Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Paris, France

September 22, 2009, Tuesday
Paris, France

The end is here. We have arrived in Paris and have packed everything we can pack. The papers are out and ready for us to take to the airport so we can return the car and get on the plane for home. Now it is just a waiting game and that is HARD!!! I’m SO excited about finally going home that I can hardly stand it!! Don is excited too. Now that the trip is done, we just want to get HOME!!

It was a good trip although not as fascinating as some of our trips have been. We both agree that we needed to go to Scandinavia in order to finish our European adventure. Now we are trying to decide where next!!

Monday, September 21, 2009

Amsterdam, Netherlands

September 21, 2009, Monday
Amsterdam, Netherlands

It was a quiet and comfortable ride in today. This morning it was VERY foggy and the fog lasted until almost noon, when it finally lifted. The traffic wasn’t too bad and we were able to drive without interruption except for the road construction. It is interesting how they slow traffic for their construction over here. Without fail, they make a significant change in the road pattern. You will be driving on a freeway and they will warn you that construction is ahead and then they will have cones out that make you change into first a lane to the right and then a lane to the right. This “S” makes you slow WAY down and then comes the construction. It is quite effective and clearly is a simple thing to accomplish as they simply use those rubber cones to reconfigure the traffic flow. We could learn something from this, I think.

We are in our favorite hotel tonight, in Amsterdam. Once again we missed the alleyway that you need to take to get here and so once again we drove the wrong way down the one way street to arrive. The hotel manager was in the parking lot as we arrived from the wrong direction and he was highly amused. He said it was no problem because there was rarely traffic on the street so……. Isn’t that lucky?? I keep my fingers crossed that our good luck holds. Only two more days and we are back in familiar territory!!

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Hamburg, Germany

September 20, 2009, Sunday
Hamburg, Germany

Another day, another ferry ride!! But now we are in mainland Europe and we won’t be on anymore ferries. Both of us are anxious to get back home.

I HATE the German freeways. EVERYBODY drives like they have lead feet and they are just maniacal. Then Don seems to feel like HE has to keep up ad the next thing I know, I look over at the speedometer and it reads 130. That’s just too damned fast and I like speed!! Of course, if I were driving I would feel differently but…….

We were tooling along today at about 110 and a guy on a motorcycle passed us like we were standing still. Both of us were awed and frightened by him. We said that this guy was going the fastest of anybody we had seen on the whole trip.

We are staying in a familiar hotel tonight. It is the same one I booked for us on the way up to Scandinavia, so we know just what to expect. It is comfortable and has a restaurant in house, so we are in for the night.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Copenhagen, Denmark

September 19, 2009, Saturday
Copenhagen

What a day!! We must have gone the wrong way on one way streets three or four times and once we stopped on the bike lane and screwed up all the cyclists, who were not afraid to show their anger!! Thank goodness we are finally in our hotel and hopefully safe for another day!! This was definitely not a stellar day of driving.

The weather is beyond beautiful and it seems a shame to be stuck in the car driving in such gorgeous weather! We had planned to walk over to Tivoli Gardens to check it out when we came back to Copenhagen but I think that may have to wait for another time. Don is so stressed out that he just wants to sit and read and I’m right there with him!!!

Friday, September 18, 2009

Oslo, Norway and Lerum, Sweden

September 17 and 18, 2009
Oslo, Norway and Lerum, Sweden

I got so bumfuzzled yesterday that I totally forgot to do the blog!! We started out at a reasonable hour to get to the airport and we met some people at breakfast that were also going to the airport, so we all got together and climbed in a cab and went out together. I tried to get my tax free refund at the airport but they said I needed to wait until I get to Paris. When we tried to check in to the plane, we discovered that DON had made the plane reservations to the “second” airport in Oslo, which was THREE hours outside the city!! Of course, they were no change tickets so we had to decide whether to go to the far away airport and hope for good transportation into the city proper or whether to junk the tickets and buy new ones. We opted to use the tickets and take our chances. Since the airport is listed as being an Oslo airport, I figured that they would NEVER leave us stranded out in the boonies. Well, they didn’t. There were two buses at the airport that met our plane and we could take one bus to the train station to train into Oslo or we could take the other bus directly into Oslo. Since the bus to Oslo was leaving immediately and the train wasn’t leaving for another hour, we took the bus and it dumped us right in the middle of the city and we were able to hop on a tram and get delivered to a stop right near our hotel. But it was a LONG day and I was just plain glad to get settled in to our room.

