Author: Jon and Amy Wedell

Waking up from a poor night of sleep on the night train (we really should pay extra for the sleeper car next time) we headed to Hillerød to meet up with Frank and Camilla. Once Camilla returned from some errands we had traditional Danish open sandwiches for lunch. For toppings we had: tuna, herring, mackerel, some sort of canned pork liver paste, as well as cheese and jam (which were eaten together). They told us that they never make sandwiches with two pieces of bread (because that would be too much bread). It makes sense as their bread is very thick and hearty. After lunch we went to see the Helsingør castle and the Fredensborg castle. At Fredensborg we saw the Prince of Denmark ride by on a horse drawn carriage. Ritzy! Helsingør slot was beautiful as well (+1 UNESCO) and if you lived there you could see Sweden from your house! We headed home to start making dinner. We had a soup made with pureed Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes. It was very good! We stayed up late talking-heading to bed about 1 am.

The night before we had made a solid day plan for how we should spend our last day. We got up early and had more Swedish pancakes ( this time with lingonberry jam).  We headed for the docks where we were planning on taking an archipelago tour. It turned out that they only run on the weekends after the month of September (their website failed to mention that). So we headed to the Stockholm TV tower where we ascended and got an excellent view of the city. Next we went to a local Swedish restaurant where we had some traditional Swedish dishes. We went home, took a nap, and then got pizza from a nearby kebab house and watched The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. We had had our absentee ballots sent to Becky's apartment and we filled them in and mailed them back today. Hurrah for democracy! We left around 21 in order to get on our night train to Copenhagen where we were going to spend another night with our previous hosts Frank and Camilla.

We had Swedish pancakes for breakfast; Becky served them with strawberries and apples. We did our laundry and then headed into town. We walked around Stockholm and stopped in a few museums. We stopped in an H&M (apparently it is a Swedish store...so is IKEA, we found out) so that I could get a new pair of pants (my old ones already have big holes). Jon was thrilled to get to spend some time in the mall ;) We went to a cafe to have coffee and we were going to try some Swedish pastry that Becky recommended, but the cafe was out of them. Next, we went to the grocery store to get ingredients for dinner. We made open faced sandwiches which were fantastic! Later, Becky took us to a bar where the drinks were really fancy. We had a drink and headed home.

We slept in a bit and then made our way to the Vasa museum. The Vasa was a 17th century warship commissioned by the Swedish crown. A majestic ship, designed to intimidate Sweden's enemies, (the Polish) she capsized and was lost less than 1km from where she was built. The brackish water of the Baltic combined with mud covered her for 333 years until she was rediscovered and salvaged. After extensive restoration efforts she was put on display in a museum built to house her. The ship survived incredibly well; over 95 percent of the wood of the ship survived. Besides housing the ship, the museum also had other artifacts on display which were salvaged from the ship wreck. It was pretty awesome. In the evening, we made Swedish meatballs and spinach pasta for dinner.

Today Becky took us to Gamla Stan (old town) where we checked out all of the old buildings and watched the changing of the guards at the palace. We saw Sweden's treasury, consisting of many fancy crowns, scepters, and balls of power (a name we made up for gold things that look like the holy hand grenade from Monty Python). We toured the royal apartments and the palace museum. After all that we had worked up quite an appetite, so Becky led us to a nearby Italian restaurant which was very good and also very reasonably priced! Later in the evening Becky brought us to a rocky outlook where we had a fantastic view of the city. We had brought snacks and refreshments, so we snacked while enjoying the view and each other's company :)

We woke up early to board our first train to Oslo. The train ride was awesome; it was a very scenic route through the fjords and the countryside. It was neat to travel through such tiny towns that we could see all of the buildings from the train and the children had nothing better to do than wave at the passing trains. From Oslo we boarded a train to Stockholm. We traveled 14 hours total before arriving at 10 pm. Becky (a college friend) met us at the station and took us back to her place. It was nice to see a familiar face! We caught up a bit before going to sleep.

We took the funicular up Mt. Fløyen where we had a fantastic view of Bergen and the surrounding fjords. It was a beautiful sunny day, which is a rarity in Bergen. We picked a path and begun our day's hike. We hiked past many small lakes and streams (it was very wet in general). We reached a high point  with a nice view where we snacked on some bread and set our sights on some cairns in the far distance on top of a taller fjord than the one we were on. Using the GPS from the tablet, we set off in the correct direction to hike to the next fjord. As we were hiking the steep path there were a few bikers who passed us. We were amazed! It must be incredibly difficult to bike up the fjords. When we got to the top we chose a lesser traveled path out to the edge of the fjord. We made it to the originally noted cairns and had another fantastic view of the fjords. One of the cairns was huge (roughly 12 ft. tall)! There were a few old platforms along the edge of the fjord that we wondered what they used to be. Jon thought that they were probably WW2 gun emplacements. We hiked down the other side of the fjord and around on our way back to town. The landscapes were beautiful and we were amazed that it hadn't rained at all! (On average it rains about 280 days a year!). By the time that we got back to town it was about 5pm and we were getting hungry so we stopped in a grocery store and got fish cakes for dinner. They look like pancakes but taste like fish and have the texture of rubber-- a very unique (but good) dish. We made our dinner at the hostel using some free food left by others (and made a mental note to check for free food more often!). Iron chef hostel style!

We walked from to train station to our YMCA hostel where we discovered that the office didn't open for another hour. To waste time, we walked to a nearby grocery store to get some breakfast. At 8 we returned to the hostel to check in. The desk person had forgotten her keys, so we had to wait another 20 minutes for a co-worker to show up. When checking in, we discovered that our booking had been messed up by hostel world. Luckily the hostel had extra rooms and they gave us a 4 person dorm for the price of a 6 person room. We locked up our belongings and headed out to see the city. First, we walked around the old wooden buildings of Bryggen, which were really neat (+1 UNESCO site). We wandered around the rest of the town, checking out the churches, parks, the fish market, and an old castle. It rained on and off all day long (which we were getting used to). We used the internet to search for affordable places to eat (Norway is extremely expensive) and found an Asian restaurant with cheap entrées (15 dollars a plate is really cheap in Norway...) for dinner. I was sad because even though we ordered the same thing, Jon's dish had a bunch of vegetables in it and mine was mostly noodles :( Jon had a chili sauce put on his, so even though he wanted to share his vegetables with me, they were too spicy. Our dorm-mates were nice and weren't very noisy, which we appreciated.

We woke up, packed up, and checked our train schedules. We traveled 16 hours to Bergen, Norway. In Oslo we had a tasty (and very expensive) panini and salad for dinner. It was a long day, but the last 7 hours passed pretty quickly. We were on a night train that provided blankets, ear plugs, and an eye-covering thing. (I imagine there is a name for that.) We slept pretty well - almost better than a hostel. We arrived at 7 am in Bergen ready to explore!

We got up early and took the train into Copenhagen. We walked around town, to the round tower, and then to The Church Of Our Savior, where we ascended 400 steps to the top of the spire. The ascent was steep, slippery, claustrophobic, and tightly winding, but was totally worth the view (and the experience)! Next, we met Camilla for lunch (a great vegetarian buffet). And then headed to the Mikkeller bar, where we met Frank and had a round. They drove us to the little mermaid statue then up along the coast and back to their place. We ordered pizza and spent the evening exchanging travel experiences and advice. They showed us some pictures from their travels to Africa and Iceland, which were very cool and made us a little jealous. It was sad saying our goodbyes (they were getting up very early the next morning for work, so we wouldn't see them). We had become very comfortable with Frank and Camilla and the time spent with them really felt too short!