Arrival in Stockholm

There isn't much to blog about today. We started the morning with a shopping trip to the mall next door to our hotel in Copenhagen. It is a little bit warmer than most people packed for therefore shorts, tshirts, and flipflops were the needed items. Our bus driver Max, whom we had met the day before, entertained us with Danish jokes of which the funnisest one was one that involved a tour leader, upset stomach, and beating the s*)t out of a ghost. Travel to Denmark for the rest of the joke :-) Max was a very sweet former policeman that said our tour group needed to be arrested....for being nice...so he could keep us in Denmark.

We boarded a flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm and enjoyed a leisurly dinner and walk from our hotel down to a view of the city and the Baltic Sea. We took several pictures of the moon visible at sunset. For those that have seen my travel photos I think we have as many pictures of flowers, birds, and the moon as I have of the London Eye ;-)

The Baltic Sea and Stockholm

Moon over Stockholm

Although The Lord blessed us with cooler weather in Stockholm there is no AC in this hotel. Wendy and I have one fan going at our feet and one fan going at our heads. We are VERY grateful for the fans provided in the rooms. Otherwise I fear we would have been forced to take our LARGE pillows to the street for sleep. Southern chicks need AC!!!!

Copenhagen

After finally awaking my roomie up at 10:30 a.m. (one of the many awesome things about Wendy as a roommate is the ability to make as much noise as a marching band and you will NOT disturb her sleep), Wendy and I took off exploring the beautiful city of Copenhagen. We started with Tivoli Gardens, which is the cross between amusement park, state fair, and botanical gardens. It was around 80 degrees today with a clear blue sky and according to the locals they only get 4 or 5 days a YEAR like this so many of them were out enjoying the park. 

Tivoli

We continued along through Copenhagen along the many pedestrian streets toward the Botanical Gardens. We were enticed here to see the beautiful, lush green spaces but also there was a rumor there is an arctic greenhouse that is climate controlled for arctic plants. While the weather here is a breezy and low humidity 80 degrees, it is still warmer than expected. Most places do NOT have air conditioning so therefore there is little relief inside. Sadly the arctic greenhouse was closed but we still got to see a flower that blooms only once every 15 years. We also got a reminder of how hot we could be in Mississippi as apparently this flower likes very warm and VERY humid air. I'm going to admit our tour guide nor the "official garden brochure" described the plant in any detail. After a 5 second Google search I am understanding why they didn't refer to it as it's um....accurate might be the word....name.

Here is the plant and here is the link to find out more about it: http://www.vocativ.com/world/denmark/penis-flower-blooms-copenhagen/

After the garden tour we hiked back down to the National Museum that is located in one of the prince of Denmark's palace. The museum was somewhat interesting but we only had 15 minutes to explorer before closing so all I can really tell you is every other room was really hot and the original Danes were farmers that then spread farming to other parts of Europe. We traveled back to our hotel for our included dinner with the group by water taxi. We thought it was going to be a 10 minute cruise. It ended up being an hour but we did get fresh air, a breeze, and another look at the beautiful city. 

Following dinner I walked back to the Tivoli Gardens with a a few other travelers to enjoy the park at night. I love traveling and visiting with so many people, especially since most (with the exception of Wendy and Margie) are my dad's age. They have all experienced so many neat things in their lives and there are lessons to learn from them all. See dad...I told you that you could hang with this group. There are at least 30 people older than you!!!

Oslo and Copenhagen

I wasn't able to blog last night since we were on a cruise ship and their was no wifi on the ship. For our last day in Oslo a few of us went to see the Opera House that is built to resemble a glacier. You are able to climb to the top and see a view of the city. Apparently locals love to go there to do yoga, drink a glass of wine, and hang out with good friends.

Climb to the top of the Opera House

After a brief walk around the city of Oslo we boarded an overnight ferry to Copenhagen. We had an amazing Norwegian buffet for dinner and then joined many of our fellow tour group members on the deck for wine. We ended the night in a piano bar where a few of us made friends with a few Norwegians. 

