Mike and Michele’s Global Wanderings

This is Michele writing…We arrived in Helsinki on an overnight cruise from Stockholm on the morning of July 3rd. (See post #21.) We found our hostel pretty easily and then did our usual walking tour (this is what we do when we go to each city – set out on foot). We walked for several hours and saw some incredibly beautiful parks and even some city beaches. Here is a photo of one of the first buildings we saw on our walking tour. It is a Lutheran cathedral.
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Mike and I agreed that we would identify who was writing the blog. So…this is Michele and this blog could also be titled, The last time I saw my blue shirt. I can explain that later. Anyway…when we went to what we thought was an overnight ferry, on Saturday, July 2nd, we were very shocked to see a huge cruise ship. When we walked on board we were told we had an upgraded room. YES! We went to the duty free shop on the ship, bought our drinks there, and hung out on the deck. The cruise ship, as we later learned, is known as a booze cruz because the alcohol is inexpensive since there is no tax on it while on the ship.

The cruise turned out to be breathtakingly beautiful. There were hundreds of small islands the first 4 hours of the 15 hour cruise and the sunset was unbelievable! The first picture below shows one of those small islands and the second picture shows Mike and I in our ship room. We were really laughing when we took this photo. In fact, this is the 4th time we took that picture. Also, sadly, this was the last time I saw this blue shirt. We were very flustered in the morning when we were getting off the ship and I think I left it hanging in the closet. The announcements on the ship were not in English and we didn’t know what was being said about how long we had to get off after the ship docked at 9:30am on July 3rd. So, we rushed and rushed and yes, the blue shirt was left behind. Oh well!
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Sorry we have not blogged in a while. It wasn’t that we were lazy but rather our connection at the central train station was down in Stockholm. Plus, we had the 48 hour Stockholm card that allowed us access to many museums, other attractions, and free public transportion so we felt like as long as the clock was ticking we should be doing Stockholm card things. Thursday, June 30th, among other places, we went to Skansen where we visited an excellent wildlife park in which we were able to enter some of the animal enclosures. Here’s a picture of Mike in the cage with some lemurs.
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We wanted to take the time to tell everyone that we really appreciate the supportive comments. These make us feel like everyone is right along with us.

Well, on tuesday we took a train from Copenhagen to Stockholm, Sweden which required us to change trains in Malmö, Sweden. The total ride time was about 5.5 hours. In our first class carriage from Malmö to Stockholm, we got free lunch, coffee and candy (yeah for Michele!). After arriving in Stockholm, we took a few minutes to get online and book our accommodations for Helsinki, Finland (where we will be for some of next week) and we spoke to some nice people at the tourist information center and picked up a city map. Next we went to what we thought was the post office. Michele took a number, stood in line, and told the woman she wanted to buy post card stamps. It turns out she was standing in line at a bank in the train station and not the post office. Oops! Then we walked about 45 minutes to our budget hotel in the Vasastaden (northern) portion of the city. We were totally psyched to be stying in this hotel because we have a sink, shower and toilet all to ourselves right in our own room. Furthermore, we get a free buffet breakfast and the hotel is 7000 times quiter than any hostel we’ve stayed in.

Stockholm is comprised of 24000 islands and so far we have been to 3. On wednesday the 29th, we spent the most of the day reading through guidebooks, purchasing a Stockholm Card (which allows us free public transport and entrance into about 3 dozen museums and/or attractions for 48 hours) and booking a ferry trip from Stockholm to Helsinki (which will depart Saturday afternoon at 5 p.m. and will arrive sunday morning at 9 a.m.). We were really excited about the ferry deal because for about $52 (U.S.) we get a private cabin with bathroom. This is less expensive than our hotel room here in Stockholm PLUS we get the transportation across the Gulf of Bothnia to Helsinki. We will actually be spending more time in Sweden after a week in Finland. We are sort of treating Sweden, Finland and Norway as one big country and will be jumping around a bit.

We started our Stockholm card wednesday afternoon at the Medeltidmuseet (the medieval museum). This museum sits on a spot that was originally allocated as parking space for members of the parliment. However, when excavations began in the late 1970’s a medieval town was discovered. So, this underground space is now the musuem. After the medieval museum, we rode the T (an underground train system much like the Metro of Washington D.C. or the subway of NYC) to the middle of Stockholm and took a short walk to a bar with 280 Belgian beers. The beer menu was quite overwhelming so we went with the recommendations of the bartender. Michele had Apple, Peach and Raspberry beers while Mike had Strawberry beer in addition to some more traditional ales and stouts.

