this was the start point of our hike. pretty short and steep descent to the bottom where the lake was. and where vikingsholm was.
a view of emerald bay from vikingsholm where we went on a tour. "what is vikingsholm?", you may ask. vikingsholm is a home built in the scandinavian style by a mrs lora knight in 1929. she bought the land where it sits on and also fannette island for $250,000. seems little but it must have been a fortune in those days. it's a bit unfortunate that the house is currently under renovation (though we did get to go inside ) as it would be nice to see it in all its glory. but nevertheless it was still interesting to listen to the stories told by the guide.
this is one part of the house built in a particular scandinavian style where no nails, pegs or spikes are used. maybe ikea will sell something like that one day.
views of the kitchen. i loved the designs of everything in there.
this is the dining area for the servants. below is a picture of the garage.
the car here is actually the car of mrs knight's secretary.
the roof is covered by some kind of soil, and supposed to have flowers growing on it but this will only be done when the renovations have been completed.
this is a scandinavian bridal chest or table, and is typically given to the bride on her wedding day. mrs knight had this replica made, right down to the wood and the type of scratches on it!
one of the guest bedrooms upstairs. there were at least 5.
this is a lock on the outside of the guest bedroom door. why is it on the outside? according to the guide, mrs knight followed the design used in scandinavian castles where the owner would lock his guests in their rooms in case they decided to do something nasty to him in the middle of the night!! here of course, her locks were only decorative - she did not actually lock her guests in!
another guest room.
this was one interesting aspect of the house. all the guest bedrooms are on the same level except for this little flight of two steps leading down to mrs knight's bedroom and dayroom. the purpose, according to the guide was that the steps demarcate the boundary where guests were not supposed to cross. i thought that was fascinating - today of course such fine distinctions would not work and most people would probably keep a part of the house locked if they did not want intruders.
a kind of work room for sewing and ironing. see how the ironing board folds into the wall?
this is the official dining room on the ground floor. the renovations are expected to be completed in 2012, depending on the weather. in winter, i think most work stops when snowfall is too heavy. roads become inaccessible and unless the workers live nearby it is probably very difficult to organize or even have predictable work schedules.
after our tour, we had some spare time before our next planned activity, and asked our guide for suggestions. she said we could do another short hike to eagle falls. and so we did. and this is one of the beautiful falls we saw along the way.
lots of nice scenery along the way.
and when we got back to emerald bay (so named because of the greenish colour of the water), we saw one of those steamer boats.
the lake is actually not that big compared to some other lakes but to a singaporean, the mere fact that it is 72 miles in circumference is awesome enough. i actually thought if there was time, i would rent a bicycle and ride around. it would take me at least 4 hours, maybe closer to 5 with the hills, some of which are really steep, plus the altitude. tahoe is a few thousand feet above sea level - 1890 metres to be precise, according to my garmin watch - and so the air is thinner and thus makes it harder to breathe. you realize that quickly when you start breathing heavily after walking just a short distance on the hills. but the human body is a marvellous machine and adapts fairly quickly. of course at higher altitudes, some people do get altitude sickness and cannot go on. they get dizzy or have headaches and have to come down to lower altitudes to recover.
No comments:
Post a Comment