We arrived the next morning to the beautiful city of Copenhagen. After a stop to view the little Mermaid statue which is a tribute to Denmark's most famous writter Hans Christian Anderson. This afternoon we took a water taxi to New Harbor, which is ironically the oldest harbor in Copenhagen. The sun was out and the weather was warm so it was a PERFECT day to sit at a harbor view restaurant with a Carlsberg and enjoy the music of the Jazz Festival that is currently going on in Copenhagen. We did take a little excursion over to Christiania, which is basically a commune founded in 1973. The people there love to live the "free life" including a little side business of cannibus trading. It is controvisial with the government but the tourists seem to love it. We walked back along the canal to our hotel where we are enjoying the World Cup futbol match on Danish tv.

Nyhaven (New Harbor)

Oslo

Oslo is the growing capital city of Norway. There is a tremendous amout of construction going on building new neighborhoods in the city of Oslo. In fact, architects around the world travel to Oslo to study new architechture. On of those buildings is the new Opera House which was opened in 2008. These same architects are rebuilding Times Square in Manahatten so look for some new fangled styles in the U.S. 

Norway is quite the progressive nation. 40% of Parliment has to be served by women. Imagine that rule in the U.S.!!! The Nobel PEACE prize is given in Oslo (note the capital PEACE....other Nobel prizes are awarded somewhere else, which I think there will be more to come about that). 

We vitsited the Viking Museum today and learned a bit about the area that settled this area of the world. The boats that were built for the Vikings were so shallow that they could run up on the shore, attack, and run back out quickly. Again women had strong roles including running the land operations during their day. In fact, a husband stealing the keys to the farm could be grounds for divorce. 

Detail on Viking Ship

Viking Ship

We traveled on to the Kon Tiki musuem to learn about a Norweighn explorer (sorry....can't spell his name so just Google Kon Tiki). Basically this man realized that if people inhabited islands from way back when then they must have built boats out of light wood and reed. He built one in the 1940's and sailed across the Pacific as the ultimate action research project. In the 1970's he and another team built another boat to sail around the middle eastern countires but were stoped at the Red Sea due to fighting in the region. In protest, they burned the boat rather than abandoning their mission.  If you actually want to learn more about this let me know. I'll throw a party and we can watch the documentary of this adventure as it is the ONLY Norwegian film to win an Oscar.

Reed boat of the Kon Tiki

We ended our tour of Oslo at a scupture garden. I, again cannot spell the name of the artist. Google it. The sculputres were amazing in their depiction of the circle of life.

The ending of the day was at an AH-MAZING meal at a local restaurant found by our New York City traveling friends. Trust a New Yorker to find a good restuarant. I could go into details but lets just call this place the Doe's Eatplace of Oslo, Norway. Halibut...to DIE FOR!

Salmon starter with potato blinzes

Hailbut main course

The Fjords and a Lesson in Socialism

Today was one of the most anticipated days for our group. We traveled by train to Voss and then down a "mamma mia" road to board a boat to cruise through the Fjords. There isn't much to tell and these pics won't do it justice but here is a taste...

Train to the Fjords:

Mamma Mia road

Fjords

After the Fjord cruise we took one of the steepest rails in the world halway back to Bergen. Along the way we had a stop to see a fairy dance at a waterfall. I can't tell you why she is there or why there is a sound system there to play her music, but here ya go.....

We arrived at the last stop for the tourist train and waited a while to board a regular train back to Bergen. We made it a few stops and then everone had to get off the train at a stop in the shire of Norway because of a malfunction on the train tracks. In a capitalist country such as the US you better bet every taxi driver, bus driver, local citizen, etc. would have been itching to give rides to the 400 strandarded train riders. Not in a socialist country. It is Sunday. Everyone is off on Sunday,  Therefore it took almost an hour and a half, and our Russian tour guide pulling off a miracle she would only call a "Russian secret" to secure a bus for our group of 42. We felt a little bad about the 300+ still waiting on busses to arrive (it would take 12 busses for all the people) but then we reminded oursevles this is the benefit of competition people. 

