EPILOGUE: Coming Home

It's still amazing how the changes in latitude affect the days. The alarm went off at 0400 but it looked more like 0800. It would figure that our last morning in Iceland was sunny, bright and beautiful. I decided to head down to the 10-11 for some breakfasty-type snacks and some much-needed caffeine. I finally got Liz the “Shrek Nuggets” she had so desired from a couple of nights before. “Shrek Nuggets” were actually a bag of bite-sized cinnamon rolls with a cross-promotional ad for the fourth Shrek movie, so she combined the two. We got our shuttle bus and caught the coach out to Keflavík. An important note is that, while in the airport, we stopped at Duty-Free and picked up a bottle of Brennivín for Liz's dad. More on that later.

We decided that IcelandAir sucks. It just seemed to be a genuine lack of caring, customer service, efficiency, and professionalism, so we were only too happy to disembark in Heathrow. Anyone who complains about security in the US should take at least one trip through London at some point in their lives. While it's FAR more invasive, it's INFINITELY more efficient and was almost pleasant compared to what we would later face at Dulles. After we checked in and checked our bags, we got in the line for the x-ray and I came to a horrifying realization: I still had the pint bottle of Brennivín in my backpack! Clearly, that would exceed the 3oz. limitation at the security checkpoint and we'd lose the bottle, so I panicked. We approached the security person and explained our situation and produced our duty-free receipt for the item and he graciously let us through after examining that the bottle had not been opened. There was the third “oops” of the trip and caused a near rumble between Liz and myself. Clearly, we needed to get home.

The flight from Heathrow to Dulles was pretty uneventful—just excruciatingly long, but delivered us home, which was all that mattered!

Day 13: Exploring Reykjavík

Wiped out is only a weak preamble to how we both feel right now. We had some exploring to do, though, so we were going to do it. I was up before the alarm again; knowing how early we'll have to get up tomorrow, we decided to keep getting up early. I showered in “the fart chamber” and shaved. We took our time getting ready since there was no real plan or schedule. After breakfast, we headed up to Laugavegur to actually see it with some of the shops open. It wasn't as thrilling as we might have thought, but there was some neat stuff to peruse. We walked down Laugavegur and then up the other shopping street, Skólavörðustígur (SKO-la-vuur-thoos-tee-goor), which led directly to Hallgrímskirkja (Hall-greems-kirk-ya), the massive cathedral at the center of town. What a striking building! As impressive as it is on the skyline, it is very clean and bright on the inside. You'd think that a cathedral such as this would be dark, solemn, and tinted with stained glass, but not so here. The crystal baptismal font and the pipe organ were the most impressive parts of this mighty church.

After that, we walked back to Laugavegur and found the vegetarian restaurant, Á næstu grösum (OW NICE-to GREW-sume), who had a very interesting buffet. It would all have been excellent if the chickpea salad hadn't been ruined with cilantro! PLEH! Tastes like soap. It was quite fulfilling nonetheless and gave us a second wind. We continued on to the city center and caught the bus back up the hill with Perlan our objective. We caught the 18 bus to The Pearl and it was marvelous. How cool to take hot water tanks and make an attraction out of it. A beautiful 360° panorama of the city that didn't cost 500 ISK each, like at Hallgrímskirkja. We got some of our best landscape photos yet up there, and I finally got my last hat for the collection.

I hadn't mentioned here, but I've collected a hat from each of the five countries we've visited. It started at Kauppatori in Helsinki, when I needed to shade my frying melon from the midday sun, and it became a fixation. I got two national baseball caps (Finland, Sweden), a bucket hat from Denmark, a tuque in Norway, and for Iceland, a baseball cap that says, “ég tala ekki íslensku,” or, “I don't speak Icelandic.” I thought it was amusing since that's the one language of the five that I bothered to learn anything about!

It was now about 1545, so we got the bus back to town and went back down Laugavegur (monotonous, eh?) in search of comfort food and an early dinner. Santa Maria! Some mighty good Mexican food. By this point, walking had given way to trudging, so as we walked down Hverfisgata (KVER-fis-gotta), the main through-street, we caught the bus and went ONE stop, to save us from walking that little stretch. We stopped at the front desk to arrange our Flybus pickup at 0435 tomorrow, so you can see our desire for an early bed. We got back to the room and started packing. I checked email and how fitting that our wedding photos would get posted today—the last real day of our Honeymoon. Pern and Karen did a fantastic job.

Since tomorrow will likely be all travel and not that interesting, I'll skip day 14 and write a summary tomorrow or Wednesday, if I have the energy. Signing off at 1928.

Day 12: Bathing on the Moon

*NOTE: It was at this point in the trip that Liz got sick of journal writing, so it's all Scott from here on out...

A later start today, a day that was meant to be relaxing. I was up before the alarm and decided to get a shower before the trip. The shower was a special experience. Because the hot water is geothermally heated and flows to Reykjavík at 81°C, they add a touch of a naturally-occurring sulfur compound to the water to prevent pipe corrosion. Imagine washing yourself with a stink bomb. We affectionately referred to our shower stall henceforth as “the fart chamber.” Fortunately, the smell doesn't linger on the skin, so that was a big plus. I woke Liz and we headed downstairs for breakfast and our 0930 pickup for Bláa lónið (BLAU-ah LO-nith), the Blue Lagoon.

It was 0945 when the bus picked us up and took us to the coach. Blue Lagoon is about halfway between Reykjavík and Keflavík Airport, so it's a popular spot for stopovers. It also means that it's about a 30-minute ride by coach. The Reykjanes peninsula is one of those wastelands that conjures thoughts of what the Moon would look like if it had an atmosphere. I know I've said all of this before, but it's one of those things to which I'd find it hard to grow accustomed.

The lagoon itself is an accident; what was initially thought to be an ecological disaster is now one of the most profitable businesses in Iceland. The nearby power plant was one of the first large plants in Iceland and, instead of feeding waste water back into the boreholes as the new plants do, they simply dumped it out onto the plains. When it was discovered that the water and the minerals contained therein were good for the skin, it was hailed as serendipity and the Blue Lagoon was born.

The resort-spa is a very cool system. You get an RFID-tagged bracelet that allows you to enter the facility, lock your locker, and charge refreshments at the swim-up bar. Once inside, we discovered that, due to strict hygiene laws, we were required to fully shower with soap and without clothing prior to as well as after bathing. Fortunately, they did have some showers with privacy stalls for we prudish Americans. We met outside the lockers and exited the building, greeted by about 55°F ambient temperature and a piercing drizzle on our now mostly-exposed skin. Quite fortunately, the Lagoon is naturally heated to around 104°F (possibly a fair bit higher in some spots, it seemed), so it was perfect. I think Liz described the mineral-rich water best, calling it, “skim milk with a drop of blue food coloring added.” It was most pleasant, and just what we needed.

People watching doesn't disappoint at the Lagoon either: there were some choices of swimwear that ranged from tragic to ill-conceived to requiring a strong concentration of eye bleach. What is it with German men and Speedos? Others of the young ladies present might have done well to have tested their garments for translucency before entering the pool. Note: I didn't want to look, but I couldn't avert my eyes in time!

We soaked and swam and explored all areas of the very large pool. We smeared the silica mud on our faces, having opted out of that tradition with wedding cake a couple of weeks ago. I even gave Liz a piggy-back ride! After we had fully pruned, we got out and rested a while before returning to the pool for our massages at 1300. Leave it to me to get the surly, silent masseuse out of the bunch. Her name was Ilsa and she seemed to think I was some kind of bongo drum. It wasn't a completely unpleasant experience, although it was fairly light on the actual massage part. One of the coolest parts of the massage, aside from the fact that you're partially submerged through the whole thing, was that after a while, they would pull you off of the submerged table and allow you to float on a foam mattress while continuing the massage fully underwater.

