Norway 2024 Folk Museum

Off on the coach again, firstly to visit a Stave church , we were hoping to be able to go inside but unfortunately our local guide had a family emergency so we had to make do with the exterior, Its normally open to visitors but at the moment is closed for restoration work, so no guide, no access.

Frome here we went a short way to the Sogn Life Museum. This started with one farmers collection of old farming implements in a shed on his farm, one day they were going to knock down one of the old buildings in the village so he took it down and reassembled it on his farm to house his small private museum. As word got around he got offered more equipment and more buildings and with the aid of finance he built an even  bigger museum on his small farm. After his death it was decided to move everything to a dedicated site where the buildings could be laid out like a village and all the artefacts could be displayed in a museum and there are lots of them. including old film footage of work on the farm.

Stresa on the banks of Lake Maggiore. Home to Colmar

WARNING  This blog contains lots and lots of photos, if you would like to look at them more closely please just click them and they will open full screen.

As usual we used National Express coaches to get us from Norwich to London, in this case traveling on Sunday 3 September 2023. The coach made excellent time as far as Stratford before getting bogged down in traffic, the driver even had to ring the depot and ask them to delay some departures for travellers catching connecting buses. Once at Victoria we made our way to the underground and invested £2-70 each on a journey to St Pancras station then a short walk to The Premier Hub.
Checking in we were surprised that we had been allocated a large room with a large double bed unlike in the past.

The Hubs don’t have a restaurant so it was out to eat. A place we had looked at in the past but not used was The Gas Station and with the nice weather we were able to sit outside to eat. (photo from their web site)

Monday 4 September 2023
Up early and no breakfast to check out and then meet out Great Rail Journeys tour manager at St Pancras Station, before heading to the departure lounge and awaiting our train to Paris, thankfully breakfast was served onboard for Standard Premier travellers .
We were in coach one, so when we arrived at Gare du Nord we had the full length of Euro Star train to walk before even reaching the station exit, from there a short walk to Paris L’Est for the train to Colmar. In Colmar our hotel was literally straight across the road from the station and even that was semi pedestrianised.

The station from our Hotel		Our Hotel from the station

Once checked in it was off for a look round this charming little town, it has its own waterway running through the centre of town with punted trip boats.

As expected with all the restaurants lining the canal/river there are some fair sized fish in there

   The buildings in this part of town are very old and quite attractive, but you need to keep an eye on the traffic.

   

Walking back to The Hotel Bristol where we were spending just the one night we passed this rather splendid water tower in the park. We only had a few hours to spare to look round Colmar as diner was pre ordered and we would all be eating in the hotel.

Stresa on the banks of Lake Maggiore, Comar to our Stresa Hotel

After a leisurely breakfast we wandered across to catch the train for our onward journey to Stresa. The railway station at Colmar has a large stained glass window in each gable end. These date back to 1991 as the originals were destroyed in an explosion in 1944

Unfortunately we couldn’t travel all the way to Stresa by train due to engineering work on the line so we had to take a coach from Domodossola for the remaining part of the journey. Like in the UK there was a replacement bus service laid on, but GRJ chartered a private coach to take us directly to our hotel. We managed a few photos from the train as we sped along.

Our hotel for the week was the Grand Hotel Bristol which we found very comfortableIts quite a rambling old building but still quite plush with 5 floors. Their main trade seems to be coach holidays although there were a couple of corporate events going on while we were there. It is situated right on the lake front but you have to cross quite a busy road to get there.The hotel even looked nice at night when lit up.

Like most of the hotels along the sea front it  has a fountain out front, but not as smart as the one at The Grand Hotel Des Les Borromees  next door

Our hotel’s fountain

Next door’s fountain

We also had an indoor swimming pool, This was at the end of a very long sloping corridor, but to save walking they had a Horizontal “lift” a real weird sensation going from the foyer  to a large vestibule with the pool and more rooms running off it. Above the vestibule was a large stained glass ceiling dome to let light in and a similar but slightly smaller one in the foyer.

      The hotel also had a large outside swimming pool with solar heating, Diana enjoyed it but I gave it a miss.

Our bedroom was on the third floor and was served by two lifts which was handy, we were at the side so not overlooking the lake, not important as we wouldn’t be spending all day in our room looking out of the window, but we did have a view of the end of the swimming pool. The room was quite roomy and very quiet with a balcony and an ensuite bathroom toilet. Needless to say I was in trouble for taking the photo when the bed was a mess.

Other than Breakfast and a couple of included evening dinners we didn’t use the hotel much but we did have coffee in the terrace.

 

The hotel next door, The Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees I think was a 5 star establishment and was a bit grander, Behind the fountain  was a kind of grotto which was illuminated at night, not only that, it had a set of clarions that played on the hour. The windows all had flowering window boxes and it all looked a bit grander, however the main entrance seemed to be tucked round the back.