Good morning Copenhagen

Although sleeping on public transit isn't the most comfortable option, it allowed us to travel to a new city and save the cost we would have spent on accommodations for the night.  It was very nice to wake up to the sun rising over the countryside in a brand new place.

We arrived at the Copenhagen bus station right on time and grabbed some coffee at the terminal to regroup and make a game plan for our new city. We have reservations at 3 different hostels in Copenhagen (again, due to limited availability for multiple nights in a row at the same place). The first night will be at one of the larger hostels in the area, and it is about a 10 minute metro ride to the outskirts of the city. We decided to head straight there to see if we could check in early. Although our room was not ready, we were able to leave our bags and lighten our load for heading back into the city. One thing that is so nice about all of these European cities is their immense public transit systems. In most places we've travelled, you can buy one pass for a short period of time (such as 24 or 72 hours) and the pass grants you transit on any of multiple transportation lines (i.e. bus, metro, train, etc).

In Denmark, the metros run above ground a good bit and they have lots of window - including the highly prized front seat. Here is David enjoying the view...

Once we got back to the city, we found ourselves on one of Copenhagen's main streets - Stroget. We walked around, taking in all of the sites.

We happened upon several Lego stores (the company was founded in Denmark in the 1930s, so there are Lego references in lots of places).

In the picture below, not only are the 2 figures on bicycles made of Legos, but the background image is also Legos that are up against the wall...

For lunch, we made our way over to the Brew Pub Restaurant. This place featured several different beers brewed on-site and also served a few typical Denmark dishes. We shared the large lunch appetizer which had a sampling of 6 different dishes.  It included some traditional 'Danish Pub Fare' including herring, pork cheeks, and duck pate.

After lunch, we walked around town a bit more then went back to the hostel to check-in. This is dorm style hosteling, so we had 2 bunkbeds and a shared bathroom. We were still a bit tired from the bus ride, so we took a short nap until around 5 p.m. Back to the city once more after waking up. We walked from the city center, past a Gay Pride event and continued on to a few city parks near Nørreport.

As darkness set in, we strolled our way to the nearest metro station and returned to the hostel for the night.

last day in Oslo

Our first stop on Tuesday morning was the bus station to look at bus passes to Copenhagen (on a tip, we heard that bus was the best way to get there). After researching the options, we decided to try out the 'night bus' which departs at 11:00 p.m. and arrives at 8:30 a.m. the next morning. We purchased 2 Swebus passes for 818 Norwegian cronas (about $148 USD total, or $74 per person).

From there we took the bus to Bygdøy. This is a peninsula that is located about 20 minutes by bus (about 8 km) from downtown Oslo, and it is where there are a few recovered & restored Viking ships. First stop was a kebab stand for lunch. Dave got another pita kebab and Jen got a burger that was topped with some of the same toppings & sauce as the kebabs come. As before, the kebabs everywhere we've gone are delicious!

We went to the Viking museum next, but didn't necessarily want to pay to get in and to fight the large crowds to see a 3 wooden boats (especially since you could see almost the entirety of the exhibits from the entry and gift shop areas).

Instead, we decided to walk down the road to the Folk Museum - which featured an entire village of houses from the 1500-1800s that were moved to this area from different villages around Norway and were restored. The idea is to give museum-goers the feel of Norwegian life over the last few centuries. It turned out to be very interesting and we had a good time walking around for a couple of hours.

In the next picture, you can see some dwellings from the 1600s. The roofs were made by laying multiple layers of shaved bark over one another. In the short period of summer here, the roofs grow over with grass.

There are many 'workers' in the museum who act as period-specific village people. In one area, there was a guy herding sheep. After moving them around a bit, he climbed onto the roof of the house nearby and began cutting back the grass growing on the roof ... the sheep were going crazy trying to get to the fresh cut grass from the roof. We found this all very entertaining...

There were a few horse-drawn carriages sharing the path through the village with us.

We also happened across an 1800s farm-house, complete with animals!

There were a lot of gardens - some with vegetables and some with beautiful flowers...

