Olaf E. Roalkvam: Destinations ; Interests

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 18:33:14 GMT

Golf Travel:

Lone Star Relaxation
Barton Creek Resort & Spa now features redesigned ladies? wrap room, Vichy shower room, steam rooms and whirlpools.

The Royal Treatment
The Royal St. Kitts Golf Club is a 6,900-yard, par-71 course that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

Dramatic Facelift
The changes at Oak Point GC include the elimination of the infamous third hole and the additiion of a new par-3 ninth.

From Sea to Tee
Norwegian Cruise Line's new Pride of Aloha will offer a full-service pro shop and transportation to area courses.

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:24:28 GMT

Top 10 places to beat the winter blues

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 22:34:21 GMT

Golf Travel:

CARIBBEAN
The Real Bahamas
PGA.com's Steve Pike took one look at the cobalt blue water, the white sand beaches and the fishing to last a lifetime, and just knew he had found what he had been looking for. The real Bahamas golf experience, at Peter de Savary's creation called Abaco Club ...more

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 11:47:41 GMT

Visit Los Angeles

The rambling metropolis of LOS ANGELES sprawls across the thousand square miles of a great desert basin, knitted together by an intricate network of congested freeways between the ocean and the snowcapped mountains. Its colorful melange of shopping malls, palm trees and swimming pools is both mildly surreal and startlingly familiar, thanks to the celluloid self-image that it has spread all over the world. Read more here:

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 12:18:20 GMT

A Portrait of Turin: 2006 Winter Olympic host

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 11:27:33 GMT

Visit Kristiansand(Norway) summer 2006!

Founded by and named after King Christian IV, KRISTIANSAND is the closest thing to a seaside resort there is in Norway - a bright, energetic place which thrives on its ferry connections with Denmark and its popular beaches. There are also two reminders of its seventeenth-century origins: the quadrant street plan that Christian IV applied to the centre, and the squat Christiansholm Fortress , overlooking the colourful marina at the east harbour, which now hosts arts and crafts displays. Several excursions are on offer, the pick being the three-and-a-half-hour cruise along the fretted coastline to Ny Hellesund , the islet site of one of four hundred coastal defences built by the Germans - or more accurately their POWs - during their occupation. The excursion is on the M/S Maarten (late June to early Aug, 4 weekly; 150kr), which departs from the quay beside Vestre Strandgate, at the foot of Tollbodgaten. Kristiansand is also home to the annual five-day Quart music festival ( www.quart.no ) at the beginning of July. Recent years have seen international names like Moby, Beck and Nick Cave headlining. For tickets, contact Billettservice (tel 815 33 133). Most concerts take place in Bendiksbukta, just outside the city, but there are also several events at clubs in the centre. Read more here:

Mon, 02 Jan 2006 16:25:44 GMT

Visit Stavanger, Norway(webmasters birth town)

STAVANGER is something of a survivor. While other Norwegian coastal towns have fallen foul of the precarious fortunes of fishing, Stavanger has grown into one of Norway's most dynamic economic powerhouses. Fish canning and its own merchant fleet brought initial prosperity, which shipbuilding and the oil industry have since sustained. It's a brash, breezy, international sort of place, with a sprinkling of interesting attractions and a good bar and restaurant scene, and well worth a day or so before moving on to the fjords or Oslo. Read more here:

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 18:22:44 GMT

Happy New Year 2006!

Fri, 30 Dec 2005 19:58:45 GMT

Play golf on the Old Course in St. Andrews in Scotland!

Confident, poised and well groomed, if a little snooty, ST ANDREWS , Scotland's oldest university town and a pilgrimage centre for golfers from all over the world, is situated on a wide bay on the northeastern coast of Fife. Of all Scotland's universities, St Andrews is most often compared to Oxford or Cambridge both for the dominance of gown over town, and for the intimate, collegiate feel of the place. Accentuating the comparison is the fact that the student population has a significant proportion of English undergraduates, among them, famously, Prince William, rather to the chagrin of townsfolk who imagine there to be a tabloid photographer lurking round every street corner. Read more here:

Thu, 29 Dec 2005 14:49:59 GMT

Planning a trip to the Olympic Games in Turin 2006?

"Do you know Turin?" asked Nietzsche. "It is a city after my own heart ? a princely residence of the seventeenth century, which has only one taste giving commands to everything, the court and its nobility. Aristocratic calm is preserved in everything; there are no nasty suburbs." Although TURIN 's traffic-choked streets are no longer calm, and its suburbs are as dreary as any in Italy, the city centre's gracious Baroque thoroughfares, opulent palaces, sumptuous churches and splendid collections of Egyptian antiquities and northern European paintings are still there - a pleasant surprise to those who might have been expecting satanic factories and little else.

