Category: Europe 6/2015 Page 1 of 5

Car~ Plane ~ Train ~ Taxi ~ and a long walk uphill!!

Today we started our adventure! Our 4 weeks away from normal life stresses has finally begun!

As long as we have each other, are having fun and laughing a lot during this break: nothing else matters. The card games have aleady come out, the silly jokes keep coming around and of course, the photos are being captured.

The obligatory “Special occasion under the fairy tree” picture was the first.

At Phoenix Airport … Let’s get this started!!

The pack is almost as big as she is!!

Captain Caitlyn

Once we landed in Oslo we had to take a train to get to our hotel, the Frogner House Apartments. Cat tried to fight sleep most of the trip but the lull of the train finally rocked her to sleep.

Our hotel kitchen! You would think it is straight from Ikea!

While researching Oslo, multiple postings had mentioned Vigeland Park. The Vigeland Park is the world’s largest sculpture park made by a single artist, Gustavo Vigeland with more than 200 sculptures in bronze, granite and wrought iron. H wasn’t that excited by the sound of it, but on arrival to Oslo we asked 3 random people what we should see here and it won unanimously. 

We stopped at the store and grabbed lunch and had a picnic before we started exploring. 

   

Our first meal of the trip! 

From there we started enjoying the lush green Frogner Park which also included the Vigeland Sculpture Park. There are 650 radical sculptures created by Gustav Vigeland throughout the garden including the 55 ft high Monolith that is made up of 121 intertwined human bodies. (Caitlyn was very clear that she thought they were very inappropriate and needed to get some clothes on! ) 

Some random pics from the day:

 

 

 

After walking around the statues we headed to a play area at the local park.  It was a mini adventure park with several really challenging obstacles.  Cat played for about an hour and loved challenging herself on the different stations. The place was amazing.

  

I now understand why there are so many beautiful and “in-shape” people in this country. They start them young! Kids were very active; running around and taking so many more “risks” than kids do at playgrounds in America.

It is also amazingly lush and green here. Flowers are blooming and beautiful. I have never smelled such fragrant flowers before!

We were talking to a man at the park who explained that the switch from winter to spring was very quick this year and within 3 days blooms blossomed, leaves grew and the dark days ended almost instantly.

     

     

We took the bus back to the train station to make our reservations for the next leg of our trip.

 Afterward, we stopped at the Oslo Opera House. The angular architecture appears to arise from the waters of the Oslo Fjord.

We climbed to the top and enjoyed the views of the many ships in the fjord.

We capped the night off in the middle of the town square enjoying a messy kebab while people watching until we realized it was 11 pm! We lost track of time as it was still light out. 

Caitlyn is becoming an expert already in reading train schedules!

      

The landscapes on the train ride in Norway were stunning. There were tons of beautiful lakes and streams with lush forests in the backgrounds and rowboats parked on the water’s edge. Many of the views looked like they would make great puzzles! I felt like looking out of the train windows was better than watching TV!

As we moved down towards Sweden, the views changed as well. They were much flatter and reminded us of Britain. It was still beautiful but H and I both noticed the similarities.

If anyone knows Caitlyn, they know that Subway is her favorite place in the world! She was very very excited to see one at the train station and although it goes against every bone in my body to eat American food on a trip like this….she was the happiest girl to be able to get her Turkey sub! She said it almost tasted exactly the same as the ones at home except she didn’t like the cheese!

  

The rest of the train ride was spent playing cards, booking the next leg of the journey and being silly…

We got into Malmö around 8pm,

checked into our quaint hotel that had different paintings on each door…

…and had a 20 minute conversation on what this was, why you would use it and how you would use it.

We did a bit of sightseeing

         

before grabbing a scrumptious meal of Swedish Meatballs and Swedish cider …

…and then called it a night.

We also saw our first windmill!

I will also say I was impressed to see seat belts on all of the buses (not that anyone used them).

We got checked in for our ferry ride and had about 30 minutes to wait. I had a small wander around the ferry building and thought this stairwell was cool.

We took another short bus ride to get onto the actual ferry. The driver actually drove onto the boat. Once we got off, there was no instruction on where we should go and he left us to wander thru the semi trucks that were parked below deck and find our own way to get inside.

Once onboard the “Nils Holgersson” it was very much like a cruise ship. Cat and I worked out at the gym, then showered in the cabin and then went to watch a movie and play in the kids area. We squeezed in a short nap as we are still jet lagged and woke up as we were pulling into port.

Our cabin:

View from our window

At the end of the cruise, again we were given vague directions on how to get off the boat and found ourselves here:

Someone found us and rerouted us to the bus.

Howard and Cat both ended up with truck grease all over them.

We caught one more train from Rostock, Germany to Berlin

We checked into our hotel and went out looking for a place for dinner. Our goal when eating out is to find:

A) something local that speaks to the cuisine of where we are.

B) a place that has something appealing on the menu for the 3 of us.

C) a good vibe to the restaurant

Our intention tonight was to find somewhere that had Wiener schnitzel which is the local fare of deep fried veal.

Instead, we stumbled upon an amazing Spanish restaurant that featured all of our favorite tapas from when we lived in Santiago de Compostela. We dined on garlic shrimp, calamari, jamon serrano, chorizo, lamb sausages, queso, and most importantly Pimientos de  Padron which are amazing chili peppers that were our favorite! The meal was a walk down memory lane and enabled us to share a lot of memories and stories of our time in Spain with Cat. Such a great night!

To end the post I do want to add a few points to ponder…

It’s been 18 years since our last big backpacking trip.

      A) I don’t need half of what I packed and will be purging during this leg of the trip.

      B) I don’t remember this many aches and pains from carrying a pack 18 years ago.

      C) traveling as a family unit is such a different experience than being a couple wandering thru the unknown. You need to take things slower and think things thru a bit more. You can’t just hope for the best with a 7-year-old in tow. That also translates to the fact that I’ve needed to hand over the navigation torch to H as I have already gotten us lost a few times. ;(

     D) I would never have guessed that Cat would be such a great traveler at this age. She is flexible, tries new things and brings a different perspective. She already has the travel bug and is planning where she wants to go on our next trip!

      E) As a family unit we travel well together. This trip is so much fun and really what life is about!