From here we took the bus back to downtown Oslo. It was about 4:30 at this point. We have to be back at the bus terminal for around 10:30 p.m. so we decided to just goof off for a few hours. We'd heard from a few fellow hostelers about Norway's infamous 'brown cheese', so we decided to stop in at a grocery to pick up some (along with bread and sliced turkey). Then we headed over to the slanted roof of the Opera House, where many people sit and take in the views of the city.

We did a little research and learned that brown cheese is made by boiling whey, cream, milk and salt for hours until a cheese like substance is formed. It has a very interesting taste - sort of like a solidified cheez-whiz...

From there, we checked out a second-hand clothing store (many wonderful sweaters), a rather interesting pipe shop, walked over to the hostel to pick up our bags, set out for one last serving of Norwegian-style kebabs for dinner, and concluded the evening with people-watching on Karl Johans Gate until around 9:00 p.m.

We walked over to the train station and sought out power outlets to charge up the phones, iPad, and laptop. Then at about 10, we walked over to the bus terminal and waited for our ride to Copenhagen.

Boarding for the bus happened right on time and the bus was only about 1/3 to 1/2 full of passengers, so we had a little room to spread out. Although it took a minute to get comfortable, I was able to fall asleep just around midnight.

Oslo

Train from Stockholm departs at 8:30 so we had an early start.

After a 7:00 a.m. breakfast (graciously prepared by our hosts), we scooted off to the metro to head down to the central station. From there we found our train platform and boarding began just before 8:30.

The train ride would take about 6 hours, so we reserved 2 seats with a table. There was no wi-fi on the particular train we were on, but we had other things to keep us busy. David did some reading on his iPad and Jen was sewing some patches onto her backpack. They serve food and beer on board, although we had brought our own food so we grabbed a few beers around lunch time to eat with our leftover pizza. We were in a sort of private area - doors to our area and empty seats. Apparently there are 'rush hour' times for these trains, but we were traveling at a time of day that was relatively less busy...

We arrived in oslo at 2:30 pm during particularly dreary weather – it was quite rainy out. Our hostel for the first night here is quite a ways outside of the downtown area in Oslo, about 20 km. David found the place and thought it would be nice because it offered access to hiking trails around a lake just outside the city. This rain is threatening to dampen that idea though…

From the train station, we walked down to the metro station and caught a metro to Kjelsas. From there we boarded a tram that ran to the particular street our hostel was on. Once we got off of the tram, we had a short hike to the hostel – maybe half a mile. This was complicated a bit by the weather and that the road to the hostel was quite steep. Needless to say, by the time we got to the hostel, we were both a little bit on the miserable side.

Our hostel for this first night was located in a boarding school that turns into a hostel for the summers, so the rooms were roughly equivalent to college dorms. After we changed out of wet clothes and relaxed for a minute, we decided that we should try to find dinner supplies and maybe a bottle of wine. Unfortunately for us, most business in Norway are either entirely closed on Sunday or they keep very short hours (10 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. for instance). So there were no grocery stores and no alcohol stores open. In fact we had to walk a couple of miles before happening upon a 7-11, a food place and a bar. The food place was called “Tasty Foods” and had a menu containing everything from chinese & sushi to kebabs, fried chicken & hamburgers. The bar didn’t have a sign – in fact, the only reason we even found out it was a bar was because we asked the guy at the counter of Tasty Foods if they sold beer and they referred us to the bar a couple of doors down the street. We walked up to a white house with about 5 tables outside in the front yard, and when peering through the windows you could see more tables inside. However, there was no signage whatsoever to indicate that this was a business. Luckily for us, it was a bar and they had great service. So we sat there for a few rounds, ordered some food from the place down the street and returned to the hostel just before dark.

It was still raining when we went to bed and the forecast for tomorrow looks to be the same.

Monday

Up until this point, we have been very fortunate with the weather. However, our luck seems to have shifted a bit here in Norway. The forecast for today gives 80% chance of rain until 3p.m. and then a 90% chance of rain for the remainder of the day. With those odds, we figured it would be best to head to our hostel for tonight which is in the middle of downtown Oslo. At least from there, we should have much closer access to grocery stores, restaurants, and bars to duck out of the rain into.

We ate a quick breakfast before leaving our Sunday night hostel, amid a large group of lively middle school aged children who were apparently a part of some camp going on there.