After an hour of that, we were severely pruned, so we opted to change back to street clothes and hit the Lava restaurant there at the facility. This was our first true miss of the whole trip. To say the buffet was lacking would be extremely kind; in fact, it was rather grotesque. Saved by the bell, however, as we now realized it was nearing 1500 and the buses ran on the 15s back to Reykjavík. We hustled out, briefly boarded the wrong bus, then got right and back to town. Since we got dropped at the central bus station instead of the hotel, Liz had the genius idea of procuring one-day bus passes for tomorrow.

We came back to the hotel to rest a bit and figure out what to do next. It's becoming clear that, although we're still enjoying ourselves, it's time to go home. After thirteen straight days of being on-the-go, it's tough to get moving again once at rest. We decided on simple and close for dinner, not wanting to repeat the failure of lunch. Two blocks up on Laugavegur, there was a wood-fired pizza place with a strong menu, so we hit it. A brilliant veggie pizza later, I was feeling refreshed. We decided at that point to finally take advantage of the 10-11 store under the hotel and made a crap raid. Ice cream, Pringles, skyr, strange candies and odd beverages—kickass! Skyr is a very interesting product: it's like triple-thick yogurt with a much more custard-like texture, but it's amazing stuff. Mine seemed to be peach-raspberry flavor and it was delicious. Although it's still kind of early in the evening, I wanted to get this done. We downloaded a Patton Oswalt stand-up special and we're going to watch before bed. Yeah, we miss TV too.

Day 11: Golden Circle

Oh, the early. Another night, another new bed, another climate not under control. I didn't sleep quite as badly as in the YOTEL! but it wasn't fantastic. We had to start at 0645 so we could get breakfast before our 0800 pickup, and they REALLY meant it: I suspect there were other buses, but we left the parking lot of the Fosshotel Barón at 0802! We stopped at a couple of other hotels along the way, completely filling the shuttle. Now, I've gotten used to being surrounded by non-English speakers by now, but I wasn't expecting almost half of the group to be German. It seems that, on Saturdays, the tour is given in English and German; Liz was digging it. All through the day, she was filling me in on little insights that the guide had left out of the English version of the tour.

The drive out of town was a good length, and we got to see more of Iceland’s strange and wild vastness. The clouds were heavy and low, so we couldn’t see the tops of the mountains, and there was a lot of fog in many places, combined with steam in other places from various geothermal vents, which give everything an overall other-worldly feeling. Somehow, given the otherworldly look of the terrain, it seemed fitting and wasn’t much of a hindrance to our day.

First stop was Nesjavellir (NES-ya-vet-leer), which I found odd, yet cool. It felt like climbing the Smokies to get there, though; the mountains here are serious. We learned that the stations like this pump heated water from boreholes, use it to heat fresh water, turn a steam turbine to generate electricity, and then pump it back into the ground to start the cycle over again. Efficient and eco-friendly; it generates no waste. The weather was somewhat bleak, misty, and dank, but it barely dampened the majesty of this place in its stark desolation. 58% of Iceland is desert wasteland and a further 11% is glacier. Oh, and the geothermal vents, boreholes, and steam smell strongly of sulfur—go figure!

After the power plant we headed to Þingvellir, the site of the original Icelandic parliament from 930 AD. Along the road, we had some spectacular views of Þingvallavatn, an enormous spring water lake. The site of Þingvellir was a little strange, since there’s no actual building to mark the spot (except a random church), but the area itself was incredible – a deep gorge with a wide path down the center making a slow descent to a wide open plain with a serpentine stream full of the clearest blue-green water I’d ever seen.

Walking through the gorge at Þingvellir was indescribable—we would later discover that this trench was actually the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Sheer cliffs on either side of us stretched 150 feet over our heads, and here we were in the middle, feeling as if the Earth could swallow you whole at any moment. It was possibly my favorite part of the tour. The other thing that struck me here, as it did whilst flying in, was the color of the water. It resembled the fake blue water you often see here in mini-golf courses, but this was for real.

As we walked back to the coach, it started to mist and then genuinely rain, but it eased up as we left the area, and we were soon riding further across the strange wilderness to our next destination: Gullfoss. The golden waterfall was indeed impressive, as the river turned a corner, crashing down one small waterfall and then a larger one into an insanely deep gorge. We were allowed to walk down on the rocks right next to the waterfall, which was an awesome experience, although a little nerve-wracking since I’m about as coordinated as a three-legged giraffe on roller skates. I managed not to break my neck or fall over the waterfall, and only gave Scott a minor panic attack when he thought the route I was taking to climb down some rocks was pointing me straight into the falls.

The milky-white water seemed to have carved the ground with a sharp, flat chisel with an almost mechanical precision—the gorge walls were steep, deep and straight. Gullfoss isn't exactly on par with Niagara in terms of scale, but the combination of the landscape and this feature's effect was awe-inspiring and well worth the chill. We walked back up to the viewing area and then up a “small hill” to the cafe (pictures will describe why this is funny). Lunch was soup and it really perked us back up. While in the cafe/shop, I bought Liz a silver runic necklace that has the bindrune “ást” (OUST), which is Icelandic for “love”. I really think it made her day and it made mine to see her smile, despite the dampness.

After lunch, we headed to the Geysir area, so named for the original hot spring which gave us all the word “geyser.” Turns out the Geysir spring itself doesn’t erupt anymore, but the one next to it does every 5-7 minutes and we got to watch it spout at least three times during our little stop. The field of hot springs was a new type of terrain, all red rock and white silica, shallow pools carved by the hot water. There was steam rising up everywhere, and a small creek where the water flowed down after the geyser erupted. We managed to get some great video and photos of the area and the eruption itself, and were back on the bus headed out again before too long.

Our last official stop was the first bishopric in Iceland, a site called Skálholt. Our guide gave us a little history of the Church in Iceland, which was utterly amazing since Christianity became official here (by decision of the parliament) in 1000 AD. After the Reformation, the entire nation was officially Lutheran, but was given a freedom of religion clause in their constitution after gaining independence from Denmark. The current Skálholtsdomkirkja was built in 1956, but was noteworthy for having stained glass windows, which is rare in Iceland. The church was lovely, but by this point in the afternoon, we were growing weary of the tour and ready to get back to Reykjavík.

Condensing some of the other features of the trip, we saw Hveragærði (KVER-ah-gair-thee), containing more hot springs and greenhouses typical of the Icelandic countryside and Selfoss (SETL-foss), the largest town (pop: ~5000) on the south coast and home to one of the newest geothermal plants where we took an odd detour through the neighborhoods to see the fenced off foundation of a house that had one day sprung a geyser in the living room and had to be abandoned. The sun which had finally come out when we reached Geysir stayed mostly with us during the drive back, so we got to see even more of the landscape than before, and continued to be amazed by it all.

Tonight, we figured we'd hit Laugavegur (LOY-ga-vey-yur), the main shopping strip, and walk until we found something. We must just be drawn to Italian food. The restaurant was called Rossopomodoro, or some such, and the food was great. I had ravioli ai funghi Porcini in a cream sauce—very savory and enjoyable. I had a pizza with about every kind of cheese on it – mozzarella, ricotta, buffalo mozzarella, camembert, and gorgonzola.

On the way back, we were going to attempt to go to the waterfront to take some pictures, but the wind was chilly and we're tired. By the way, if we thought sunset on the boat was odd, it's just now after 2200, but the sky would suggest 1900 at the latest. This is EXACTLY why we brought the sleep masks. The odd thing is: here, where they're probably needed the most, there are no blackout curtains! Blue Lagoon tomorrow and we've earned it. I just hope the place doesn’t totally reek of sulfur the way the other hot water springs today have!

