Back in Action

When I started this blog, the plan was to post a little more often than once a week--really! Unfortunately, I slept through most of this week after picking up a cold virus.  I'm told that this is part of the travelling experience. As such, I should probably relish said experience and share it with you in great, gory detail. Instead, I may just celebrate that it has almost completely succumbed to the efforts of my immune system. It really was fabulous having energy again today!

So, as I'm sure you can imagine, quite a lot has happened, especially since I didn't even manage to get caught up last time I wrote! We arrived in Sweden on the evening of July 9th. On the eleventh, our dear friends with whom we have been staying took us for an astounding three-day tour of one of Sweden's important cultural districts: Dalarna! We saw so many really cool things! Our first stop was Falun copper mine which operated for about 1300 years (estimates seem to vary regarding early operations from as early as 700 onward, but it was known to operate in 1080, and it only stopped active use as a mine in 1992) at different stages as an open pit and underground mine. It also boasted a 40m high hoist wheel and a 208m high foot bridge over a shaft to the underground workings:

See, it's a very long way down! The open pit and the field hospital were also very impressive. There were huge innovations in mining developed at Falun including mechanised hoist systems.  There were equally impressive medical innovations, but if I'm not telling you about my little cold, I'm certainly not sharing the gory details on those babies! (Seriously gory there folks--just think mining accidents before the invention of anaesthesia and you know I need to go no further)

While still in Falun (town) we went to the Dalarna Museum to check out impressive cultural contributions such as the world-famous, wooden "Dala" horses, Swedish traditional folk costumes and embroidery beyond compare!

On the second day we split up into two groups: one went to check out waterfalls and a limestone quarry loaded with columns and columns of cephalopod fossils; the other went to Anders Zorn's old-style farm and textile museum.

Wow! Have we ever been busy!

It is very difficult to realise that we are already at the middle of July! The stay on the boat in Copenhagen harbour was great! Here's a picture of it:

I've been told that while Norwegians use the word "frokost" to refer to breakfast, the Danish use the same word to refer to a mid-day meal. Fortunately, in my last post I was referring to a meal we ate late in the morning, so I wasn't entirely wrong in either sense. (Perhaps not entirely right either, but we can let that slide.) One of the local sights I really wanted to share with you is this phenomenon I observed of beautiful stands of hollyhocks growing out of the cobblestones at the base of buildings all around Christianshavn (the area of Copenhagen where we were staying).

On our last day in Denmark, we did some heavy-duty sight-seeing! We started the morning with a canal tour of the city before moving on to a picnic lunch in the botanical gardens, a pleasant wander through the geological museum, and a mad dash through Rosenborg Castle in the hour before it closed. Apparently time dilates a little when some of us come into the vicinity of beautiful mineral samples.

We hadn't realised ahead of time that Rosenborg also houses the Danish Royal Treasury, so it was a great treat when we got there and found out we could go through as part of the ticket!

On July 9th, we took the train over a large bridge and across much of southeastern Sweden to Stockholm and further to Uppsala where we have been staying with friends ever since. It was wonderful to see familiar faces and to be greeted with hugs and welcoming even though our train had experienced "tekniske vanligheter" (technical difficulties of unknown origin) which resulted in our arrival being delayed by about half an hour. Apparently there are as many construction delays on the various transportation networks here as we are accustomed to in Canada, so our hosts had been monitoring for such possibilities.

On our first full day in Sweden, we did some catch-up shopping for supplies, and checked out the grounds of Uppsala Castle.

The grounds in the picture aren't actually part of the castle surrounds, but the Botanical Gardens of the University of Uppsala. We had a bit of a wander through those after climbing up the slope to the castle. Our friends' daughter told us about an annual local road race in which she took part few years ago. She said that the most challenging part of the route was up the stretch of road up to the castle where we were walking. Since I was a little winded toward the top, I was truly impressed by the athletes who run the route! (And note that the botanical gardens are about halfway up the hill, so those of you who are snickering because it doesn't look all that high from here can just stop!)

