Category: Europe 6/2015

We started our day with a hunt for bicycles. The challenge is that there weren’t any kid sized bikes nor tandems in Copenhagen that we could find. Our third stop had one of these carts so the Kid got to be a lady of leisure for the day. She got to sit back and relaxing while H and I pedaled thru the town. What I will say is that Copenhagen has their bike lanes organized correctly. While Amsterdam was well set out, it was very chaotic. Copenhagen bike lanes  were well organized and orderly. We rode about 10 miles throughout the day and the entire time we had our own lanes and felt safe.

I had this purple beauty. I thought the smaller seat wouldn’t hurt my bum as much but that wasn’t the case!

Everywhere we went we saw these bike locks. They were attached to the bikes and were amazing. People wouldn’t even  attach the bikes to structures with locks because they felt secure in these locks.

After riding around a bit we went to Tivoli Gardens. It is a very famous amusement park and honestly I think it is amazing. It opened in August 1843 and is the second oldest amusement park in the world. Unlike other amusement parks, everything is really classy. There are beautiful gardens everywhere. The buildings are exotic, the gardens were immaculate and blossoming. There were restaurants and band stands and of course there were lots of rides. Even the gardens in the rides were manicured. It was busy but not over crowded. It was just lovely. The gift shops didn’t even have cheap souvineers and instead had very “Pottery Barn” style house decorations. 

Tivoli’s oldest and most popular ride, the wooden Roller Coaster from 1914, is one of only seven roller coasters in the world that has a person riding and using a hand brake. 

We left early and went to the Copenhagen Street Food Market for lunch. It had a huge selection of international street food and everything we bought was tasty! 

Again my neighborhood researching was unsuccessful. Note to self: stop looking for travel info on Quora. We walked in and out of this one pretty quickly. 

We rode a bit further and came across these trampolines…

From there we rode to the Little Mermaid statue which was built in 1913 and was inspired by Hans Christian Andersens story about a Little Mermaid… My guess is that you have heard Disney’s version of the story before.

We returned the bikes and returned to Tivoli for some more fun!

I have included the picture below so H has a record of some planters I would love for him to build…

More miscellaneous pictures:

At night, thousands of coloured lights create a fairy tale atmosphere that is completely unique.

So much fun!

Cat has been looking forward to zip lining in Oslo almost as much as she was looking forward to going to the Eiffel Tower! In Oslo, they covert the ski area into a zip lining area for the summer.

We had a 10 minute orientation and were set free. 

The before pics:

There were so many people in line for the first level zip line that we opted for the one that started 3 floors up. (What were we thinking?!)

H went first, then Cat and then me. Unfortunate for the reader, you completely miss out on my finesse and grace as I was the only one with the camera.

The first obstacle

The second obstacle:

The third obstacle

The forth obstacle:

The fifth obstacle: (teeter totter log cross)

There was 5 other obstacles and then the passage ended with the zip line into this pad where you needed to pull yourself around. I was ok for the other stages but struggled with this last bit so decided that one time around was enough for me.

. 

H and Cat went on 3 more routes and I went for a couple of hikes. Cat and H were like ninjas moving thru the trees. By the end of the day, Cat was moving thru the obstacles as if she had been swinging thru the trees her whole life! It was a win win for everyone and a really fun day. We caught the metro home, grabbed sandwiches and were asleep by 8:30pm!

Misc pictures for the day:

Pictures from my hike

We got up this morning and had a fabulous breakfast in the hotel and then took a 2 hour fjord boat cruise. Weather was perfect, views were stunning and the  sea breeze was refreshing.

We rode past a cute church on the waters edge.

And took a few of selfies…

Cat went exploring in the boat and found the room under the deck. The exposed hull wasn’t what I was expecting but was cool to see.

We sailed past Norweigan beaches which were mostly patches of grass. This one actually had a diving board that went into the fjord.

We got back to docks and had an  ice cream and a wander and came across this astronomical clock. I love my clocks!