Day 10: Oslo to Reykjavík

No offense to the other cities we've visited so far, but this is the one we'd been waiting for. Iceland is where we'd always planned to go. I got up before the alarm and took a shower. Liz got up and we sauntered quite casually to breakfast, then back upstairs to pack. I really did enjoy Oslo: it was like the best parts of the other three cities rolled into one, even if none of them matched up to the others individually. The goal was to be out of the hotel by 1100, but we were ready just after 1000. We figured that we might as well head out and make the airport less stressful. Thanks to a stroke of luck at the tram stop and the wonderful Flytoget express train, we were at Gardemoen by 1100. It was, therefore, a pity that check-in didn't open until 1200. After check-in, it was through security and to the gate. Ordinarily, I'd leave minutia like security out of this journal, but since I realized I had left my watch at the checkpoint, I thought it relevant. My second big “oops” of the trip but, as with the first, all ended well and I got my watch back.

The airport itself was very modern and airy, reasonably well laid out and manageable. With all the time on our hands, we hit a tourist shop and picked up some souvenirs, and had a pair of baguette sandwiches from a restaurant near our gate. Waiting at the gate was pleasant at first, but grew tiresome quickly as more and more people showed up and started forming a queue for absolutely no reason. Said queue was, naturally, a large mass of people between where we were sitting and the nearest bathroom, which I, naturally, had to visit more than once. Boarding for the flight was delayed over 30 minutes, which had us departing 30 minutes late and arriving about 20 minutes late.

The flight was pleasant enough, as I spent most of it reading and Scott watched Sherlock Holmes (not as bad as I'd expected, per Scott). We didn’t get to see much of the landscape as we were descending because there was low cloud cover, but what we did see was impressive. After our arrival and long walk through the airport, we were picked up by our taxi driver and given a bag of utterly useless tourist info put together by the Nordic Visitor people. I can’t stress how nice it was to simply climb in the back of a taxi and mindlessly be shuttled to the hotel – I wish we’d had that in each city, not just those we arrived in by plane.

A couple of things leapt out at me about Iceland straight away: the parts of the landscape that aren't rocks seem to be covered in lupines and the water in the bay near Reykjavík is a color I have never seen before—it's a dark jewel teal where the sun hits it and it's magnificent.The landscape was barren, rocky, shaded with green from peat and moss, and almost completely desolate. Near the airport there were lupines EVERYWHERE and it was simply gorgeous, albeit totally uninhabited. Truthfully, I think I liked the fact that it was uninhabited – I kept imagining walking out across the strange landscape, wind blowing in my hair, taking shelter under rocky outcroppings and writing poetry and painting.

I guess we had forgotten that the airport is about 40 minutes outside Reykjavík, but it gave us a chance to see the “suburbs” of Iceland. The drive was other-worldly. If this had been the only part of Iceland I had seen, I'd have thought the island unfit for human habitation. It's completely alien with rocks, moss, and lichen everywhere and the odd patch of grass or pool dotting the scene. It may be the closest I ever get to walking on the Moon. It's as if the whole horizon is under construction. It was stirring and depressing, both awe- and woe-inspiring, and, on the whole, everything I'd hoped for.

Getting closer to civilization, all the little houses clinging to the harsh landscape looked so painfully beautiful, and the growing sprawl of the city in front of us seemed less and less appealing. Part of me wanted nothing more than to be in our hotel, where another part of me wanted to continue on that lonely road through the huge open wilderness for hours. I’m very glad we’re doing the Golden Circle tour tomorrow so we can see more of the natural beauty of this place. Civilization reared its head here and there and, finally, Reykjavík loomed ahead. Through low clouds and mist, it really did offset the wastes through which we had passed. We passed Perlan and not far from the massive cathedral, Hallgrímskirkja, and arrived at the hotel. For the first time in many years, we got an actual KEY to our room, not a card.

The Fosshótel Baron is kind of part of this weird juxtaposition – the front half of the hotel is shiny and new, all Scan style and aluminum siding, whereas the rear of the hotel looks like some long hall or lodge, and has rooms with whitewashed antique furniture and steeply slanted ceilings. Our room is one of these “historical rooms,” complete with an exposed wooden beams, one of which is vertical and clearly weight-bearing, judging by the long cracks along its grain. The only windows in the room are skylights in the severely angled ceiling directly over our heads as we lie in bed. The highest point of the ceiling is by the door, where there is an ornate chandelier for no apparent reason.

After settling a bit and catching up with the world, we started thinking about dinner. Being two hours behind the peninsula from whence we came, our stomachs were now screaming for food. Liz found a place about a block and a half away that served Balkan (Bulgarian, to be specific) food. Sure, let's go have an adventure! It was quite tasty and they had extensive veggie options. I had something called Sirene, which was a vegetable stew of some nature with goat cheese and an egg poached within it. I had zucchini which had been cut into thick slices, sandwiched with salty goat cheese, and fried. It was served with a yogurt-dill sauce and was indescribably tasty. The desserts were also good – a kind of chocolatey torte/cake with a baklava-ish quality, and a flan-like custard with burnt caramel sauce.

Because of the depressed economy here, it may have been our cheapest meal yet: at around 4500 ISK, that's about $36, including two desserts. Interestingly, on our way to dinner, we discovered that, direcly beneath our room, there is a 24-hour convenience store/supermarket. This could prove extremely handy later.

After dinner we walked back down the main shopping street to our hotel. The shops were all closed, but they looked interesting and I’m looking forward to exploring them. I’m excited to be in Iceland, but also somewhat homesick after 11 days away, and hopefully that the next few days will keep us busy enough to avoid being sucked into homesickness. Tomorrow should be very interesting since it’s a guided tour of the Golden Circle which is scheduled to take 8.5 hours and leaves at 8am. Luckily with the time difference, it’s 9pm here but feels like 11pm to us, so getting up at 7am tomorrow should feel like 9am and not be completely unbearable.

Day 9: Scott’s Birthday in Oslo

I got up, took a quick shower, and awakened my bride for breakfast. Like everything else in Hotel Bristol, breakfast was just that much classier; oh, it was all the same stuff, but it had style. In addition to the usual breakfast fare, they also had a chef present doing fried eggs and fruit smoothies to order. I think this has been my favorite hotel so far. We finished up our breakfast, loaded our pockets and bags, and headed out for the tram. Our destinations today were Akershus Fortress, Rådhusplassen, and the ship museums on Bygdøy peninsula.

It was another painfully beautiful day – crystal clear blue skies and about 70°F with a light breeze. We caught the tram down to the central station, picked up a second tram, then headed into Akershus Fortress. Really loving all the public transportation in these cities, especially the trams. Akershus is a medieval fortification that has been modified and expanded over the last ::mumble::hundred years, and was truly a magnificent sight. It’s still a living castle, with a working military base, and extensive reconstruction and renovation going on all over the place. We picked up the brochure for the walking tour and followed the stops around the outer walls of the fortress, making our way in to take the tour of the castle interior. Picked up the audio guide ‘cause it was free, which really enriched the experience, as we learned about the history of the castle and the various rooms on display. The British accent of the guide didn’t hurt, either! The weather was just too gorgeous to be believed, and I couldn’t get over the bright blue sky and lush green trees everywhere. Looking down and around at the views of the city from the fortress walls was amazing.

