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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!

We spent the first part of the day doing laundry and searching for hostels in Norway. After figuring out our travel schedule and booking our hostel we walked into the city center. We did some wandering and spent some time in a second hand store where we bought sheets (we had seen that our next hostel charged for sheet rental-and that it was quite expensive). On our walk home we stopped in a grocery store to get some things for dinner (we had offered to make dinner for our hosts). Our hosts took us for a walk to the castle and its beautiful garden. It was very fancy and unlike any other garden we had seen before (very ornate and well manicured). We made macaroni for dinner (we get better every time!) and spent the night chatting with our hosts again. We also played quite a few rounds of a board game called Sequence.

This morning we had a nice breakfast--along with nice conversation-- with Rachy and Micha. Micha shared some tasty bread (with bits of apples and pears) he brought from southern Germany. Next, we headed to a nearby park (not the same one as yesterday) where we watched people soccering and then climbed to the top of the park Observatory (apparently one of the most modern in Europe) and got a nice view of the northern part of Hamburg. We left to catch our trains to Hillerød. We had an interesting train ride, where our train actually boarded a ferry (that's an exciting first- we were on a train, on a boat :). We took the ferry from Germany to Denmark (about a 45 minute crossing) where our train continued on to Copenhagen. There, we took the train to Hillerød where our host Camilla and her boyfriend Frank picked us up from the train station. We ate ice cream and got to know each other a bit. (The picture is of our train on a boat.)

This morning we set off to see Hamburg. We stopped in a bakery to get franzbrötchen for breakfast, a cinnamon baked good that Rachy had recommended. It was great. We took the s-bahn downtown and then did some exploring. We walked through the financial district where there was a political rally and where there was also some sort of protest against the unequal distribution of wealth brought about by capitalism. (We weren't exactly sure what they were protesting, as we couldn't read the German signs...) We walked by some historic buildings and some cathedrals/chapels with significantly different architecture than we had seen elsewhere on our treks. We made our way to Saint Nikolai, which is really nothing other than a spire. The actual church had been destroyed during the firebombing of Hamburg at the end of the second World War. It has been turned into a memorial to remember those who died in the firebombings (as well as those persecuted and killed by the Nazi regime). We went up to the top of the spire where we had an okay view of the city - it would have been better if the spire weren't surrounded by scaffolding. There is a lot of scaffolding in Europe in September, as they hold off doing construction and repairs until the end of tourist season. Next, we walked down to the harbor where we took a ferry (included in our day pass for the s-bahn) which traveled up and down the Elbe river along Hamburg. We got a nice view of the beaches and of the ports where cargo ships were being loaded and unloaded. On our return trip we could see approaching rain, which hit us pretty hard (all the passengers took cover on the lower deck). Luckily, by the time we got to our stop the rain had reduced to a dribble. Our entire day actually consisted of a constant cycle of rain, then sun, then more rain, etc. This is very common in Hamburg, as well as everywhere else we've been in the last two weeks. We walked past the Fischmarkt (Fish market) and down Reeperbahn street (the famous Red Light district in Hamburg) to a fantastic park- Planten un Blomen. It was another highly sculpted European park and it was extraordinarily beautiful. We met up with our host Rachy at a nearby s-bahn station and then went to dinner at a nice bistro. We chatted a little with Rachy over a beer in a chic German bar (only 3 beers on tap; are we really in Germany?) and then headed home.

We got up early and took a long train to Hamburg (actually 2 different trains). The second train was miserable. There were way more people than seats, so we had to stand for 3 hours surrounded by other people doing the same. We started making reservations for trains after that fiasco. We got to our CS host's house at around 8 and got to know her a little before heading out to get some food from Thai Cowboy. While eating, Rachy showed us what to do in Hamburg. We talked a bit more and then went to bed on the most legitimate fold out couch we've ever seen. Danke, IKEA!