We’ll take a tour of Trollstigen², starting at the bottom where we can see several sections of the road climbing the mountain side.

With very narrow sections, eleven hairpin bends, and an average gradient of 9%, the road could fairly be described as challenging, and long buses and trucks are not allowed on it. The road is also closed by snow for several months of the year.

As we approach the first hairpin, we can see one of the waterfalls that feed the mountain stream which courses through the valley behind us.

By the fourth hairpin we’re starting to rise above the treeline and a second waterfall comes into view.

As we continue upwards we approach a stone bridge with a small parking area for people to admire the waterfall, though for some people the Street View car was apparently more interesting!

While some sections of the road have been widened, others are still very narrow, but the threat of oncoming traffic hasn’t stopped these intrepic cyclists from tackling the ascent.

By the seventh hairpin we start to get glimpses of the views awaiting from the top.³

At the penultimate turn, we can see the road below, and the full majesty of one waterfall …

… while the other cascades right next to us.

At the final hairpin we can see patches of snow on the mountainside across the valley, and the full view of the valley in the embedded Street View at the start of this post.

No more hairpins await us, but the road continues upwards through an increasingly barren landscape.

As we approach the top of the climb there is a parking area, a visitors centre and viewing platform that allows tourists to take in the scenery. While there’s currently a small range of stuff to buy⁴, there’s actually a new facility under construction which should better cater to the needs to the thousands of people who travel the Trollstigen each year.

After passing this curious monument, the road continues south through a landscape considered (by all except perhaps the most fastidious of virtual tourists), every bit as spectacular as that which we saw on the way up.

Wikipedia has a brief article about Trollstigen, but there’s more detail at the Norway tourism website. Or you can watch a motorcycle tour of the road on YouTube.

Locations: Norway / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views

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We first visited this Santa three years ago but updated Street View imagery gives us a much better look at the bright red 12m tall Saint Nick who is in the process of making his list, and checking it twice. This blog post gives a fascinating glimpse at its origins in Seattle.

Heading to Oxnard, California, we find only the top-half of a Santa who has apparently got a bad headache, judging by the hand position and big frown on his face. Maybe all the cookies, milk and glasses of whisky were too much for him? As vigilant as ever, Google has blurred the faces of the accompanying nutcrackers to protect their identities.

This 6m tall Kris Kringle is actually quite a venerable specimen, having spent 50 years on the top of a candy store before being moved to his current location eight years ago. Read the full story in this blog post or this LA Times article, which includes a slideshow.

The state of Indiana seems to have a particularly fondness for Santa Claus. We first visited the town that bears his name back in 2008, but neglected to show the large statue that sits outside the town hall, surrounded by festive red benches.

Two separate can be spotted (one standing, one sitting) outside a hotel, while on the outskirts of town is a much older statue; in fact it is claimed to be the oldest Santa statue in the world.

It dates to 1935, shortly after the town’s residents realised they lived in a locale with a name that could be exploited for commercial gain. Originally thought to be 7 metres of solid granite, time and weathering have revealed that it is in fact made of concrete! Unfortunately it is too far from the road for early Street Views to give a good view.

Not quite so blurry is the 11m tall Father Christmas found an hour’s drive to the west in Haubstadt.

Roadside America reports that the surrounding derelict buildings have been demolished, leading to fears that this Santa may disappear before too long.

Many businesses adorn their premises with statues of Santa, though generally they’re not quite as disturbing as this one in Fresno, California.

Finally, just to prove that it’s not just the US that has giant Santa statues, in Lyngen, Norway, a large Julenissen² overlooks the harbour.

If you know of any other giant Santa statues please post them in the comments.

Merry Christmas from all of us at Google Sightseeing!

Locations: Alaska, California, Indiana, Norway /

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The countries receiving updated imagery are Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Romania, South Africa, Taiwan, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Additionally, there is brand new coverage of two of Britain’s Crown Dependencies, the Isle of Man, and Jersey.

Peel Castle, Isle of Man

Mont Orgueil, Jersey

Of particular interest in the United States, brand new imagery has been added throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego, taking in sights such as the Golden Gate Bridge, Staples Center, and USS Midway which are now shown in stunning high-resolution.

What can you find in the new imagery? Send us your finds via our suggestion form, or on Twitter, and we’ll post a roundup later in the week of your best finds!

Read the full story at the Google Latlong blog.

Locations: Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, North America, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom / Categories: Street Views

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Take Monaco, for instance, where the cameras approach the eastern border only to be greeted with this giant abstract sculpture at the crossing (or is that just Monaco giving a massive middle-finger to Google’s camera?).

The western entrance to Monaco is quite stunning, with the road descending into the principality as cliffs loom overhead.

Moving south into the Pyrenees, we reach the border of Andorra, where we can sneak a peek into the ski resort of Pas de la Casa, including some oddly-coloured apartments on the hillside.