Akershus may be one of the coolest places we've yet been. Whereas most of the palaces we've seen have been gaudy, Baroque mini-Versailles clones, Akershus started life as a simple military fortification to which a castle was later added. This is not to say, however, that it did not have its adornments: Danish King Christian IV felt that his Norwegian realm needed some continental style and added many Baroque and Rococo touches to the castle. Comparatively, though, it was still very simple and martial in many ways. The fortress surrounding the castle was indeed imposing: the outer walls were 3m thick, 8m high, and other measurements as well (I really couldn't resist that). The problem with Akershus was that, after nine days of walking, the steep cobblestone paths, steps, and other obstacles were taking a serious toll on our already weary bodies. We got some fantastic pictures, though, of one of the oldest parts of Oslo (known until 1925 as Christiania...boy, that King Christian IV was a modest guy, huh?) backstopped by the very modern Oslo Sentrum. Even more starkly than in Helsinki, Oslo fuses Old Europe (via Denmark) with ultra-modern design. For a good example of this, I took a picture from our hotel window of the Oslo Tinghus (Court House), which is shining steel and glass, in the midst of the stuccoed walls of the old hotels and offices nearby; it's like a sore thumb, but a very shiny new one.

After Akershus, we climbed down to the harbor square in front of the Rådhus, the striking design of which has grown on me steadily since we got here. We had lunch at a restaurant near the docks, then Scott called home to say hello to his parents on his birthday, and I think he made them very happy. I hope he’s had a good birthday; I’ve tried to make things feel special for him without overplaying the fact that it’s his birthday, or thereby underplaying the fact that we’re on our honeymoon. After the phone call, we caught the ferry boat over to the tip of the Bygdøy peninsula.

In Rådhusplassen, we found a nice little dockside cafe. I was intrigued by the prawn salad, but I had, thus far, been resolute in my decision to only eat fish and not shellfish, so I ordered the fish burger. I was, therefore, very surprised to find that one of the toppings for the fish burger was prawn salad! In my short tenure as a pescetarian, I've been aware that shrimp is ubiquitous on seafood menus and I was fairly sure that, at some point, I would have to make that one exception to my shellfish restriction, though I hadn't expected it so soon. I went ahead and ate it, and I rather enjoyed it, in fact. These shrimp would not be the last in my immediate future. After lunch, I gave Mom a call for my birthday, since it was now a reasonable hour back home. It has been very tough to wrap my head around it being my birthday, but I never have liked to dwell on it and would rather keep myself busy.

Our first stop on Bygdøy was the Viking Ship Museum, which was beyond impressive – a collection of three Viking ships (used for VIP burials) dating from between 800 and 940 AD found amazingly preserved in the 1880s. The first ship on view in the hall was the most stunning, with ornately carved bows at both ends. The second ship was far more stout and sturdy, less ornate but no less beautiful. The third ship was more or less in ruins, but had the best preserved burial chamber. The artifacts found with the three ships were stunning, and I got some really great detail shots of the carvings on some of the pieces. The level of preservation of the wood was just phenomenal – something to do with the “blue clay” in which they were buried. The parallels between these Viking artifacts and the Anglo-Saxon finds at Sutton Hoo were less than subtle, both of which have obvious similarities to Celtic designs, and it's easy to see how connected the world was, even a thousand years ago. It was at this point, switching back and forth to "digital macro," to capture the ornate detail still visible on much of the wood, that the camera battery began to die, which left us terrified to use it beyond one or two quick snapshots for the rest of the day.

After leaving the ships, we debated on how we would get to the other museums on the peninsula and ultimately decided on the known route: back down the hill to the ferry and a short hop to Bygdøynes, where Fram and Kon-Tiki are kept. Fram came first, and it is noted as being the wooden ship to have traveled farther north and south than any other in history on its Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. It was nearly as large and impressive as the Vasa in Stockholm, albeit more modern, but it had one chief difference in the museum: you could actually BOARD the Fram! It was fascinating to see what is clearly a late 19^th century ship rigged for extended exposure to polar temperatures. It had all of the classic Victorian comforts, but with many pelts covering the floors of the crew cabins. You would have to be a hardy voyager indeed to take a cruise on this boat.

Time was running short on the museums' open hours, so we sped through the Fram museum and crossed the street to the Kon-Tiki Museum. The ships themselves -- Kon-Tiki, Ra and Ra II -- were less interesting than the man behind them. Thor Heyerdahl was an adventurer, seemingly unafraid of anything, but unlike, say Richard Branson, he was on a much higher mission. The experiments themselves were sociological, venturing to prove that Polynesians were possibly as skilled seafarers as the Vikings, and he set out to prove that their reed and papyrus crafts were capable of reaching all points in the Pacific, even as far as South America. His experiments were largely successful, but he discovered something along the way that became much more of a focus—environmental activism. Heyerdahl was the first to note that refuse and spilled oil did have an impact on even something as vast as the Pacific Ocean, and became a great champion of the environmental movement in the 70s and 80s. Walking through the museum of his works, only one word that came to mind: humbling.

The best part of the adventure, though, was Bygdøy itself, which was full of meandering little streets packed with beautiful houses. We overheard a woman on the ferry over there saying that a lot of people live there and commute to downtown Oslo via the ferries. We took the bus back so we could get a sense of how far we had travelled, and saw just how close the bucolic escape was from the city center – there was an official royal farm on the way into town!

Back in town, we strolled up from Karl Johan’s gate to the hotel where I took a short nap while Scott uploaded pictures and researched a restaurant for dinner. He settled on a chain restaurant pizza joint, which proved to be quite tasty, although it was unpleasantly warm in the restaurant itself and we couldn’t wait to get out! Peppes Pizza is a chain that started in Norway and is branching out internationally, and it had some very interesting-sounding pizzas and toppings. I had a pizza that had curry and garlic-marinated shrimp with green peppers, leeks and lime. This place would challenge the mighty California Pizza Kitchen if they had American locations; I still can't believe I ate the entire 12” pie! We stuffed ourselves too much for dessert, which was kind of a shame since it was his birthday and all, but it’s all good. Back at the hotel I got a shower while he checked us in for our flight to Iceland tomorrow, and we’re now sitting with the window open listening to the bustle of a busy city for what will probably be the last time on our trip – although Reykjavík is a capital city, it’s probably going to be pretty quiet compared to where we’ve already been!

Tomorrow, we fly to Iceland, our final stop. Here, we can turn off our brains (and feet) since most of our time there is prearranged and transport is provided. I'm REALLY looking forward to the Blue Lagoon Spa and that leg massage now!

Day 8: Beautiful Day for Oslo

It was kind of a rough trip out of Copenhagen: the water really moved us about, but we both survived and slept fairly well. Woke up early to get to the breakfast buffet ahead of the crowds (at least, that had been the plan) and watch the views along Oslofjord. The breakfast buffet was a major Charlie; I'm almost certain that we brought the entire island nation of Japan with us to Norway. The food was as unremarkable as dinner the night before, but the view from the ship was anything but. As the time passed and the boat sailed on, I was getting a little antsy, so I left Liz a bit early and went up on deck to get some pictures of the towns and islets as they rolled by.

Eventually, Liz caught up to me and we promptly ran the battery out on the camera. Silly me, I thought we had gone easy on it the day before and it didn't need an overnight charge (an unfortunate omen of things to come). Since it had been my fault, I dashed back below decks to plug the charger in, but that pretty much spelled the end of photography for the approach to Oslo. There were spectacular views of blue-black glassy water and green piney hills, chock full of little houses, many on smaller islands only reachable by boats. Although it was definitely reminiscent of maritime Canada, it was still unlike anything I’d ever seen before. The morning was sunny and gorgeous, and we kept running back and forth across the ship’s upper deck to catch the sights from each side.

The approach was insane. Although the Crown of Scandinavia was not as big as the Silja Serenade, it was still a very large ship and Oslo Fjord is not large. Some of the turns and narrow passages were a little hair-raising, but these pilots are professionals and it was a magnificent dance to get through. When we docked and disembarked, there was allegedly a bus waiting to take us from the ship to Oslo's Central Station, but neither of us could find said bus, so we followed the crowd and walked. Seven blocks of a gentle-but-steady uphill walk later, we found the station, the tourist information office, got our Oslo Passes and boarded the tram for the hotel.

