A Blog Abroad

Making the moist of a day in Edinburgh

October 20, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

We have gotten by with very good weather so far on our trip, but on Thursday, it decided to full-on Scotland on us. I learned later that it’s a named storm – Babet – and it has been a mess in the northeast and south of us, with lots of flooding and rain.

The station had a lot of canceled trains for the more heavily impacted areas and I was hoping our train would not be impacted. Nothing will keep me from eating at Dishoom. NOTHING. Suck it, Babet. I have been looking forward to this for months, and have only failed to eat at Dishoom since 2015. I will be getting that Indian food, come high water or more high water.

Fortunatelly in Glasgow, it’s just aggressive rain and wind. It isn’t all that bad, but the wind blew so hard a few times it made me kick myself mid-stride (is this an old people problem??? who does this?). We dodged a lot of the rain out of sheer luck: it was pretty bad when we were on the train, was ok when we were in the castle tour, and then poured in sheets the entire afternoon we were in the national gallery.

But Thursday was also our last day to not be collective goblins who like to be lazy in the morning: we have a 9:15 train to catch so we can be at our Edinburgh castle tour on time at 11am. I obtained a breakfast tea and we were off: just one hour-ish on the train gets you to Edinburgh. It’s clean, quiet, and we were able to not get on train cars with small, loud children – great success.

No people! And there we are in the reflection!

Edinburgh was rainy butts when we got off the train. My weak, cheap umbrella I got in South Korea many moons ago is no match for the very angry Scottish wind and I gave up after it flipped inside out once.

Everything is great and why did I leave my hiking pants in Glasgow

I tucked my camera in my backpack for optimum protection and we were off to trudge up the hill to the castle. The skyline here is much different from Glasgow: the buildings are pokey and it’s very hilly. The castle dominates the top of the town, and most of the buildings on the way to it are brightly painted and cutesy or functional stone.

I can say that if you were a giant, it would not be fun to step on this town.

Edinburgh Castle is different from the other two we have seen: it’s primarily a military castle. There are not many plush, decorated rooms, but it is home to the crown jewels of Scotland (which you are not allowed to photograph, please British royals can you have a word with the Danes) and a few apartments you can tour through.

Hey Look it’s the castle and it stopped raining

The crest of Scotland is everywhere here, and it features a very buff unicorn with a lion. The unicorn is swole and I would never want to cross it.

We took the 30 minute guided tour, which helped us focus our visit. Here are some Fun Castle Facts we learned on the tour:

All the cities everywhere had different time zones, so at 1pm Glasgow time, they fired one cannon. They still do this today, and we witnessed it!
It’s home to Mons Meg, a very lorge medieval gun which could fire a cannonball nearly 2 miles! Her barrel burst in 1681 and now she is on display for all to not touch.
Some kind of Defensive Fort has been there since the iron ages, and it’s been torn down, rebuilt, and added onto ever since.
It’s the most besieged place in Britain! But now, the only ones who besiege it are tourists.

There’s also a beautiful memorial for Scotland’s war dead, which forbids pictures, but is filled with tributes to soldiers, and books with the names of those who died in battle.

The only thing that hasn’t been torn down and rebuilt numerous times is St Margaret’s Chapel, Edinburgh’s oldest building. It was built in the 1100s and was dedicated to the very pious and charitable Queen Margaret, who was sainted in the 1200s. You can get married in the tiny chapel now! There were many tourist meatbags, so please behold some of its stained glass as my visual offering to you.

We made sure to visit the prison before we left. It turns out there was quite the prison crafts business, especially in forging bank notes for bribes. Also, all the Americans that were held captive here in the revolutionary war would usually pretend to be french, so they would actually get fed.

We pillaged the gift store appropriately, and it was then I realized that I was Hangry, so we had to stop for an emergency scone. Pro tip: if you don’t like raisins but you order a “fruit scone” in Scotland, you will be very sad.

For you see, the fruit is raisins. I did not even know they were considered a fruit. Raisins are like the mummy of a fruit. I like them, so I’m not sad.

Ok but it was delicious and american scones suck ass

The place we stopped was just off of Victoria Street, which was apparently the inspiration for Diagon Alley in Harry Potter. It’s very cutesy and has a mix of great shops for souvenir-ing (or for fruit scone-ing).