Day in Bergen

We started off the morning with a tour with a little history of the city of Bergen. Bergen is an important seaport dating back to Hanseactic times when Bergen had exclusive trading rights for northern Norway. Today Bergen has one of the largest shipping industries in the world and is a research center for sub sea oil drilling in the North Sea. Our tour guide boasted the minimum wage in Bergen is around $21 US dollars but a hamburger is about $25 US dollars so in perspective it isn't that good! It rains around 250 days per year here. We have seen everthing from mist to heavy rain to sunshine to very high winds today and it's only 5:43. Speaking of the time....it is very difficult to tell what time it is without a watch. Bascially there is 23 hours of gray skies about about 1 hour of twlight, which I witnessed around 1:30 a.m. during my restless first night of sleep. 

Our first stop today was at Edvard Greig's house. Greig was a highly popular Romantic era composer from Bergen. His house sits at the top of a bluff overlooking a beautiful Bay area. He shared this house with his wife Nina, whose family was not happy about her marrige to Edvard. They thought he did nothing but write music that no one listened to. As Greig's music became more popular he and Nina, an accomplished soprano, toured all of Europe giving concerts. His music weaves in Norwegian folk tunes with more traditional classical styles. At the hight of his popularity he was offered $20,000 to tour the U.S. but turned it down due to his tendancy toward sea sickness. The U.S. settled for Strauss but only paid him $6,000. 

Edvard Greig

View Edvard had for composing his works...

We then visited the Fantoft Stave Church, which was orginally built in the old style of complete wood with no nails. Sadly the church was burned in June of 1993 by the leader of a satanic cult. He was charged with the crime but sadly never served any time. Stave churches used to be very common in Norway but their style is extremly small. There was a law passed that a third of the congregation had to be able to fit inside of any church built therefore most stave churches have been destroyed. As such, the owner of the Fantoft church felt it was important to rebuild the church in the same old methods to preserve a piece of the past.

Interior of church 

We ended our tour in the Bergen harbor which is a very picturesque fishing village. Along one side of the harbor are a few preserved buildings of the old orignial city of Bryggen. Disney copied this idea for the city of Arendelle in the movie Frozen. One last interesting fact we learned from our tour guide was that in the Middle Ages there was one pub for every 12 people in Bergen. I certainly hope the alcohol was cheapter then because a pint of beer today costs around $20!!

Old village 

We were able to enjoy an amazing lunch of fresh mussels, shrimp, salmon, scallops, and whitefish for lunch at the Fish Market, located on the harbor. It was all very good but the salmon was unlike any I have ever had before! Amazing!!

Mussels 

Seafood kabob 

We are catching a break now before enjoying a meal on the hotel terrace of items purchased at the local grocery store. Did I mentioned this place is expensive???

Arrival in Bergen

We flew to Bergen, Norway via Atlanta and Amsterdam. TSA could learn some lessons in customer service from Amsterdam. EVERY single person we encountered were kind, happy, and helpful. It may have something to do with the "crops" but seriously....the Dutch know how to make people happy in an airport and an airplane.

We arrived in Bergen to be greated by a pleasantly cool breeze and cloudy skies. After a quick transefer to our hotel, located in the city center, a few of us took off for an adventure up a funiculare to a lookout point high above the cliffs of Bergen. We were treated to stunning views of the sea village below! We took a small hike to a pond where the rain coming across the forest made us feel like we were in a magical fairy land. Seriously....we really wondered where the magical creatures were hiding!!

We followed up our hike by a visit to the harbor and quick stop at the fish market where we tried caviar (not a fan), fresh smoked salmon, and mussels that we quite simply to die for. A few of us then found a local pub for a quick afternoon IPA. 

Following dinner a group of us headed to the local grocery for meat, cheese, crackers, and libations. The locals are so very kind and pointed us in the direction of really good choices, except one cheese that resembled a sponge that none of us shall ever eat again. I'm not sure the homeless would even want it. ACK!!! We braved hurricane force winds to sit on the hotel terrace and enjoy the nignt "lights" of this area. In fact it is 11:25 pm here and it just now showing signs of waning sunlight. 

Tomorrow we'll learn more about this beautiful city by the sea. Until then it is lights out (kind of) after over 24 hours of being awake!!!