It was just now after 1100 and we figured that we were facing a morning much like Day 3 in Stockholm: drop your shit off at the desk and find something to do until you can check in. Having already expended a fair amount of energy just getting to the train station, this was NOT an appealing prospect, but we're soldiers and we'll do what we must. Someone does take pity on the weary traveler, though, because our room was ready for us and we could check in immediately. Hallelujah! Our room is probably the best of the trip so far: it has the feeling of being in someone's home rather than a hotel. We're on the sixth and top floor, right next to Josephine Baker's Suite, with beautiful windows that open and look out on the Domkirke and the rest of the inner city.

Arrival in Oslo had been a bit chaotic, and the bright sun was H-O-T as we schlepped our bags all the way from the boat terminal to the central station. We ended up taking a mid-day nap, as we’d been awake since 6am and the walk from the bus terminal had nearly killed me (and Scott as a bystander to my general frustration with bumpy sidewalks and rolling luggage), then went out to explore the city after lunch near the hotel.

Not wanting to stray too far into Oslo, we found a place on the next block called Malik's which, given its hours, must be major drunk food, not unlike Mario's back home (NOTE: In the hand-written version of this journal, I noted here how poor my penmanship had gotten and suspected that maybe I was drunk already!). I had a falafel plate with fries; I've never seen falafel made into a burger before, but it was delicious and I demolished the plate.

We followed our plan to a tee, riding the tram through the town after lunch and realizing just how far we had walked with our heavy suitcases this morning. We really have put in some miles on our feet for this trip, but we kind of expected it. From Jernbanetorget, we walked over the pedestrian bridge to the gleaming white Operahuset, which is literally built into the harbor. Inspired by the look of an iceberg, the building was brand new, made of sparkling white marble and glass, with incredible sloping angles going right down to the water. The design of the building was such that people could climb up the strange angles and actually walk on top of the Opera, an adventure I left for Scott while I sat on the makeshift shore looking at the water.

With Liz's feet hurting, I made the climb alone, but I'm very glad that I did, although it did make me wish I'd brought my sunglasses. The marble from which it is made is impossibly white and quite painful to the naked eye. On a beautiful day such as this one, though, looking out over the water and mountains and city provided yet another of those “wow, this is cool” moments. It's hard to tell in the pictures, but I did sneak a zoomed in photo of Liz sitting on the “beach” slope awaiting my descent. The interior of the Opera was just as gorgeous, with light wood forming a sound-diffusing wall between the foyer and the performance area, which made the area eerily quiet, despite its height and scale. After resting for a bit in the Opera House, we crossed back to Jernbanetorget and got back on the tram.

We rode through the charming neighborhood of Frogner to the Vigeland Sculpture Park, which was utterly astounding. Something like 80 acres of lush trees, pristine lawns, sandy paths, ponds and streams, shady glades of tall trees, and hundreds of sculptures. A kind of arcade of bronze figures led to a plaza with a huge fountain. From the fountain, a series of terraced small gardens led up to the peak, where a giant monolith of bodies stood atop amazing views in all directions. The sculptor, Gustav Vigeland, was inspired by the human form, and the sculptures throughout the park depict the nude body in all stages, ages, and contortions. The statues immediately surrounding the monolith were carved in granite, and contained so much humanity despite minimal embellishment. The curves of the arms and shoulders were simply correct, rather than agonizingly detailed like Renaissance sculptures, and laying a hand on the granite felt like touching a real person. I probably took two hundred photographs in the garden, and could happily have stayed there all day, snapping away and touching smooth biceps and cool stone faces. Then some morons approached the wrought iron gate (basically stained glass without the glass) and the girl posed as if touching the stylized penis of the figure while her boyfriend snickered and took the picture…sigh.

Now very weary, we headed back to Sentrum in search of dinner. I suggested we head up Karl Johan's Gate, which seems to be Oslo's version of Strøget, but not quite so...well, København. I'd searched through the immensely helpful city guide in our hotel room and found a place that claimed to have Mexican food (which we'd been craving intensely) called 3 Brødre just off Karl Johan's Gate. After some souvenir shopping and browsing through an amazing store called DesignTorget, we managed to find 3 Brødre, but were shocked to find that it was a piano bar? Sneaky, sneaky they are in Oslo: they hid the Tex-Mex Lounge in the basement! The food was good, but it's not quite Los Toltecos. I had a grilled vegetable burrito and it was rather good and contained no broccoli. A funny moment occurred (I'm still laughing as I write this) when the odd country music being piped into the restaurant played Merle Haggard's “You Don't Have To Call Me Darlin',” which Dan has had us practicing for a change-up. I absolutely lost it when he got to the verse that we use, which starts, “I was drunk the day my mom got outta prison.” You can imagine where it would go from there!

After dinner, we were thoroughly exhausted, so we strolled past Stortinget (the open-air market, which was closing for the evening) and back to the hotel for the nightly ritual of uploading the day's pictures to the laptop and writing in our journals. Tomorrow is Scott’s birthday, and I can’t wait to explore Akershus castle and the ship museums on Bygdøy.

Day 7: Farvel København

We started the morning early, but without a solid plan. All we really knew for sure was that our 24-hour cards expired at 1500 and we needed to be at the boat terminal before departure at 1700. I had the idea to use our CPH cards and go into Tivoli to just wander around, so we did. They really are brilliant about admission and such: they charge a small admission fee (much less than say Kings Dominion or Busch Gardens), and then you buy tickets for the rides. Rather than paying a lot for rides you might not ride, you only pay for what you want—WIN!

We spent our last day in Copenhagen exploring Tivoli and I’m very glad we did! It was so quaint and pretty, a surprise oasis in the middle of the city. It was fairly empty, so we walked around casually and took dozens of photos of many beautiful flowers. The park features various floral gardens, music venues, restaurants, as well as the requisite amusement park rides. My favorite was the Dæmonen roller coaster, whose warning signs were enough to send us running in the opposite direction!

The afternoon was soon upon us and lunch became the order of the day. We explored some of the restaurants inside Tivoli, but most were either overpriced, too fancy, or far too meaty. We found one that looked promising and were even seated, but I had a very rare uppity vegetarian moment. Chicken salad was 9 EUR, but the one vegetarian entree (a Quorn cutlet with some sides) was 25 EUR—unacceptable! I realize that vegetarianism is a choice, but I refuse to be financially punished for that choice. We left the park in search of something simpler, cheaper, and quicker, since the day was quickly advancing. Fortunately, I had noticed while leaving the hotel that the sushi buffet we had been to our first night doubled as a deli during the day. We stopped in and found the sandwiches to be appealing and cheap, and the lady even made me a meat-free one. It wasn't terribly substantial, but tasty and would keep us going.

By this time, it was about 1400, so we collected our bags at the hotel and hopped on the 26 bus to the cruise ships. The driver was gesticulating wildly about something regarding the ships, but his English was fairly weak and we just kind of nodded, smiled and sat down. As we traversed city traffic that reminded me of mid-day DC, the sky grew very dark and we got clobbered with a thunderstorm. The rain came down in sheets and it was fairly active electrically as well. The traffic broke free and we headed into a suburban area within sight of the boat terminals.

While on the bus, we passed by everything we saw the day before, plus quick peeks at Amelienborg and the Marble Church, which did look lovely and I was kind of sad we’d missed. We saw more expensive boutiques and more fancy art galleries, thus confirming my view that CPH = NYC, and definitely not my favorite place. I also felt a little ridiculous that we'd walked all over town the day before when the buses obviously could have helped us get around more efficiently (and probably with fewer tears on my part). I'd like to think that if we'd spent less time plodding around the city and more time going to specific destinations, we would have had a better time of it. We got to watch a massive thunderstorm from the safety of the bus, which had luckily abated when the bus driver dropped us off at the corner of nowhere and nowhere, assuring us that the bus stop for the boat terminal was very close.

Here's where it gets interesting. The driver stopped at a station on a side street and, in his broken English (Danglish?), explained that he didn't go all the way to the boats and we would have to catch the NEXT 26 bus to get there, but we would have to walk around the corner to catch it. The next bus wasn't due for another 20 minutes and the sky was threatening again, so we decided we'd continue walking at least to the next bus station, and hopefully find some shelter along the way.

The rain started and my raincoat was packed in my suitcase, but Liz had an umbrella in her bag. We finally reached the next station, which had a slight overhang from the adjacent building for shelter, and stopped to rest for a moment. I had gotten a little mad because, as I looked down, I saw something fly past me and thought Liz had been annoyed and kicking rocks at me, but I didn't say anything (Note: I would never kick rocks at Scott). The bus came and we hauled our now-soaked bags on board, suddenly realizing that we would go one stop to the terminal—about 200 yards. As we got off the bus, I saw something else go flying past my view and came to the sudden and terrifying realization that Liz had not been kicking rocks at me at all: it was pea-sized hail! We sprinted for the door, as fast as one can sprint with forty-pound suitcases in tow.

We’re fairly certain that the second bus driver thought we were insane and/or retarded, but we didn’t care. We were ridiculously early, so we had to just sit around at the terminal for a while, but Scott enjoyed watching the rain and hail on the water outside. The ship for our second voyage, the Crown of Scandinavia, wasn’t as nice as our first one, but by no means shabby. I think its greatest fault was simply being laid out less nicely as the first ship. Our cabin was similar, although in the Crown, we were almost as far at the back of the ship as humanly possible, and have the pictures of the insanely long hallway to prove it. The rain let up and the afternoon got really beautiful for our departure, and we got some great views of the city from the upper deck as we pulled away. A bit further out, we were able to see the Øresund bridge in the distance, and get some blurry shots of it with the camera zoomed to the max!

We had to make “reservations” for the buffet dinner, which left us with time to kill before our seating, so we looked around the ship a bit more and found some comfy chairs to enjoy a few tasty (albeit overpriced) local Danish beers while watching the world go by. The buffet was overpriced and underwhelming, but we lucked into seats right by the window on the port side of the ship, and enjoyed fantastic views of Kronborg Castle in Helsingør (setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet...something is indeed rotten in the state of Denmark!). Scott and I agreed that the chief attraction on this cruise was the view sailing up Oslofjord in the morning, so we opted to go to bed early.

I wish I could say that I loved Copenhagen, but it was just so underwhelming. Maybe I had built it up too much in my mind, but it was crowded, overflowing with Americans, and chaotic. It felt more like an American city than a European one, and there was so much dirt on the buildings and construction everywhere that it was really hard not to feel let down. I’m glad Copenhagen was part of our trip, and there were some really unforgettable and beautiful sights, but on the whole it was less than magical. Here's hoping Oslo gets us back to feeling smitten by Scandinavia!

Day 6: Copenhagen – City of Walking

I think there's only so far we can drive ourselves before cracking, and I think we nearly found the limit today. We got a bit spoiled with the Stockholm weekend breakfast ending at 1100, so we effectively slept through ours today, but that's why we brought Clif bars! We had a fairly good sense of what we wanted to accomplish, so we set out with purpose.

Leaving the room around 10am, we headed for the tourist office to get our city cards. Stopped at an Apotek along the way and found EVERYTHING behind the counter (so that’s what over-the-counter means) and a take-a-number system like the DMV, not to mention a big crowd, so we decided we didn’t need Sudafed that much! Got to the Tourist Info Office and met with another DMV-style scenario, waiting at least 15 minutes to be called.

As I had mentioned, I'd been apprehensive about Copenhagen and the local signage didn't give me much comfort. Inside the tourist information office, where we bought our CPH Cards, there were signs everywhere warning of pick-pockets. My pockets are fine, I'm happy to report, aside from the constant plundering of a strong DKK. We got our cards without incident and headed to Rådhusplasen to start down the highly-recommended Strøget (Stroy-yet: the shopping strand).

Strøget, it seems, is Danish for shopping – stores all along the streets which were swimming with people, far too many of them Americans. A few of the stores had tourist stuff, and some were unfamiliar, but the majority of them were disappointingly familiar: Athlete’s Foot (Chuck Taylors for 499 DKK), H&M, Body Shop. The crowds and commercialism reminded me a lot of NYC, which many people love but I kinda hate.

Having said all of that, there was still plenty to like here. We found a toy store that had a larger-than-life-sized Woody from Toy Story built of LEGO, which stands to reason since Denmark is the birthplace of LEGO. We got many pictures, some touristy-type souvenirs, and continued down Strøget.

Strøget dumps out at Kongens Nytorv, which is a beautiful enormous “square” (it’s really a circle). We sat for a while on a bench watching the mob go by, and noticed that the hordes of people in Danish football paraphernalia, most with Tuborg or Carlsberg in hand, all seemed to be heading to a common destination. National pride was in full bloom today as the Danes were playing their first World Cup qualifying match vs. the Dutch. As we moved to Nyhavn, a charming little harbor in the center of town, we realized that THIS was where most of the football hooligans had been heading, because the crowds were astonishing. We found a quiet spot at an Italian restaurant, had beer and pizza, and basked in the sun; we should both come back with decent tans. Suck on THAT, Caribbean!

Nyhavn was very cute, full of cafés and sliced down the center by a wide canal full of sailboats. It would have been positively charming, if not for the swarm of people, as the horde indeed seemed to be heading somewhere. We figured they must have been showing the match broadcast from South Africa on a large screen somewhere. We settled in at a pizza place as the match started and watched the herd thin out as people either got where they were going or headed back, presumably because it was full. Once the bulk of the crowd had past, Nyhavn became a lot more pleasant, and our lunch was great!

After lunch, we had ice cream at the open end of Nyhavn canal, then walked some side streets toward Christiansborg palace. We got there just in time to see the ruins of the old castle (from 1170 or thereabouts) and the current royal reception rooms. The palace was, thankfully, quite empty, so we had things pretty much to ourselves. The Great Hall, full of modern tapestries, was worth the price of admission and the blue plastic booties they made us wear over our shoes.

On the surface, Christiansborg seemed eerily similar to Sweden's Royal Palace, but there was something unique about it, which we'd find later. First thing, we visited the ruins under the castle. Apparently, this is something like the sixth or seventh different castle built on this spot! The original Havn was built here in the late 1100s, and these were the ruins discovered when the current castle was being built. We went back above ground and were the last two people to tour the castle for the day; it was like the palace was ours for a half-hour. Here, we had one of the most romantic moments of the trip thus far: in the Alexander Room, used for small state functions even to this day, Liz and I shared a waltz as if there had been a lovely gala for just us. Only for THIS woman would I do such a thing!

By this time, our dogs were seriously barking, so we made straight back toward the hotel, but managed to pass Tivoli Gardens in the process. Had we had more time and energy, we might have gone in, but since we had to take several rest breaks along the way, there was no chance. Liz almost cracked (actually, I broke down and cried at one point while sitting on a bench), but we managed to keep ourselves together and reach the hotel for a well-needed respite. Liz napped and I washed socks. Romance? We've got it, baby!