Read more here:

Wed, 28 Dec 2005 17:24:21 GMT

Soon time for Tulips in Amsterdam

AMSTERDAM is a beguiling capital, a compact mix of the provincial and the cosmopolitan. It has a welcoming attitude towards visitors and a uniquely youthful orientation. For many, however, its world-class museums and galleries - notably the Rijksmuseum, with its collection of seventeenth-century Dutch paintings, and the Van Gogh Museum - are reason enough to visit. Read more here:

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 14:50:41 GMT

Winter holiday in Austria in 2006?

It's the spectacular, snowcapped mountains of regions like the Tyrol that provide the most familiar images of Austria - a landscape of jagged peaks and rampaging rivers, giving way to green pastures studded with onion-domed churches. Yet Austria is by no means all alpine vistas: the country stretches across central Europe for some 700km, from the shores of the Bodensee in the west to the edge of the flat Hungarian plain in the east. Far removed from the archetype are the wetlands and reed beds of Burgenland, and the dramatic sequence of stopes that carve their way up the Erzberg in Styria. In Upper and Lower Austria in particular, a predominantly low-key landscape of gentle rolling hills and vineyards can come as something of a surprise to first-time visitors. Yet this fertile, low-lying northern half of the country is, in fact, where the majority of Austrians live and work, many of them within commuting distance of the capital, Vienna - the country's chief tourist destination after the alpine regions. Read more here:

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:19:11 GMT

I wish you all a peaceful christmas and a happy new year.

Editor and owner of this blog:

Olaf E. Roalkvam

Norway

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 13:02:34 GMT

Visit the Norwegian Capital Oslo

Despite tourist-office endeavours, OSLO retains a low profile among European cities, and even comparisons with other Scandinavian capitals are usually a little less than favourable. Inevitably, though, you'll pass through - the main train routes heading west to the fjords, north to the Arctic, south to the coast and east to Sweden are routed through the city - but take heart: Oslo is definitely worth seeing. The city has some of Europe's best museums, fields a street life that surprises most first-time visitors, and helps revive travellers weary of the austere northern wilderness. Read more here:

Fri, 23 Dec 2005 19:20:29 GMT

Time to visit Phuket again?

Thailand's largest island and a province in its own right, Phuket (pronounced "Poo-ket") ranks second in tourist popularity only to Pattaya. Thoughtless tourist developments have scarred much of the island, particularly along the west coast, and the trend on all the beaches is upmarket, with very few budget possibilities. As mainstream resorts go, however, those on Phuket are just about the best in Thailand, offering a huge range of watersports and great diving facilities. The sea gets quite rough from May to October. Although the best west-coast beaches are connected by road, to get from one beach to another by public transport you nearly always have to go back into Phuket town. Read more here:

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:57:13 GMT

Visit London

With a population of just under eight million, London is Europe's largest city, spreading across an area of more than 620 square miles from its core on the River Thames. Ethnically it's also Europe's most diverse metropolis: around two hundred languages are spoken within its confines, and more than thirty percent of the population is made up of first, second- and third-generation immigrants. Despite Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolution, London still dominates the national horizon, too: this is where the country's news and money are made, it's where the central government resides and, as far as its inhabitants are concerned, provincial life begins beyond the circuit of the city's orbital motorway. Londoners' sense of superiority causes enormous resentment in the regions, yet it's undeniable that the capital has a unique aura of excitement and success - in most walks of British life, if you want to get on you've got to do it in London. Read more here:

Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:02:14 GMT

Visit Madrid

Madrid became Spain's capital simply through its geographical position at the centre of Iberia. When Felipe II moved the seat of government here in 1561 his aim was to create a symbol of the unification and centralization of the country, and a capital from which he could receive the fastest post and communications from each corner of the nation. The site itself had few natural advantages - it is 300km from the sea on a 650-metre-high plateau, freezing in winter, burning in summer - and it was only the determination of successive rulers to promote a strong central capital that ensured Madrid's survival and development. Read more here:

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 17:36:26 GMT

Visit New Orleans

There's a lot more to NEW ORLEANS the ''Big Easy,'' the ''city that care forgot'' than its tourist image as a nonstop party town. At once sordid and sublime, it careers along under an infuriating doublethink. While having enormous amounts of fun, you're liable to be repeatedly struck by the divisions between rich and poor (and, more explicitly, between white and black). Even so, the city's vitality and joie de vivre are real, buffeted but not beaten by the vagaries of commercialism and poverty. The melange of cultures and races that built the city still gives it its heart; not ''easy,'' exactly, but quite unlike anywhere else in the States or the world. Read more here:

Mon, 19 Dec 2005 19:28:13 GMT

Visit Las Vegas

Las Vegas is not like other cities. No city in history has so explicitly valued the needs of visitors above those of its own population. All its growth has been fueled by tourism, but the tourists haven't spoiled the "real" city; there is no real city. Las Vegas doesn't have fascinating little-known neighborhoods, and it's not a place where visitors can go off the beaten track to have more authentic experiences. Instead, the whole thing is completely self-referential; the reason Las Vegas boasts the vast majority of the world's largest hotels is that around thirty-seven million tourists each year come to see the hotels themselves. Read more here

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 16:17:56 GMT

Play Golf in Spain

If you are coming to Spain for the first time, be warned: this is a country that fast becomes an addiction. You might intend to come just for a beach holiday, or a tour of the major cities, but before you know it you'll find yourself hooked by something quite different - by the celebration of some local fiesta, perhaps, or the amazing nightlife in Madrid, by the Moorish monuments of Andalucia, by Basque cooking, or the wild landscapes and birds of prey of Estremadura. And by then, of course, you will have noticed that there is not just one Spain but many. Indeed, Spaniards often speak of Las Españas (the Spains) and they even talk of the capital in the plural - Los Madriles , the Madrids. Read more here:

Sat, 17 Dec 2005 15:52:12 GMT

Visit Swaziland

A tiny landlocked kingdom, Swaziland lies in the spanner-like grip of South Africa which surrounds it on three sides, with Mozambique providing its eastern border along the Lubombo Mountains. Although South Africa's influence predominates, Swaziland was a British protectorate from 1906 until its full independence in 1968, and today the country offers an intriguing mix of colonial heritage and homegrown confidence, giving the place a friendlier, more relaxed and often safer feeling than its larger neighbour.Read more here:

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 14:31:09 GMT

Visit Morocco

For Westerners, Morocco holds an immediate and enduring fascination. Though just an hour's ride on the ferry from Spain, it seems at once very far from Europe, with a culture - Islamic and deeply traditional - that is almost wholly unfamiliar. Throughout the country, despite the years of French and Spanish colonial rule and the presence of modern and cosmopolitan cities like Rabat and Casablanca, a more distant past constantly makes its presence felt. Fes , perhaps the most beautiful of all Arab cities, maintains a life still rooted in medieval times, when a Moroccan empire stretched from Senegal to northern Spain, while in the mountains of the Atlas and the Rif , it's still possible to draw up tribal maps of the Berber population. As a backdrop to all this, the country's physical make-up is also extraordinary: from a Mediterranean coast, through four maintain ranges, to the empty sand and scrub of the Sahara. Read more here:

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 17:52:55 GMT

Visit Philippines

The Philippines has suffered in the tourism stakes because of its position on the map. Imelda Marcos once said it was "hamburgered" geographically. What she meant was that the Philippines receives fewer visitors than other Southeast Asian countries - about two million a year compared to Thailand's six million - because it is not part of the Southeast Asian mainland. Travellers on the traditional Asian trails tend to get as far as Thailand or Hong Kong, but ignore the Philippines because it involves an extra flight, albeit it a short one, across the South China Sea. Read more here:

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:47:48 GMT

Visit Italy

Of all European countries, Italy is perhaps the hardest to classify. It is a modern, industrialized nation. It is the harbinger of style, its designers leading the way with each season's fashions. But it is also, to an equal degree, a Mediterranean country, with all that that implies. Agricultural land covers much of the country, a lot of it, especially in the south, still owned under almost feudal conditions. In towns and villages all over the country, life grinds to a halt in the middle of the day for a siesta, and is strongly family-oriented, with an emphasis on the traditions and rituals of the Catholic Church which, notwithstanding a growing scepticism among the country's youth, still dominates people's lives here to an immediately obvious degree. Read more here:

Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:40:54 GMT

Visit Monaco

Monstrosities are common on the Côte d'Azur, but nowhere - not even Cannes - can outdo MONACO . This tiny independent principality, no bigger than London's Hyde Park, has lived off gambling and catering for the desires of the idle international rich for the last hundred years. Meanwhile, it has become one of the greatest property speculation sites in the world - a sort of low-rise Manhattan-on-Sea with an incredibly dense concentration of fin-de-siècle Edwardian hotels standing in for the skyscrapers. Read more here: