Moving on up, to the top

Bodø, Norway is a wonderful place to spend the summer. For reasons I can't identify or quite articulate it keeps reminding me of Manhattan, Kansas where I lived when I earned my undergraduate degree at Kansas State. I had guessed that Bodø was about the same size as Manhattan, perhaps a little bigger. I finally got on Wikipedia and checked it out this morning. I was surprised to find that Bodø is less than half the size of Manhattan (in population). Manhattan has 113,829 residents whereas Bodø has 47,282. Maybe it is the fact that from my dorm room window, I can look out on to an active port, hear military jets and civilian aircraft taking off from the airport, and look down on active railroad tracks that give the city a buzz that makes me feel like it is bigger than it is. Also, I could regularly walk from one end on Manhattan to the other in a perfectly cromulant amount of time. Doing so in Bodø is a more ambitious undertaking. This is because Bodø is nestled on the edge of the water and surrounded by a semi-circle of mountainous hills. The city then snakes along the coastline between the water's edge and the mountainous hills for a fair distance.

Speaking of the mountainous hills and walking, Leah and I decided to take a break yesterday and climb to the top of a nearby peak. Leah had been before, but it was my first time to wander up that way. So, it fell to Leah to serve as guide and sherpa, which she did admirably well. The view of the city below and the surrounding landscape is fantastic and puts the city in a cool perspective. Below is a photo and short video I shot from the top.

Epilogue—Leah and I were wrestling with the term to use to describe the terrain we were standing on. Mountain seemed a bit of an overstatement. It was only a 30-40 minute trek from the water level to the top. However, hill is an understatement, because it's an impressive climb to the peak. Finally, we decided that an adjective was the solution and coined the term 'mountainous hill'. Hah! Problem solved.