Meals have been somewhat of a struggle for us on this trip, not because we're picky, but because we've often had too many options. After our refreshing break in the room, we turned the other direction down Vesterbrogade and found an Indian-Pakistani restaurant, called Koh-I-Noor, that looked promising. I had mattar paneer (curried peas w/cheese) that was possibly the best I've ever had, garlic naan, and spicy mango pickle. My lips were buzzing and I had happy curry face. Considering Liz's conservative estimate of about 5-6 km walking today, possibly the best feature of this restaurant, however, was that it was about 30 steps from our hotel.

We’re both painfully exhausted, a bit underwhelmed with København it seems, and ready to stop pushing ourselves so hard at sightseeing that we forget to enjoy our honeymoon! The hope is that Oslo will renew our excitement and that we're not suffering European burnout with a full week yet to go.

Day 5: Riding The Rails

Another good and restful night last night. This morning was fairly relaxed because our train didn't leave until 1221, and we didn't have to be out of the hotel until 1200. We had another very nice breakfast at the hotel, and I discovered that breakfast + pickles = WIN. It's not what you'd normally consider breakfast fare, but it just works somehow.

After enjoying another massive breakfast at the hotel, we relaxed in our room for a bit watching Scrubs with Svenska subtitles. We packed our bags – seems to get easier every time – and headed back to the trusty T-bana. We rode to T-Centralen once again (it had been the point of many of our line changes), this time following the signs to the Central Train Station. Scott bought us some snacks and we boarded the train which departed exactly on schedule at 12:21pm. Thankfully, our seats were facing forward.

We headed south out of Stockholm and I was a little sad to see it go. We did get to see the Ericsson Globe as we rode out of town, though, which was wild. The Globe is the largest spherical building in the world, and what's extra crazy about it is that there is a Great Glass Wonkavator that ascends the building ON THE OUTSIDE, giving you an ass-puckering panorama of the city. Part of me wishes we'd had time to do it, but then the rational side of me remembers that I'm not the largest fan of heights.

It didn't take very long before we were in the countryside, since Europe doesn't really have suburbs in the American sense. What a picturesque nation Sweden is: the barn-red and mustard-yellow farms, lush, green pastures, dense pine forests, crystal blue lakes and rivers. It was all going by too quickly to photograph effectively, but I did manage to snap a few. The whole trip, but this day in particular, has had me thinking about how hollow American life is. I'll keep the soapboxing to a minimum; suffice to say I spent most of the ride in quiet contemplation, but far from sad or angsty. It was mostly about how to simplify and improve our lives—a noble aspiration, wouldn't you say?

The scenery was nice – like Maine at first, very rocky and dotted with pines, then easing into rolling hills and leafy trees. We went through several small towns, all full of cute little cottages with cute little gardens. While riding through the picturesque countryside, my thoughts wandered. First I thought about People-to-People back in ’98 and the almost-romance I had. Looking back, I really only remember snapshots of that adrenaline-filled-heart-pounding-near-breathlessness of a few choice moments, especially the night cruise on the Seine. I think we may have held hands, or maybe linked arms, or maybe just stood very close. I remember feeling an electricity and anticipation. What I don’t remember is what we talked about, who he was as a person, or even really what he looked like, apart from that one photo of us with Suzy at the top of the Eiffel Tower – I remember the photo more than the moment it captured.

It felt odd to think about this while sitting next to my new husband, but the reality is that those memories, those experiences, got me to where I could meet him and find this life. I often wonder who I would’ve been if different things had happened: if I had a boyfriend in high school…if I hadn’t had the car accident soon after P-to-P…if I hadn’t gained the weight…if I hadn’t gone to Hollins…the list just goes on. But these thoughts are usually based on the mistaken assumption that my life would be better now for taking those different turns. What I realized today on the train was that I wouldn’t trade what I have now for anything. The future I have with Scott is the “happy ending” I always thought my life would’ve had if I’d done things differently. Turns out I made all the right choices and ended up here, with the love of my life, on our honeymoon!

And now for the second great fail of the trip: we had lunch on the train, or rather Liz had lunch on the train while I dined on failure. The train had a bistro car, so about halfway through the trip, I went forward to investigate. I got Liz some köttbullar and found a lasagna for myself. It's tough to read the ingredients list when they're all in Swedish and, although I should have, I didn't ask the attendant for help. Yeah, meat sauce aplenty. At least the Coca-Cola was safe.

To our great surprise, our train seemed to go only as far as Malmö, so we unexpectedly had to change trains there. I did have a brief moment of panic, not knowing whether or not our tickets would transfer or whether we would have seats together. To borrow from Henry Rollins, this one seemed to be “The People's Train”: side seating, no luggage space and, like the earlier train, it was “The Cranky Baby Express.” We weren't on it for long, thankfully, as we crossed Øresund and, in a matter of minutes, we were in København Central, only blocks away from our hotel. Interestingly, no passport control or customs that we could see. I'm figuring that because the countries are mostly part of the EU, there are agreements in place for land and sea transports.

It could hardly have been easier to find our hotel, but our room was another story. Three corridors took us around the inner atrium, and then we were finally “home.” When we reached the room, I discovered that three days of boat and rail travel, coupled with the use of my prescription sunglasses, had completely wrecked my equilibrium and I was SURE that the hotel was moving. I tried laying down to reset the sensors, but the springy bed wasn't helping. I boosted my allergy meds to try and calm things down and got a shower, which renewed my spirits a bit.

It was getting to be about dinner time, so we set off with only one thing in mind: SUSHI. About a block down Vesterbrogade, we found a revolving sushi buffet. Score! Everything was fantastic and I even tried kimchi for the first time—interesting, but in a good way. I got brave and had a couple slices of crab roll with roe on the outside. It was a little spendy at 159 DKK each ($1 USD ~ 6 DKK), but I definitely think we got our money's worth. I think we've both had our fill of today, so it's bed soon. Tomorrow will be fairly light because most of the attractions seem to be closed on Mondays. We may just wander a bit to see what there is to see.

Day 4: All-Day Stockholm

After a sound sleep, thanks largely to a desk fan -- oh glorious white noise -- and black-out shades built into the window panes (because, well, they need them here. It was actually a little too much and made getting up harder to do because, although it was about 0845, it felt like the middle of the night), we made our way down to the smörgåsbord. The hotel’s lobby had been transformed into an enormous restaurant, where literally hundreds of people were enjoying the extensive buffet. Having visited Europe before, I was prepared for the cultural differences with respect to breakfast, but Scandinavian breakfast takes things to another level. The usual suspects are always represented: boiled eggs, various bread and rolls, sliced meats and cheeses, yogurt and granola or other cereals, and of course coffee, tea, and juices. Sweden, and indeed all of Scandinavia, expands on these staples with smoked salmon, pickled herring in various preparations, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers, various pickles and sometimes beets, plus scrambled eggs, sausages and/or bacon!

Following the indulgent breakfast, we ventured out to see more of Stockholm. Objective: Djurgården. Since Djurgården and Skeppsholmen are islands, there were undoubtedly small boats in our future. I had done pretty well with the cruise ships because, well, they didn't FEEL like boats, but the ferries in the harbor were likely to be a different story. Also, the weather was less than perfect with gray, drizzly skies and a not insignificant breeze, so the harbor was likely to be on the choppy side. We took the T-bana to the Kungsträdgården station (which was one of the cooler T stations we went through, with faux ruins and a beautiful ceiling) and walked up to Nybroplan for the Hop-On Hop-Off Sightseeing boats. I already love our Stockholm Cards or, as I like to call them, our “Everything's Fucking Free Cards,” because we just flashed the cards at the ferry crew and they directed us on board. The boat itself looked small but was actually fairly sizeable on the inside, and the trip across the harbor was so short that I never had time to get seasick.