Thursday, after having our traditional Scandanavian breakfast of granola, soured milk (which we have been thinking for the past 3 weeks was yogurt), deli meats and cheese, we made some quick plans for the day and headed out to explore some more attractions with our Stockholm cards. First, we went to National Museum, which housed an exhibit on Swedish Modern Design. Some might say this was very interesting while others (such as Mike) wonder what about it, exactly, constituted art. Next we headed to Djurgården, a small island that we walked to from Central Stockholm. There we visited the Vasa Museum that focused exclusively on the flagship Vasa which sank in 1628 and was resurrected from the sea 300 years later. You will have to see the pictures of this ship to belive it’s size and structure. Next we went to Skansen, a miniature Sweden and the world’s first open-air museum. The aquarium and zoo there were the best we’ve ever been to. You could actually go into the cages with some of the animals at the zoo and in the aquarium, there were actually vampire bats on the walls where we were walking. It was great!

Sorry no pictures this time. When we can post pictures we will.
Tomorrow we hit the museums again. Bye!

We love blog comments but if for some reason you want to say something to us more directly, please email us — mikeandmichelertw at hotmail dot com (appropriate punctuation changes will be required of course).

The last couple of days we’ve been in Copenhagen. It was smooth sailing getting here on the train but then we ran into problems. Not to be negative but here’s an example of what can happen when you are traveling to unfamiliar cities in other countries. We had a difficult travel day once before and another one on Saturday. Once we got off the train in Copenhagen, we were in search of an Internet cafe because we needed to access our hotmail account to get our hostel reservation information (yea, I know we should have done that before we arrived – trust me, we won’t forget to do this next time). We used the Lonely Planet guidebook that showed a place on the map in the book but we walked and walked and searched and searched and couldn’t find it. So, after giving up, we walked back to the train station to find the tourist information place. We found that and were told to go to an Internet cafe. O.k., fine, so Mike went to the Internet cafe while Michele collected brochures and information as to how to get to the hostel. The tourist information place gave out a pamphlet that had the bus no. and stop on it for what we would learn was our hostel. Meanwhile, Mike had to wait for a computer but eventually got on one. Then he gets the hostel information and Michele has the directions provided by the tourist office. We search for bus no. 30. We find the stop and see that we have to wait almost an hour for the next one. Fine, we go into the train station and walk around. And we have our 32 pound packs on this whole time.

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Just so you know…Denmark is made up of three large land masses and many smaller islands. Jutland is the largest land mass with the capital, Århus. Funen is the smallest land mass with the capital Odense, and the medium sized land mass is Zealand with Denmark’s capital city Copenhagen. We traveled for 12 hours on Tuesday, June 21st, taking 3 trains and a bus to get to our hostel in Vejle, a small town on the land mass of Jutland. If we had more time we would tell you about all our travel tales but needless to say, we are still learning how the trains and bus systems work and one important lesson we’ve learned is to NOT arrive in a small town later at night because everything will be closed, you’ll have no way of getting a map or figuring out where to go or how to go where you should eventually end up (did that make sense?) We have also had some communication issues which resulted in a few mishaps and we are constantly changing money and trying to figure out exchange rates. On this one day, Tuesday, we paid for things using Euros, Czech Kron, and Danish Kroner. Ah, the life of world travelers!

Anyway, our main purpose for taking the train from the Netherlands through Germany to Vejle, Denmark was so that we could go to Lego Land. This was an incredible experience! We were kids for a day, going on all the rides and looking at the miniature towns made out of hundreds of thousands of legos. Although you may not be able to tell by the picture, everything is made out of legos and the bus is only about a foot long and a 3 inches high. Here’s a picture
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Yes, we are in Denmark now! We spent two nights in Vejle and are now in Århus (on Jutland) before heading to Odense (on Funen). We finally found a place to upload our photos. We are in the public library in Århus and have a lot of stories to tell but we spent well over an hour uploading photos. So, click
here to see our photos from the Netherlands (Holland). We also uploaded more Iceland photos so once you are finished looking at the Netherlands photos, you can view a slide show of the Iceland photos to see our updates. We will post more later. See ya!

We love blog comments but if for some reason you want to say something to us more directly, please email us — mikeandmichelertw at hotmail dot com (appropriate punctuation changes will be required of course).

Are we dedicated to this blog, or what? Today is Sunday, June 19th and yes, it’s another post from Noordwjik, the beach town we are in in the Netherlands (Holland). The frequency of these posts no doubt is related to the fact that we have free internet access. We realize that part of our experiences on the road will be the places we are staying. This place is something else, alright. It is very much like a commune. The people who work here also live here and are 20something year-olds. They work for a free room and free food. It is the craziest place with techno (club) music blaring until 5:00am every night. Of course we brought lots of earplugs so this isn’t the problem. We just shake our heads everytime we walk into the common area. There are people drinking, smoking pot, cooking in the kitchen, and hanging out on the floor area that’s covered with pillows. Michele just opened a bottle of wine which she can drink out of at the bar until 8:00pm as long as she writes her name on it (we wrote about that in the last post).