For sheer impressiveness, however, it’s hard to beat the sight of the Rock of Gibraltar looming over the Spanish border at La Linea while a thunderstorm prepares to hit overhead:

The prize for ‘Most Ornate Entrance Captured on Street View’ might have to go to the border between Rimini, Italy and Serravalle, San Marino, where the microstate has constructed a pedestrian overpass and an observation tower for tourists, leading into a major shopping district. The other main entrance to San Marino would probably be described as ‘quaint’ by comparison.

The absurdly complicated Dutch-Belgian border at Baarle (documented previously on Google Sightseeing) is likely to have presented special challenges to the Street View team. However, they have cleverly managed to avoid publishing any images captured on Belgian soil – despite examples such as this, where the camera car must drive from Holland at one end of the block, across a tiny sliver of Belgium, and back to Holland at the other end.

Baarle’s not the only town cut in half in Street View. Here’s a place where you park in France to dine at a cafe in Luxembourg:

Near the tri-point of Italy, Austria and Slovenia, we get this multi-national flag arrangement at an old Austrian customs building. Further into the Alps, the Street View car camera ends its trip at the ski resort of Nassfeld, where one of the ski lifts lies right next to a field of grazing cattle.

The lone glimpse of Russian soil captured so far on Street View is the view across a small lake from Norway (the only place you can actually drive south into Russia from), where we get a blurry view of a building on a hill overlooking the lake. Hmm, a regular house, or a Cold War spy shanty? You be the judge…

South Africa is the only African country so far visited by Street View, but sadly most of the border shots are not particularly notable. For example, the images simply stop by a fence on the middle of the road at the border with Swaziland, while the border with Botswana couldn’t be any more different, merely possessing a single stop sign.

We end our forbidden borderland odyssey with a glimpse from Singapore across the Straits of Johor to downtown Johor Bahru.

With luck, one day we’ll be able to get a glimpse beyond those borders as Street View continues to roll out coverage in countries across the globe. (Then we can finally find out just what it is they’re trying to hide from us…)

Locations: Austria, Belgium, Botswana, Crown Dependencies, France, Italy, Malaysia, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views, Structures

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Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve was member of a family of prominent astronomers¹. While the majority of his work involved the study of astronomical bodies, he also turned his attentions to geodetic surveying – the measurement and representation of the Earth.

He studied at the University of Tartu in Estonia and established the first of his triangulation points at the observatory in that town. There is a large stone monument just to the north of the main building.

Further locations were established roughly along a meridian line originating in Tartu and spanning almost 3,000km. The majority of the sites were hill- or mountain-tops, or other prominent points of land. This wide range of triangulation points would have allowed accurate calculations of the size of the whole planet.

The 265 locations were – at that time – in only two countries: the Sweden-Norway Union and the Russian Empire. The intervening years have seen these two disintegrate into ten separate countries. Most of the 34 locations which make up the World Heritage Site are marked by monuments of some kind. The northernmost point is in Hammerfest, Norway. It’s a low-res area on Google maps, but the monument is worth a closer look.

In Tornio, northern Finland, the quite beautiful Alatornion kirkko was the only building – other than the Tartu observatory – that was used as a triangulation point.

Further south in Finland, Aavasaksa is a small hill also used as a triangulation point. At the top there is a hunting lodge used by leaders of the Russian Empire. It is currently in use as a cafe and there is a monument consisting of a large boulder surrounded by an iron representation of the globe.

In the Baltic Sea, points were located on two islands: the highest point on Finland’s Mustaviiri, and a hill-top on Russia’s Gogland.

The village of Jekabpils in Latvia has a park named after Struve at the location of the triangulation point.

The majority of points to the south of the Arc – in Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine – are marked by small monuments, in rural areas covered by low-res imagery, so there’s not much to see on satellite images. If you’re curious, you can find many of the locations marked on this Google Maps interface.

The southernmost monument is in what appears to be a housing development in the Ukrainian town of Stara Nekrasivka,

Wikipedia has a bit more information, while the Wikidot entry has a detailed list and map of all 265 triangulation points, along with photos of many of the World Heritage locations.

Locations: Belarus, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Ukraine / Categories: Buildings, Monuments, Street Views, Structures, World Heritage Sites

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On arrival to this residential street in Bergen, the Google camera car is greeted by two adults, dressed head to toe in SCUBA gear, sitting in a couple of deck chairs. It’s a lovely sunny day, but they’re prepared for the worst with an umbrella.

The situation gets even weirder when the two men leap from their seats and begin to pursue the car down the road, brandishing harpoons!

Given that the two divers are wearing flippers, they actually manage to keep up for a surprisingly long distance before the Google car leaves them behind, presumably cursing into their masks.

These guys must have known the camera car was coming, but how? In recent days we’ve seen a group of German people claiming they bugged the streetview car with a GPS device, which makes us wonder if we’ll see more and more bizarre protests as the whereabouts of Google’s cars become better known?

Make sure you follow Google Sightseeing on Twitter for all the latest Street View sightings.

Thanks to @prebenlm.