We saw an Oslo fire truck which looked almost as spiffy as the Oslo fireman that drove it.

We grabbed some snacks and headed over to Akershus Fortress. It was originally built in the 1300’s but can be considered a patchwork of a fort for the different add ons and repairs it has had over the years.  It was originally built to protect the city of Oslo but has changed hands several times and changed from a castle and home to the king to a fort to a prison and now aside from the museums it holds, also still has social functions and mass/weddings/baptisms in the Fort church.

The fort church was part of our exploration. Howard and Cat had already moved on. I was still listening to the audio tour and as I was leaving an older gentleman belted out an acapella chorus in a language I am unsure of. The reverberation in the empty room was amazing. He just did the one chorus and seemed to only want to hear his echo. He was content with his performance and I appreciated being able to hear it.

In the picture of the church below, the King and Queen would sit in the box at the left. The alter was in the middle and the sermon was given  in the box on the right.

Below are some miscellaneous pics of the fort. One thing that never occurred to me was that some of the prisoner quarters were not only cold and wet but also angled. The floor on this cell was at about a 30 degree slant. (Bottom right picture)  How uncomfortable.

After the tour we headed back to the hotel, grabbed our packs and headed to the train station.

When we got to the airport we weighed our bags. H had been complaining that he had by far the heaviest pack of the group because he was carrying everyone’s dirty clothes. I had mine and Cat’s clean clothes, souvineers and other miscellaneous bits. Cat had all things we would need in the next 36 hours of travel. The scale was in Kilos but:

Nicole: 17.4/ 38.28 lbs

H: 14.5 / 31.9 lbs

Cat: 6.9/  15.8 lbs

H’s day pack: 5.6 / 12.32 lbs

To be fair, H’s combined packs were a bit heavier but not enough to qualify for the amount of complaining that took place….

We got to the airport early to find that our flight was delayed 2 hours. When we went to check our bags we found an iPad mini on the floor by the elevator. After we got rid of our bags we dropped it off at lost and found. On our way back to departures we came across a white faced teary eyed young girl who spoke to us in Norwegian. H asked her if she lost an iPad and her eyes lit up and the color on her face returned. We all walked back to the lost and found and retrieved it with her. From there she ran off and we watched her from afar as she held it up in victory to show her mom. Yay for the little girl!

All the airport restaurants were closed by the time we got to the gate so we had no choice but to break our “no American restaurants when you are outside of America” rule and ate Pizza Hut. As we sat there eating our pizza that was on par with what we got in Milan, it sank in that the end of this amazing trip was coming soon. We saw the hallway we walked down when we arrived to this airport 27 days ago. Our backpacks were overfilled and our minds were occupied with the knowledge that adventure was soon on our horizon.

Lucky for us we have a night layover in London and get to see Howard’s parents and the dogs. When we landed, we were greeted by them outside of customs and had a quick visit.

 We get to see them again in the morning and then it’s time for our long haul home.

We woke up early and were greeted by H’s mom in the hotel lobby. Our hotel was in Slough which is where H’s parents lived in the early stages of their relationship over 50 years ago. On our way back to the Caravan park, she took us on the scenic route and told us stories and showed us landmarks of their courtship.

Some stats for the Europe 2015 trip:

Miles traveled around Europe by train and car: 3,633 miles

Steps taken: 451,464

Miles walked: 206.25

Calories burned: 97,363

Flights of stairs climbed: 602

Countries visited: 11

Things I know:

Every traveler embarks on a trip like this with hopes to have unique experiences that are different from travelers exactly like them.  I think that we made a decent attempt of finding the middle ground of hitting the major tourist venues and also following the path least traveled. None of the trip was really planned out, and we kept an open mind on the things that we tried. Our trips to Australia and Spain were so integrated into the local culture that this trip seemed a bit removed.  That said, every single person (minus one Frenchman) we interacted with was friendly, personable and helpful. I truly believe people in general have good intentions.