Last night we went to the beach and watched the most incredible sunset. We have been hanging out with Brian, Steve, and Russ from Los Angeles. We went to dinner last night with them then to the beach. We treated ourselves to a dinner that costs close to $50 but my God, it was good. We went to a pancake house which is not like it is in the US. This pancake house had about 150 things on the menu. You can get a pancake – which is like a monster spongy bread tortilla thing – and then get it filled with almost anything. Mike got lamb and Michele got 4 cheese. For dessert we got an ice cream pancake with Amaretto liquor, whipped cream and toasted almonds. Yum! A funny thing we want to mention while thinking of it is that people bring their pets to outdoor cafes and to fast food places here and in Amsterdam. Michele took a picture of a cat sitting at a bar stool waiting for service and will upload that when she gets the chance. Here in Noordwijik we see people with their dogs sitting next to them eating dinner.

Anyway, after dinner we walked 10 feet to the beach and watched the sunset. After the sun set and it became dusk, all the fishermen came out, set up their poles, and threw their nets out into the ocean. When we came in from the beach at midnight it was not quite dark yet.

This morning we went to the beach and WOAH! How many people can you possible fit on a beach? We wish we could upload pictures because you can not believe how many people go to this beach – and oh, yes, we are in Europe! Many women are topless, men are in speedos, and the national past time here is smoking cigarettes and drinking beer. Before we left the US we were so annoyed when we had to eat or do anything around people smoking but when people are smoking everywhere you go, you just get used to it. So, we hung out at the beach today and it was record heat for Noordwjik, which is about 90 degrees but there’s no humidity. We also realized there was a statue of some kind on every grassy knoll by the beach so we looked at those then went to the grocery store to buy food to cook for dinner (salad, pasta, and seafood plus snacks for about $15).

So, at this time we are “hanging out” at the beach house having a couple drinks, watching people play pool, chatting, and planning our sunset viewing at the beach again tonight. Tomorrow morning we are off to Amsterdam again where we will spend one night before going to Denmark. Tomorrow is a business day in Amsterdam since we have to find a laundry mat, do our laundry, and will try to upload photos at the public library. We booked a room at some place that was cheap and near the train station – probably not a good combination – but hey, that’s part of the adventure. If we have time we may hit one more museum tomorrow. See ya!

We love blog comments but if for some reason you want to say something to us more directly, please email us — mikeandmichelertw at hotmail dot com (appropriate punctuation changes will be required of course).

Here we are at the beach hostel. We have still not been able to find a USB port yet so sorry, no pictures again. We caught a shuttle bus to the beach but waited an hour for it since it was supposed to be there at 10:30a but instead it arrived at 11:30a. On the way to the beach we saw the 1928 Olympic Stadium and some windmills (which of course one thing that Holland is famous for). This hostel has a bar and is geared towards providing a party atmosphere to 20something year-olds and Michele (who of course is not 20something). We went to the grocery store upon getting here and bought lots of salad stuff. A funny thing about this place is that you can store your own alcohol at the bar. So, Michele has her bottle of red wine with her name and the date on it sitting on the bar with other people’s bottles of wine. After the store we took a bus to a nearby town, called Leiden. This town, which was a 30 minute bus ride away is known as “Little Amsterdam” and has all the things Amsterdam has but it also has windmills (you have to see those in Holland, you know). We walked around there for a couple of hours before coming back to Noordwijk. This morning (Saturday, June 18th) we found out that you can’t use the hostel kitchen until after 10:30am. This is a serious problem since we were told we can’t have food in our rooms either. So, when Michele got up to eat at 7:00am she had to wait several hours. We tried to explain that this policy is stupid and encourages people to store food in their rooms but the owner didn’t care. So, we are now storing food in our rooms. O.k., then, we are off to the beach (meaning the actual ocean and sand place). We have been hanging out in the beach house too long and need some fresh air. It’s sunny here but not too warm. We estimate in the high 60s. Bye!

We love blog comments but if for some reason you want to say something to us more directly, please email us — mikeandmichelertw at hotmail dot com (appropriate punctuation changes will be required of course).

On Tuesday, June 14th we flew to Amsterdam. Going to Amsterdam, Netherlands (Holland) from Reykjavik, Iceland was quite a shock. We walked off the train going from the airport to the city and thought, “WOW! This place is really, really, busy!” There are so many people, bikes, trams, and cars. You have to be careful not to get run over!

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