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 in a grocery store on the way from Bergen to Loen: more…

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 from Bergen to the top of the country – almost literally at the North Pole – serving as a life line to northern communities by transporting mail, goods and people. more…

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 about half the train got off (there was a high tourist percentage amongst the travellers!) and crowded across the platform to eagerly await the arrival of the historic Flam Railway.

This is one of the world’s steepest railway lines, taking you from the  mountains past spectacular waterfalls and breathtaking vistas to the innermost corner of the Aurland Fjord at only two meters above sea level in the village of Flam.  more…

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 into the water in such a way that makes it look like it is actually rising out of the waterfront. more…

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 ever considered it.

So after much planning, reading and consultation with a travel agent that knows a thing or two about Norway, my parents and I had an itinerary set and we were ready to head out to the land of the Vikings, trolls and fish. more…

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.
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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 holiday season.

Well, we’re in the Gulfport-Biloxi region now and there was no oil anywhere to be found as we walked along the beach yesterday. more…

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 – but it’s what we experienced today in Lafayette, Louisiana.

We found ourselves in the heart of Acadiana. That’s a region of 22 parishes (what we would call counties) in southern Louisiana that is home to the Cajuns – descendants of French-speaking inhabitants of Acadia (now Nova Scotia) who were cruelly expelled and forcefully deported from their homeland by a vengeful British governor in 1755. more…

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 that rain, as I learned on the local Louisiana news that night, was courtesy of Tropical Depression 5 – or TD5 for short – a weather system that luckily didn’t grow into a hurricane. Now that would’ve been a travel adventure (and a few blog posts) to remember! more…

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 the spring and early summer of 1863 eventually took its toll on the Confederate forces, as well as the beleaguered townsfolk, many of whom had taken refuge in caves dug into the surrounding hills as a way of avoiding the constant shelling.

Food supplies became scarce, and by the time the city fell, the city’s cat and dog population had almost completely vanished and civilians and soldiers alike were also resorting to eating mule meat and even rats. more…