københavn’s botanisk have

liz and andrea and i visited copenhagen’s botanical gardens (botanisk have) the other day, which were really impressive and beautiful! here’s the blurb from the garden website:

Botanical Garden & Museum is situated in the heart of Copenhagen. The garden is a living museum and room for the largest collection of living plants in Denmark. The main purpose is to maintain a taxonomically, geographically and esthetical diverse collection of plants to be used in research and teaching and for public information. The museum holds one of the largest herbaria of plants and fungi from all over the world.

we really enjoyed it – this time of year there are lots of vibrant colors, and the park itself is like a flowery oasis right in the heart of the city. i think my mom (who is an avid gardener) would really have enjoyed this. my favorite parts were the palm house and the plant exhibitions that were arranged throughout the gardens (with titles like: “exotic spices”, “poisonous plants in nature”, “plants from the bible”, “tropical fruits”, “botany in the golden age”, and so on).

scan|design trip to norway

as an end-of-the semester treat, scan|design arranged a trip to norway for us (‘thank you, scan|design!’). we took the ferry (= cruise ship) from copenhagen to oslo, and then marianne, our intrepid mentor, showed us around lillehammer and and the capital for three days. our trip coincided with norway’s national day, may 17, so we got to see traditional costumes, parades, and lots of other celebratory goings-on. in lillehammer, we got to visit maihaugen, an open-air museum that had an exhibit on norwegian history as well as several examples of traditional wooden buildings. after our day in lillehammer, we took the train back to oslo, where we visited the vigeland sculpture park (which i visited last november and love) and the newly opened operahuset, which was fantastic (and i have to say better than copenhagen’s…particularly in a roof-to-roof comparison). we had a great time, ate some delicious lefse, sampled different foods-in-a-tube (including, yes, the always-wonderful nugatti), and enjoyed some blueberry muffin ice cream at anker brygge, oslo’s new harbourfront development/restored warehouse district. having visited norway once in the winter, it was really nice to be able to see what the landscape, and oslo, were like in the spring. i was really impressed with the city – and got to see many places that i hadn’t visited before. it was also nice to be there for the national day and to learn a bit about norway’s historical ties to denmark. so again, ‘thanks, scan|design…!’

fika and falu (stockholm slideshow)

my good friend liz maly is visiting me in copenhagen, and we decided to take a weekend trip to stockholm (one of my favorite cities!) to visit our friend and uw colleague heather burpee, who is there on a valle scholarship. we had a fantastic time – visited some museums, met up with some friends from copenhagen who were also visiting, and got to see hb’s side of stockholm. i would say that the highlights of the trip were an amazing meal of swedish meatballs at pelikan, seeing the restored ship at the vasamuseet, visiting traditional buildings from all over sweden at skansen (stockholm’s open-air museum) where we learned about the origins of falu red paint (which gives many rural swedish buildings their distinctive color), visiting the dalahäst (traditional carved wooden horse) museum, and being initiated into (and heavily practicing) the swedish tradition of fika, a verb meaning ‘to take a coffee break,’ one that often includes friends and snacks, between larger meals…a tradition that i will be taking back to the states, and anywhere else i go…anyway. although that seems to be a lot of ‘highlights’ for two short days, it’s definitely an indication of what a great time we had in stockholm. here’s the photo-illustrated version: