however, it is iconic: an impressive public green space covering 843 acres right in the middle of Manhattan.

The park’s visionary architects, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, succeeded in creating a public expanse where people can roam and mingle while marveling at the beauty of the natural world. When it opened in 1858, it was the first public landscaped park in the U.S. Today, it gets more than forty million visitors every year, many of whom live or work locally.

We have visited Central Park several times over the years. Following our last visit, in November, we were curious to find out more about the history of the park. As it turns out, the very creation of Central Park and the fact that it has retained, to this day, most of the features of the architects’ original proposal, are nothing short of astonishing.