Jelling and Copenhagen

We've been exploring Denmark's cultural side! After our fun at Legoland, we went to Jelling, considered to be the birthplace of Danish nationalism.  We climbed the highest viking-age burial mound I have ever seen up a set of stone stairs so old that the surfaces were polished from all the use.  Apparently this mound was actually built on top of an even older one from the bronze age.  Between this mound and another to the south we explored the church originally built by Harald Bluetooth (one of Denmark's most famous ancient kings), but twice replaced on account of fire, and saw two incredible runestones. One was raised by Harald's father, Gorm the Old, in honour of his late wife, Thyre.  She was considered to be quite the amazing lady and is credited with the building of some of Denmark's best early defenses. The other stone was raised by Harald in honour of his parents, but on it he also proclaimed himself king of all Denmark and Norway, and responsible for the official conversion of the Danish state to Christianity. The museum explaining all of this was quite impressive!

Yesterday, we returned to Copenhagen by train, experienced the horror of Copenhagen public transport at rush-hour, traversed more elaborately cobblestoned streets to our accommodation, and gratefully retired at our very friendly B&B, the Arctic Janus (which has the marvelous distinction of being a ship moored here in the harbour).

After a fabulous scandinavian "Frokost" (breakfast), we set out across Copenhagen to explore museums and cultural sites. We'll let you know what we find!

Well, that was cool!

What fun we had at Legoland! The creations in Lego were quite amazing! There were scale renditions of several Danish and other European cultural sites complete with characters and motorised vehicles. Much to our excitement, there was also a whole section of the miniature world devoted to scenes from Star Wars.

There were also very cool close-to-life-size lego sculptures of people, animals and other figures. I was pretty impressed with this llama:

Don't be thinking that all we did was walk around looking at things, though! Some crazy son-like person dragged me on a flight simulator and half the roller coasters in the park. (We left out the ones designed for those under the age of five) We also got completely soaked in a roaring pirate battle! Fortunately for us, Legoland has huge stand-in dryers that take the worst off, so you can go on enjoying the day if you overdo the water games (Who knew?). All-in-all, it was a fun, exciting day, so we'll sleep well tonight!

Tomorrow, we are off to Jelling to check out amazing runestones, viking burial mounds and a museum to help us understand it all.

Scandinavia!

After leaving Toronto last night, we flew toward Iceland for a brief inspection of their security services before boarding another flight for Denmark. Most of the route was heavily covered with cloud, but we had a real treat as we flew over the southern tip of Greenland and got to see some exposed glacier complete with blue and green lakes and calving ice sections.

Once in Denmark we started adventures of a different variety as we had to find our way around. Apparently, if you don't buy a map book, you should at least print off instructions to your B&B before you leave! We made it safely, though (plus a few new blisters) and ended the evening with a lovely roast pork supper at the restaurant down the road.

Tomorrow's adventure is spelled L-E-G-O! We are going to ignore the jet lag and head off for Billund for a day of building/amusement park fun!

Sleep well, everybody.

Heading Out!

Our first flight is in just a few hours after we share a lovely send-off supper with our family in Toronto. By morning we will be in Iceland for a brief stop before heading on to Denmark!

Getting There

We only have about two weeks to go before we head out on our adventure! We've started to pack up things around the house, sort through our clothes (and we bought some new ones), and generally prepare to leave. We had huge help when my parents came to visit. There were some household renovations that needed to be done, so now the place is looking pretty good.

The travel planning is coming together as well. We have had a last minute offer of an extra place to visit in Norway, so we're looking into options, there. Otherwise, the European portion of the trip has dates, places, and transportation all ready to go. We got exciting news about accommodation and activity options in South Africa this week, so that's coming along nicely. I'm still researching choices in Australia, but it sounds like the time in New Zealand will be very relaxed and open to playing things by ear at the time.

We received an exciting package this week from our amazing travel agent, Rose Allen, at The Adventure Travel Company in Halifax. She sent all our paperwork for the tour in Japan, the trains in Europe and the city passes for Edinburgh and Paris--what fun that was! It's all coming together now, and finally starting to feel like this trip is really going to happen.