We had hoped to go directly to the Vasa Museum stop on Djurgården and start our tour there, but the boat took us directly to Skeppsholmen. We later found out that all ferry service to that dock had been temporarily suspended for—you guessed it—the Royal Wedding. Skeppsholmen had been on our to-do list anyway, so we went ahead and headed toward the Moderna Museet (Museum of Modern Art), which was far more interesting than Helsinki’s Kiasma. We walked around Skeppsholmen for a while, postulating on what its purpose had been based on the buildings. Given its attachment to Kastellholmen and the utilitarian look of the buildings, we figure it must have either been barracks for the Kastellet fortification or some kind of government outpost.

The collection at Moderna Museet included truly contemporary works, as well as pieces from the twentieth century. The collection was more extensive than Kiasma, and since it wasn’t solely contemporary art, it wasn’t nearly as full of bullshit. I honestly didn't last long there because many of the exhibits mirrored pieces we had recently seen at home in the National Gallery's East Wing, most notably the Matisse cut-outs. I figured we should see things that we could only find here, so we only did about half of the museum. One piece I particularly enjoyed was a massive dark blue half sphere, open on one side and hollow like a little cave or a nest. Standing directly in front of the piece, the back of the cave was lost in darkness, and the sculpture seemed very cosy and inviting, like you could curl up there and take a nap. I was very proud when I discovered the piece was indeed titled Mother as a Void, by Anish Kapoor, the same artist behind the ginormous reflective kidney bean (actual title: Cloud Gate) in Chicago’s Millennium Park.

We boarded the ferry yet again and traveled to the more southern port on Djurgården at Gröna Lund, the Tivoli amusement park. It definitely had a Kings Dominion-esque feel to it and, although our EFF Cards would have gotten us in free (because that's what they do!), we wanted to see more history. The museums on Djurgården were now uphill from us and we disagreed briefly over whether to walk or take the tram, a discussion ultimately rendered moot; we discovered that the historic tram line that still operates only on Djurgården was down for track maintenance. It also seemed that they were extending the T-bana onto the island, so the tram will probably be relegated to museum status by the end of the summer. That left one option: walking. We schlepped up the hill past the Vasa Museum and the small medicinal garden behind it (which contained hops!!) to the Nordiska Museet.

We hit the Nordic first and had lunch there. The café was situated in the great hall of the museum, which was a treat in and of itself, and the food was good, too: I had a Rostbiffsalat, which had sliced roast beef, olives, pickles, and potatoes in addition to the usual salad components. The museum itself is a massive Neo-Gothic hall with round skylights in the ceiling, and would be very impressive for its architecture if nothing else. The highlight of the museum was an exhibit on plastic, featuring something like 3,000 pieces of Tupperware and the like that was owned by a single collector. They had the impressive array set up in clear plastic cases (of course) in the hall of the museum and organized by color group, so it had the overall effect of a large plastic rainbow. The plastic exhibit also included other objects, but the rainbow of objects was a stand-out favorite.

Who'd have thought an exhibit on plastic would be so interesting? Their collection featured more than 3000 pieces of historic plastic-ware through the 20^th century, from celluloid film to Bakelite on up to more modern plastics like ABS, including one of my personal favorites, LEGO bricks. It also explored the ecological and environmental impacts of plastic and its proliferation and was quite fascinating, despite outward appearance. Another very interesting exhibit in the museum was the Sami culture of Arctic Sweden (Lapland) and how the Swedes have treated them much as we Americans have treated the Native Americans. It was rather tragic how the Sami culture has been systematically expunged from Sweden through bureaucratic means, but heartening to see how they've still thrived in the barren north despite the prejudice. Progress is being made in preserving the culture, but it stands much as the civil rights movement did in the late 60s here. Fascinating as all of this was, the building was the real feature of the museum; it was very grand with a large statue of Gustav Vasa in the entry hall and the Tre Kronor directly under the tower.

Next we hit the Vasa ship museum, a fantastic structure built to house the Vasa, a ship who sank on her maiden voyage on August 10, 1628 and was found and raised in the late 1950s. The ship itself was amazing – felt like we were in Goonies! She was meant to have been a warship, so she is a massive ship, and something about the salinity of the water in Stockholm harbor preserved the wood in such a way that 90% of the display is from the wreckage; my guess is that the other 10% was the rigging, which did not fare as well as the wood under water for 300 years. They actually had pieces of the rope and the sails on display under glass, and I do not envy the person whose job it was to reconstruct the jigsaw puzzle of ridiculously thin 300 year old cloth.

What a ship it was—pity she didn't make it out of the harbor on her maiden voyage. The story goes that, due to a tragic design flaw, the ship didn't carry enough ballast and when a sudden squall had the ship listing, she took water through the gun ports and sank just off the island of Becksholmen, still in Stockholm harbor. She was salvaged and brought to dry-dock at Djurgården, where a building was erected around her for preservation and as a museum. Both the ship and the building were magnificent. I guess I had always known, in abstract, that the old warships were big, but now I know just how big and it was mind-blowing. The Vasa was at the same time awe-inspiring, tragic, and funny—what a design flaw!

We headed back to Gröna Lund to catch the ferry again (the last ferry, as it turned out). I had the idea that, rather than wandering aimlessly around Kungsholmen (a rather suburban bit of Stockholm) seeking dinner like last night, we should see what we could find on Gamla Stan, since the ferry was headed there anyway; there seemed to be hundreds of restaurants nestled into those narrow streets. We could then catch the T-bana back to the hotel and not have to worry that the ferries had stopped for the day. After a rather scenic ride, we circled around the southern end of the island and headed up a random street, looking at menus as we went, but it was our noses that made the selection. The wafting aroma of köttbullar (Swedish meatballs) ensnared us. We headed down some steps and ended up in a cellar with some of the best food we'd had yet on the trip. I had a mixed salad, then poached cod with egg and parsley sauce and new potatoes with dill. The sauce might be illegal in some of the more conservative states back home! I still can't remember the name of the place (I've since learned it's called von der Lindeska Valvet), so I made Liz take a picture.

I had the full Swedish culinary experience. I had an appetizer of reindeer mousse with caviar on a dense bread, then meatballs with gravy, potatoes, and lingonberries, all of which was delicious. We decided to continue the awesome with ice cream in freshly made waffle cones. The ice cream vendors cleverly positioned their waffle irons next to open windows along Västerlånggatan, so the heavenly scents would bring people in despite the cool weather. It started out a bit drizzly, but culminated in pretty significant winds, which made us look a little ridiculous holding ice cream cones, but we didn’t care. I enjoyed a scoop of apple cinnamon and a scoop of marzipan chocolate, and mine was a swirl of vanilla, pear, and strawberry. Yeah.

Since most of the shops on Gamla Stan had already closed, we made our way back down to the T-bana. There's a grocery INSIDE the station! I had seen that there was some kind of shop down there on previous trips through, but I guess I figured it was some sort of newsstand or convenience store, but it's a full grocery. We went in and looked around for things that were uniquely Swedish (namely some sort of horrific preserved fish in some strange sauce for Liz's dad), and it didn't take long. I thought it had just been a Think Geek April Fools' Day joke, but I'll be damned if they didn't have squeeze bacon in a tube! Fortunately, we were able to get a picture of it. The T-bana is full of surprises: in the Rådhuset station, there's an Eritrean restaurant. Try to imagine for a moment putting a three- or four-star restaurant in one of the subterranean Metro stations here.

We both loved Stockholm, despite our exhaustion and squabbles, and in spite of the mercurial and unfriendly weather. I can only imagine what it would be like to visit Stockholm on a day like our second day in Helsinki. Thankfully, tomorrow’s adventure will require far less walking, and be less affected by the weather, as we have a six hour train ride to København. København (Köpenhamn, to the Swedes) has me a bit apprehensive, but I've been proven wrong several times already on this trip.