The Turning Torso is, with it’s 190 meters (623 feet) and 54 stories, the tallest building in Sweden when created, but also one of the most spectacular with it’s crazy 90 degrees twisting of the 9 cubes in the tower from top to bottom and irregular pentagonal shaped floors rotating around the vertical core.

A true artwork in structural expressionism by Santiago Calatrava (follow the link to read more about this fantastic engineers work!) from 2005, inspired by his own sculpture called the Turning Torso which the Swedish contractor saw and asked him to copy his design as a building.

Featured in Discovery channel’s TV program, Extreme Engineering – always so incredible fascinating – where they did show how a floor of this twisted tower was constructed. It’s also built with sustainability and an environmentally friendly way of life in mind and the building is supplied only with locally produced and renewable energy.

Santiago Calatrava (from Valencia in Spain) is considered to be one of the worlds elite designers who has won gold medal’s. A truly gifted structural engineer with an unusually artistic approach in his creations! I’m totally blown-away by several of his other architectural wonders too.

He also contributed (but did not won) in the architectural competition for the Swedish Öresund Bridge in the nearby area, which we had to pass over to get from Sweden to Denmark on our next leg of Lifecruiser Europe trip…

©Lifecruiser Love Unusual Architecture
 

Image produced by: Javier

The first part of the trip started from La Coruña, a busy harbor city occupying a small peninsula that protrudes out into the Atlantic. La Coruña was established thousands of years ago and is very famous for the ‘Tower of Hercules’, a Roman lighthouse from the 2nd century which has been operating for over 2000 years. To avoid the unpleasant walk along the main city roads they took a bus to the Alcampo hypermarket, from here on out the initial leg of their journey would bring them to Hospital de Bruma. Into their first hour of the trek the team of three began to recognize the unreasonably hot heat therefore slowed down the pace, and hydrated often while winding along the ancient path. The slower speed gave them the opportunity to appreciate their surroundings and to take in the never-ending country side with its spiritually unique history.

Image produced by: Christine

After a restful night’s sleep in rustic little hotel in Meson do Vento (a neighboring village to Bruma) they refueled their bodies, laced their shoes and headed back out to the pilgrimage trail. For thirty kilometers they cantered on along a trail that passed by various small farms, basic villages and wooded areas until they reached the small Spanish town of Sigüeiro. This night they stayed in a basic cottage rental were they cooked some warm food, shared a few laughs and had a long nights rest. The following morning, they persevered on to their final destination Santiago de Compostela. During this last 16 km of this journey they were engulfed by a remarkably noticeable spiritual feeling as they took in the beautiful surroundings. This was their concluding destination, so they had booked a local apartment rental through wimdu.com and spent the following days exploring the cathedral and well-preserved historic city center. The remains of Apostle James are what make this city so famous within religious circles and attract spiritual seekers from all corners of the world take part in such a pilgrimage that finalizes in this remarkable destination.

Image produced by: year of the dragon

For many this expedition is done as an opportunity to seek religious connections, however for this group it was only curiosity and adventure that drove them here, enabling them to partake in an unforgettable experience!

Lifecruiser Love Spain
 

When traveling, we often enjoy all the different architecture we get to see and this is an excellent example of a new thinking within apartment block planning, opening up for more creative surroundings for peoples living areas.

I’m all for it! Let new ideas grow and be implemented!

©Lifecruiser Love Beach Hammocks
 

I’ll try to translate the postcard correctly for you below, since it’s so hilarious in some parts, especially if you recognize some of your own travel experiences too!

Saluti da Firenze 21th of April

Buongiorno at you!

We’re now in the west worlds cultural center! Here are so much culture that we now are giving our feet some air at the hotel room. Even the hotel room is smelling culture, as an example: the heat is not working, light bulbs are missing and the fridge – the minibar – provides warm beer. To see some light in the room, we have to climb up at a shelf in the wall where we with a certain experience can manage to open two windows shutters and then we can see the sky! Otherwise everything is peace and joy.
Greetings A and G…

I can’t help laughing, even though it shouldn’t be like that. When will it ever change, the cheating charter agencies or hotel owners, with the announced standard when buying the trip…?

And even if you buy it to a discounted rate, it still should not be like that. Period.

©Lifecruiser Love Postcards
 

Both liquors are from slijteri & wijnhuis Zeewijck in IJMUiden, The Netherlands and have an old, seaman-related history, so what could suit this blog any better…?

IJMUidens Spicy Liquor-bitter Piertje

As you can spot a glimpse of in the photo below, this is a darker liquor, which in it’s spicyness reminded us a bit about Jagermeister actually, but with a milder taste better suiting our tastebuds and obviously even the old fishermen in IJMuiden: if you consider the fact that there were 36 bars there they could escape their harsh life for a while…

The name comes from when they discovered this safe haven once upon a time, named after the ancient heads of harbor of IJMUiden. The piers protected the North Sea Canal channel in order not to silt up.

The harbor built up in IJMuiden were invaded by many fishermen at this time, who liked to drink the Kruidenbitter, giving it it’s nickname Schipperdrank or boats men liquor. I don’t blame them: it’s really good and they lived a hard life!