We opted for a pizza for dinner and it was rather good. There was a funny little restaurant right up the street from our hotel that we had passed every day when we were in Oslo before and we decided to give it a try. You walk down about 6 steps to get into the place and it wasn’t any bigger than a minute!! They had expanded the space by building tiers inside and you climbed up to various heights to sit on these tiers. The tables were about the size of ironing boards and were shaped like an ironing board, tapered at one end!! The proprietor was hand making the pizzas and they were turning people away left and right!! After we ate we dumped all our suitcases and rearranged everything. We have definitely over purchased and I’m not at all sure how we are going to get all this stuff home but………. LOL

Then we got up early today and wanted to do some last minute sight seeing. We drove over to the Viking Museum and looked at the ships that they’ve unearthed and those darned things are REALLY impressive. They are massive and ornate and it is hard to believe that they were created over 2000 years ago. Then we wanted to see a stave church before we left Scandinavia and so we went to the Norwegian Folk Museum and toured around there. They have a perfectly lovely stave church and Don was suitably impressed!!

The rest of the day was spent driving and we got to our hotel in Lerum at 5pm.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Bergen, Norway

September 16, 2009, Wednesday
Bergen, Norway

We’ve had a super day in Bergen. It has rained off and on all day but that didn’t deter us in the least. Our hotel is only a ten minute walk from the absolute heart of town and we got going early and have wandered and shopped and been sightseeing all day long. We are back now and both of us are pooped but feel that we have “done” Bergen. Wow, has it ever grown since I was last here (30+ years ago). The fish market is still a smelly place but isn’t as offensive to me as it was way back when!!

We found some really good shopping here and availed ourselves of the best prices we’ve seen in a while!! And the goods were of good quality, so that is a plus. We are both delighted to be off the ship and back on stable ground!

I have been seeing shrimp sandwiches and they have looked good but I just haven’t had the opportunity to try them until last night. We went into our hotel’s restaurant and the menu looked absolutely atrocious. I was ready to walk out but we had passed some of these yummy looking shrimp sandwiches on the way in to the restaurant. They were on a tray ready to be served to a group in a meeting hall. So I asked the waiter if we could have those instead of food off the menu and guess what!! He got us each a couple of them and they were just as good as I had imagined. AND the bonus is that now I’ve had shrimp sandwiches!! We haven’t decided what we are going to do for dinner tonight as the menu is the same at our hotel and there aren’t any restaurants near by that we’ve seen. About the only choices around here are fish or fish!! This is a fishy town and they seem to live on fish. Of course, I wouldn’t care if I never had a fish ever, so this isn’t my favorite kind of place to find food.

Tomorrow we officially start to come home. We will fly out to Oslo and then start driving back towards Paris. In some ways I’m REALLY glad to be going home but in other ways this has been a marvelous trip and I’m sorry to see it end.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Day 6 M/S Polarlys

September 15, 2009, Tuesday
Day 6 M/S Polarlys

We are headed for Bergen and will disembark at about 2;30 pm today. We’ve signed up for a bus to take us directly to our hotel and since it will be delivering other people from the ship, I am betting that we won’t get to the hotel until 4 or after.

The scenery is beautiful, hundreds and hundreds of small islands with houses here and there. No large villages but some of the islands are large enough to have small villages.

Don has declared that Finns wear the shortest skirts, Norwegian women have the largest butts and none of the Scandinavians are particularly big busted! God only knows what prompted this declaration at lunch today but that is his assessment of the women over here!! I, on the other hand, feel that all throughout Scandinavia, I’ve seen busts hanging out of low cut shirts and blouses until there were times I held my breathe waiting for them to completely fall out!! Apparently he and I are not looking at the same women!! LOL

The internet coverage on this ship is sketchy, at best and I haven’t been able to access the web for a couple of days. I’ll try again in a few minutes. Well, it didn’t work and now we are in the hotel in Bergen. This wifi is MUCH improved although somebody has sent me some email that is so loaded with graphics that it is taking FOREVER to receive and it is blocking all the rest of my email. How annoying!! I may actually have to go directly to my email and get it a different way. Ick! Ah well. Better to have email than not have email!!