We took the tram all the way to the train station and then walked a few blocks to our hostel. We were early for check in but were able to leave our bags in the luggage storage area, so that’s what we did and then hopped back out the door to explore downtown Oslo (between rain showers).

In our walking around downtown, we happened upon a few memorial sites set up for victims of the Oslo bombing & shooting...

We also saw a few buildings where the windows had apparently been blown out in the blast...

Other than a couple of affected blocks, the city seemed to be functioning as normal...

We walked around and visited a few sites and bars…the prices of beer and food in general are most expensive here (we paid close to 15 US dollars per beer at a few bars)…randomly, at bar named Elm Street, we met one of the leads from the band "Pretty Boy Floyd" who was there for a concert that night.

In Oslo proper, many of the sights were within very close walking distance of the hostel, so after bouncing around throughout the day, we returned to the hostel to regroup. We packed a picnic dinner with a couple of bottles of wine. Our first stop for people watching was about 3 blocks from the hostel, over at the train station.

We continued with watching people on Karl Johans Gate street, and met a harpist from Australia/Finland who played beautiful music. Given the rainy weather, it was difficult to pull out the camera, but we did snap a couple of quick pictures of the harpist by iPhone cam...

One more day in Oslo tomorrow, so we'll check out a few more sites before heading over to Copenhagen...

Saturday in Stockholm

Saturday started off just as pleasant as every other day here. We woke up mid-morning, and checked out of our hostel in Gamla Stan. The next place we are staying is a residence just outside of the downtown area, north of Östermalm. We took the metro over and we were able to check in early. The room was very nice - the top story of an apartment building with balconies, along with a nice kitchen & bathroom. Everything was very modern in design and reminded us of an IKEA catalog.

The weather was beautiful again, so we dropped our backpacks & headed out to explore that area of Stockholm. The first stop was the neighborhood of Östermalm. In this community, there are several museums, including one that Jen was particularly interested in checking out about Viking history and culture. It was an interesting experience to check out this museum because the Swedes are very upfront about the facts of Viking history (specifically, the lack of historical evidence to support the common horn-helmeted image of pirating sea-farers). So we learned a bit about how, up until very recently, the word "viking" was generally used to refer to any person who took long-term voyages by sea. In some, but only rarely documented cases, these Vikings pursued the riches of others. More typically they went out to sea for fishing and trading. The museum primarily covered the typical lifestyle of Scandinavian peoples, who contended with extremely cold temperatures and long months of darkness in the winters. Towards the end of the museum, there was an exhibit where you could try on 18th centurty attire, here's Jen in a wig...

Outside of the museum, we continued our walk south toward Djurgärden (an island of Stockholm just west and south of the main downtown area). There were many great park areas along the way...

The island of Djurgärden features a sort of theme park called Skansen (which the brochures refer to as an "Open Air Musuem", but there are rides and there is a fee to get into). We passed by this and walked through a very pleasant waterside park...

From here, we continued on to Rosendals Trädgard, which featured a huge garden, market, and cafe. The cafe served dishes which were mostly created out of things that had been grown on the garden grounds. Additionally, they had many picnic areas in their orchards and they sold a couple kinds of locally brewed beers. On a tip, we elected to get a piece of carrot cake (yes, fresh carrots from the garden) and a couple of local beers. 

From across the water, we were able to size up our next destination...there is a satellite tower that they've opened up to the public so people can travel up to the top observation deck for 360° views of Stockholm. Here is the tower from about a mile away...

After completing our walk through the park and over the bridge in Djurgärdsbrunn, we found the road up to the tower. Here are our pictures from above:

After getting our fill of views from above, we concluded our walking tour with a stroll back to our room for the night. Not to be excluded from mention was the circus that was in town. Apparently circuses roll in for close to 2 or 3 months at a time during the summers here, so it was a semi-permanent sort of establishment, complete with tents and animals and wildly dressed performers all around the area.

Our last stop for the evening was at the grocery near our room. We decided that we would make good use of the kitchen and prepare a semi-homemade pizza. We picked up a plain cheese pizza along with a handful of local produce to cook down and add on top. Our evening concluded with a little cooking, drinking and blogging while overlooking the great view of a sunset on the balcony - absolutely perfect =)

On to Oslo tomorrow...