IJMUidens Rom Liquor Sluisje

The other is a Rom liquor based on an old family recipe, with a strong Vanilla taste, bottled in a very nice old looking ceramic bottle even this one – as you can see in the photo. The name is Sluisje, which as a word means sluice and that is another interesting attractions they have to attract us tourists. Very interesting built sluices well worth a visit to study the construction of them.

Be aware though, as with other liquors, they’re rather strong: we did noticed that when we did drink it now at home… ehrm…

I say no more than: thank you again Cora and Ron, you’re as sweet as the liquors that you gave us and we really, really appreciate your gift!

Continue to keep an eye on Lifecruiser Europe roadtrip 2012 Flickr Photos, there will be new photos uploaded there now and then until I’m done with them all.

©Lifecruiser Love The Netherlands

Earlier posts about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly at the Europe trip
Ending a long Europe road-trip
Europe roadtrip: in the Alps
Europe trip: leaving the Champagne district to go to Provence
Europe Road short update
Europe Road: leaving Bruges
Europe trip: blogger meet in Wijk aan Zee and IJMuiden, The Netherlands
Europe Road Trip Day 2-3 Goodbye Germany Hello The Netherlands
Europe Road Trip Day 1-2
Europe 7500 km roadtrip start!
 

Sorting and uploading all the photos from all those countries will take too long time and I know some of you are very curious of how our very long road trip went, so better to start with this summery with conclusion in the end.

10 Countries were visited by us during this Europe road trip: Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Austria. We have now been to at least 30 countries together since 2004.

I’ll start with the good things, so if you don’t want to know the bad and the ugly, you can skip the middle part and jump directly to the end of this post and click on the link to see our photos so far.

The Good with the European road trip

Except from the useful travel experience, which always are great to have, and lots of great times here and there, I’ll list the absolute highlights of our European road trip below, not in any particular order.

1. Meeting a lot of friends were one of the main reasons for us to go on this trip from the beginning, a meetup once again in the French Riviera at Claudie and Pierre’s house with the Norwegian blog friends, but also to meetup with several other online friends along the way. Many of them which we never had met before, but that was no problem – very pleasant meetings all of them!

2. To visit the Champagne district and especially Moet Chandon wine cellars & gorgeous vineyards is of course a must when going to France for us Dom Perignon Champagne lovers and it did not let us down as a terrific travel experience.

3. The Netherlands lovely countryside at first and then the west coast with long, gorgeous beaches and actually 2 different blogger friends meetups turning out really good despite quite windy weather conditions.

4. The French Grand Canyon recreation area with it’s marvelous Emerald green lake which we definitely will go back to some day to stay for several days or a week. Also the fantastic French Alp views is really worth exploring more even in the summertime I tell you!

5. The Austrian Alps, gorgeous even in the summertime, but maybe we will even go back there some time in the wintertime even though I normally don’t like the winter. It’s very special with the Alp tops and the people. I did miss any yodeling though… ha ha…

6. The International Sandsculpture festival with incredible sculptures, quite big ones, but actually not as many as we thought there would be, but still worth visiting. Fantastic artists involved from many countries.

7. Certain hotel’s or B&B’s we had booked were surprising us with being even better than we had thought they would be. You never know until you see them in real life!

8. Trying different beer or wines that are not even available in our home country. Every day was a party!

I’ll come back in later travel blog posts, to write more about the different highlights in separate posts and divide the different places into separate photo folders too, making it easier for you to have a look at the special travel experiences.

The Bad with the European road trip

There was too little time and a too small wallet. We spent too much time on the roads, some of the hotels did not match their description or our expectations, some places were not really worth spending time within (like the Rhine Valley in my opinion).

The promised WiFi at too many of the hotels were not working well – if at all, making us unable to keep in contact with people as well as unable to upload photos even from the iPhone many times. That was something we did not like at all and worth thinking of if going on a trip.

The food creation around Europe is in bad shape, it’s really too much french fries to every dish with very little variation, too little vegetables served in the meals, not creative enough if you go to normal restaurants and not the real gourmet or classy ones. I can’t call them budget restaurants since they’ve not really budget prices nowadays.

We had packed two big suitcases which really didn’t fit for the too many steep stairs in the hotels we had booked (or our disk problems), so we had to rearrange a bit, taking out clothes in advance and put in smaller bags to be able to cope during the driving around. It was quite a puzzle sometimes, ha ha!

We had not really great summer weather on this trip, making it very difficult to take photos. It was either unusually cold and gray or way too hot to be outdoors, nothing in between until we did reach Denmark in the end. (We were unusually white this summer actually…)

Both lucky and unlucky: in the end of our trip, when reaching the south of Sweden again, hubby suddenly got ill with dizziness which forced me to do some heavy things I shouldn’t which made my back crack again, which created severe problems when continuing up in Sweden.

We stopped to sleep half ways home in hubby’s childhoods summer home and went home from there the day after that, despite that we had plans to continue our journey within Sweden. It was not meant to be obviously – it has been unsteady weather since.