Locations: Norway / Categories: Street Views

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Far out in the South Atlantic, more than 2,500km from the coast of South Africa, Bouvet Island is the loneliest chunk of land on Earth. With the exception of a few tiny rocks just offshore, its nearest neighbour is Antarctica, 1,750km to the south. Despite being so remote, and totally uninhabited¹, it is covered by some beautiful high-resolution imagery.

Bouvet Island is a dependency of Norway, although it was discovered by (and named after) a Frenchman, Jean Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, in 1739. It’s a volcanic island, almost entirely covered by snow and ice — you can make out the central crater surrounded by cloud-covered peaks, with the highest, Olavtoppen, casting a shadow from the northeast.

Landing here is a very tricky prospect, unless your ship’s equipment includes a helicopter: the coastline mainly consists of high cliffs, with stormy seas foaming at the base and carving out sheer stacks of rock. In places, glaciers tumble over the edge in jagged blocks of ice, while submerged rocks lie in wait for unwary sailors. It’s no surprise that the island remains uninhabited, although a group of hardy Norwegians did spend a whole month there in the 1920s, confirming the nation’s claim on the island.

It seems Bouvet is still volcanically active. During the 1950s, an eruption on the west coast created a low shelf of lava — just about the only convenient flat spot on the island. The Norwegian Polar Institute installed a research station there in 1994 for use during field trips to the island, but by 2007 (and on Google’s pictures) no trace of it remained. The official story is that an earthquake caused a landslide that swept the portable building away — or broke the guy lines that anchored it, allowing gales to blow it into the sea — but bearing in mind that Bouvet Island was the setting for the 2004 film Alien vs Predator, the real explanation seems obvious…

One final mystery: can anyone tell us why, according to the map at Wikipedia, this headland is called Cape Circumcision?

Locations: Norway / Categories: Islands

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Artist Gustav Vigeland created each of the works in clay or plaster, then employed skilled craftsmen to create the final granite carvings or bronze or iron castings. The statues were mostly created between 1939 and 1949.

Most visitors arrive at the wrought-iron Main Gate, the first of five distinct areas of the Park which stretches for almost a kilometre in a layout also created by Vigeland.

The Main Gate leads to the 100m long Bridge which is adorned by 58 bronze sculptures – individuals or groups; men, women and children, including one of the most popular sculptures in the park – the little Angry Boy.

The circular area beneath the Bridge is the Children’s Playground – 8 bronzes of small children and one unborn child.

The Bridge leads to the Fountain, a large granite column topped by a group of men holding up a bronze bowl. This is surrounded by 60 bronze reliefs and tree statues depicting the life cycle of man.

Originally planned for the exterior of the Norwegian Parliament, the Fountain was one of Vigeland’s most monumental creations. It is surrounded by a mosaic floor which contains a 3km long labyrinth.

Beyond The Fountain is the Monolith Plateau. A set of circular stairs leads upwards to the centrepiece of the park, the 17m tall monolith carved from a single piece of granite and depicting 121 figures entwined and reaching toward the sky – intended to represent man’s need for the spiritual and divine.

Eight additional granite sculptures surround the Monolith and continue the depiction of human life’s eternal cycle, the theme that reaches its conclusion with the final section of the park, the Wheel of Life.

While specifically not erotic, that fact didn’t stop somebody attempting to censor the statues a couple of years ago. Fortunately Norwegians are generally of a more liberal mindset than that, and the park is celebrated as a cultural highlight; attracting more than a million visitors each year.

More information can be found at the Park’s website, and there are many excellent pictures at Panoramio.

Thanks to Steve Fernie and Gard Karlsen.

Locations: Norway / Categories: Monuments, Shadows, Structures, Theme Parks

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Designed by the architects Snøhetta, and opened in April this year, the Opera House features a huge sloping roof that runs past either side of the foyer, tapering all the way down to the water’s edge. Best of all, visitors can climb all over it (possibly thanks to Norway’s refusal to join the fun police – Er, I mean the European Union).

Italian marble and granite account for the striking whiteness of the exterior, but some sections are also clad in aluminium punched with spherical forms, and the interior is awash with dark, sculpted oak.

Unfortunately the Opera House wasn’t completely finished in these satellite images, so it’s worth having a look through this Flickr pool – as the building is truly stunning now that it’s done.

Arcspace.com has a good photo tour of the whole building, The Times did a story about the launch event, and there’s more at Wikipedia of course.

Thanks to James McKay.

Locations: Norway / Categories: Buildings, Watercraft

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According to gyrrus, who found the image of the whale:

it probably drifted onshore already dead … and was removed by the Norwegian Coast Guard a week or two after this image was taken.

This isn’t the only example of a dead whale found in Google’s imagery – all the way back in February 2006 we posted this image of a bleeding whale on a beach in South Africa.

We also previously featured a couple of pods of very-much-alive whales, as well as a roundup of some of the best fake whales across the globe.

Thanks to gyrrus.

Locations: Norway, South Africa / Categories: Animals

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