The Travelling Canadian

Norwegian food adventures

Lilian — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 21:07:50 +0000

As a journalist, writer and blogger focused on agriculture in my day job, I can’t help but be attracted to food and farming-related things when I’m not on the clock too. Here are some quick food highlights. As at home, locally produced is displayed and promoted. Here are some local dried sheep sausages I saw [...]

Bergen by the sea

Lilian — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 20:26:41 +0000

Bergen, on Norway’s west coast, is the country’s second largest city. It’s also where, so far on our trip, we’ve encountered the biggest crowds of tourists. Bergen is a favoured stop for cruise ships and is the starting point of the famous Hurtigruten, Norway’s fleet of postal and supply ships that work their way north [...]

Through Norwegian mountains and fjords

Lilian — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 21:03:28 +0000

One of the iconic Norwegian tours is called Norway in a Nutshell. It transports visitors from Oslo across the country to port city Bergen through some of the prettiest mountain scenery and imposing fjords anywhere. Our journey started with a four-plus hour train ride from Oslo to Myrdal, a railway crossing in the mountains where [...]

Oslo highlights in pictures

Lilian — Sun, 17 Jun 2012 08:48:50 +0000

For one day in Oslo we tried to see as many things as we could. Here are some of the highlights. The Oslo opera house is a crazy sloping building that lets you walk up the roof all the way to the top to give you some unique views of the harbour. It is built [...]

Vikings, trolls and an early shock to the system

Lilian — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 16:52:41 +0000

I have to admit, until my brother announced that he was getting married in Norway and that I really should be there, the country really wasn’t on my top ten list of places I wanted to visit. Not because I disliked it or had any preconceived notions against it but really because I just hadn’t [...]

Shrimping in the Gulf of Mexico

Lilian — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 03:19:41 +0000

Shrimpers returned to the waters off the coast of Louisiana today. And we took to the sea on a shrimping expedition as well, a little further up the coast in Biloxi, Mississippi. The Biloxi Shrimping Tour is the second oldest attraction in the region; the “Sailfish” has been running tours since 1955. We were a [...]

Oil? What oil? Gulf coast beaches are open for business!

Lilian — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:47:03 +0000

The Mississippi Gulf Coast was well into its hurricane recovery when the Deep Water Horizon exploded and oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. It was a blow the struggling region didn’t need – headlines flashing around the world about oil washing up on beaches as they were getting ready to launch into summer [...]

Checkin’ out Cajun country

Lilian — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 14:13:06 +0000

In Ontario, I think we’re always aware of the French language. We’re located right next to Quebec and there are pockets of Franco-Ontarian populations sprinkled throughout the province. And French is on most of our products, labels, printed materials and more. To see this in the United States is a little out of the ordinary [...]

The day the rain came

Lilian — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 03:04:10 +0000

I had great visions for yesterday – visions of lovely Natchez, of stately Civil War-era homes and of cotton-growing. But they weren’t to be, thanks to what I later discovered to be TD5. It rained heavily pretty much from the moment we set out from Vicksburg on Route 61 on our way to Natchez. And [...]

In the footsteps of the battle of Vicksburg

Lilian — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 03:38:21 +0000

Vicksburg, Mississippi is a town with a bloody history. As a major Confederate stronghold strategically located on the Mississippi River – the South’s major supply line – it took beating after beating as Union troops tried repeatedly to capture the city during the US Civil War. A lengthy and brutal siege by northern forces in [...]