The Ugly at the European road trip

The highways in Switzerland were the most boring part of our road trip and I think from all our earlier road trips too. I have never seen such a boring motorway ever. I don’t know if it were the fact that we had been on the roads for so long, but the highway never seemed to end…

Our look after being exhausted made me not wanna be on the photos… ha ha… We were looking so darn worn out both of us, like 10 years older suddenly. Our photos and videos, ugly ones I tell you!

Surprisingly enough, we had hard time finding interesting things or beautiful views to capture. We do have lots of interesting photos, but also uninteresting ones and too many deleted ones to be honest. Normally we always find so many things to photograph, but not at all as many as usual on this trip, strange enough.

Conclusion of European roadtrip

If going on such a long road trip, you need at least to double the time (and your wallet!) to get a more satisfying experience. We did know this before we went, but we had no choice, this was what we could manage at this time, so we had to take it or leave it.

We’re satisfied with our experiences as we thought about it as a tour to look around and get a quick view over a lot of countries, to know where we want to go back again in the nearest future. We now know that we want to go back to The Netherlands, The French and the Austrian Alps for sure.

I would not recommend going to the French Riviera in August when it use to be too hot and crowdy and we would never have gone there at this time, if it were not for the fact that our hosts had vacation then and the meetup there with our friends from Norway.

Since all Europe’s holiday period occurs in August, there use to be lots and lots of holiday people out on the roads normally, but we were lucky this year: no severe traffic jams in the directions where we went – only in the opposite directions all the time. Maybe also the economic crises has left some traces, making people staying home more.

Continue to keep an eye on Lifecruiser Europe roadtrip 2012 Flickr Photos, there will be new photos uploaded there now and then until I’m done with them all.

©Lifecruiser Love European Roadtrips

Earlier posts about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Ending a long Europe road-trip
Europe roadtrip: in the Alps
Europe trip: leaving the Champagne district to go to Provence
Europe Road short update
Europe Road: leaving Bruges
Europe trip: blogger meet in Wijk aan Zee and IJMuiden, The Netherlands
Europe Road Trip Day 2-3 Goodbye Germany Hello The Netherlands
Europe Road Trip Day 1-2
Europe 7500 km roadtrip start!
 

Home sweet home, but oh my how strange it feels to speak your own mother language and have all your own things, your own bed… The sad thing is that we did not want to go home, because now the fall has started over here…. *sigh*

We had actually plans to extend this road trip a bit more, but within Sweden though the weather reports were not promising at all: rain, rain and rain, plus that hubby didn’t feel well so we decided to return home instead.

Before this long road trip we also were away another month at our summer island, which means around 2 months away from home. The downfall of all this is: all the laundry is waiting for you and that is what we’re occupied with at the moment.

We will write a lot about this long Europe trip, the good, the bad and the ugly – and everything in between plus showing you all the photos, not only the ones from my iPhone, so stay tuned for all the travel reports coming up!

Continue to keep an eye on Lifecruiser Europe roadtrip 2012 Flickr Photos too, there will be new photos uploaded there soon now.

©Lifecruiser Love European Roadtrips
 

So far we have traveled around 4400 km. We left Provence two days ago and have been through the French alps (gorgeous!) plus in Switzerland and Liechtenstein since then and are in Austria’s Alps for the moment. Beautiful surroundings indeed!!!!

We had no Wifi on the phone today, so some photos from the Alps will be delayed one day more, be patient with us.

Continue to keep an eye on Lifecruiser Europe roadtrip 2012 Flickr Photos too, there are new photos there now and we will upload our photos as soon as we got the time to do it – and working, fast enough wifi. So far, it’s mostly my iPhone photos because it’s easiest that way..

©Lifecruiser Love European Roadtrips
 

Yes, we even did do the Grand Vintage tour at the Moet Chandon and we tasted the Vintage 2002, the blanc (which we have been tasted before) and the Rose. We also did a stop in the store afterward the tour… I say no more…

After that we had a long drive ahead of us to get down to Provence, to our dear friends Claudie and Pierre, where we will have the gathering with our Norwegian blog friends too: the 7th of August.

This time we even got to meet Claudie and Pierre’s daughter, she was not at home the last time we were here. We had a really nice, connecting time. She is a really good vocalist and has also made her own songs (impressive, listen to it!), awesome ones. She might come to Stockholm in the autumn – we really hopes she will come, since we would love to show her around!

Today, we have spent a really nice day together with Pierre, Claudie and her sister and husband in Nice, exploring the old town in Nice. A heaven for us photographers, I tell you!!! Then of course, we always have a great time together with Claudie and her family!! It’s impossible to not have a good time since they are such nice people!!!

Continue to keep an eye on Lifecruiser Europe roadtrip 2012 Flickr Photos too, there are new photos there now and we will upload our photos as soon as we got the time to do it – and working, fast enough wifi. So far, it’s mostly my iPhone photos because it’s easiest that way..

©Lifecruiser Love European Roadtrips
 

Continue to keep an eye on Lifecruiser Europe roadtrip 2012 Flickr Photos too, we will upload our photos as soon as we got the time to do it – and working, fast enough wifi. So far, it’s mostly my iPhone photos because it’s easiest that way.

©Lifecruiser Love European Roadtrips