Because the weather is a nasty woman, we retreated to the National Gallery for the afternoon, until it was time for Dishooming. Six raindrops fell on us, and by the time we had stored our bags inside, it was pouring rain. Suck it, rain!

This museum had lots of art from influential Scots. I don’t know a lot about Scottish art, but there’s a lot of gorgeous landscapes and art nouveau. This museum was light on the exasperated Mary and Petulant Baby Jesuses, which was a nice break for me personally.

Hey look it’s the Quiraing (see Skye post)

My favorite artist was Phoebe Anna Traquair and her art nouveau embroidery. She used a lot of gold in her work and you could get up close to check out the stitching.

They had a smaller but formidable collection of other artwork by European masters, including a painting by Monet and one of Van Gogh’s olive trees.

The museum was notably light on the Museum Butts, but I did see a pretty good cain + abel wrestling statue with A+ buttcheeks.

All in all, a good deal for free entry – we made sure to donate….and then it was time for DISHOOM. Its Indian cuisine is from Bombay. There are a few of them sprinkled throughout England and ONE up in Edinburgh. It is my TIME! I made my res in August and I have been waiting patiently ever since.

I have the cookbook that I use when the spirit of Fancy Indian Cooking moves me. I um – don’t think I got that close to the restaurant’s food. But….my own take was still acceptable!

Dishoom is bustling, Art Deco, and smells amazing. This is the best Indian food I have had in my LIFE. We got the daal, some paneer roll, chaat, and mattar paneer. It came with lovely chutneys and we had to get a chocolatey dessert.

When we were done, I wrote them a review and asked if I could live in their restaurant. I will be waiting for their invitation.

We ended our night on the tiniest, cutest subway train that we took on the way back from the station to our house:

From Skye to Glasgow: a castle, cathedral, and graveyard (and a new camera lens!)

October 19, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

Coming full circle from our post on day one of our trip: we solve the lens problem our first day in Glasgow, because my phone has just driven me absolutely bonkers and the lens I brought Just Won’t Do in the city. And also unfortunately for my wallet, there is a camera store just 10 minutes away from our lodgings.

So, to ramp myself up for peak responsible purchasing, I uttered some of my best catchphrases, like “it’s vacation so money isn’t real” and “we’re remodeling soon so does $400 even matter?” and “money is fake anyway but happiness isn’t.”

I talked myself down from a steeply discounted fancy used lens that I didn’t need (I have so much self control) and ended up with a cheaper and lovely prime lens which would fit in nicely with the stuff I had at home. And I could also use it for nail photography. So….success.

Just look at the f/1.4 bokeh. L o o k

Tuesday was mainly travel from Skye to Glasgow airport to return Margarine You Dumb Bitch to the rental car place. However, we did make two stops: first, a detour to the very tiny town of Duirinish to see some more hairy coos.

We did not have any luck with our carrots today, but we stood outside their pasture and informed them of how cute they were (very cute). We might have chucked most of the rest of the carrots in their pen just to be rid of them. There were BABIES!!!!

Second, a stop at Eilean Donan Castle, because it had intrigued us on our way up to Skye. It’s large. It’s impossible to miss. Perfect.

The OG Eilean Donan castle was built in the 13th century to protect against the vikings. It’s located on a little island where three lochs meet – eilean means island in Gaelic. It was used primarily as a defensive location, which shrunk in size over the years. It was blown up in the 1700s during the Jacobite insurrection, and sat in ruins until the early 1900s.

Castle in the early 1900s, after being blown up and then left to the elements for 200 years.

Someone from the Macrae clan came along in 1910 and restored it to its 1600s glory. Now, the castle is furnished by the Macrae clan, and a private portion of it acts as their holiday home (what a life). They have rooms inside bedecked in their old glory, filled with photos from the current clan. You can’t take photos inside, but it was great to walk around and see the furnishings, gowns, and old pictures on display.

You can also get married here for the astonishingly affordable fee of just under $2k. Plus, this castle was featured in the original Highlander, as well as several James Bond films.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t a really good way to break up the drive, since it was just about an hour south of our lodgings on Skye and now we have 3.5 to go. Sometimes, Margarine makes a weird burning smell if she idles at a stop after running for a while. But…she seems fine. She made it back to her home at the airport with no issues (phew!).

Our Edinburgh place is kind of ridiculous – it has 14 foot ceilings and elaborate crown molding. This was not in any photo online and we feel like peasants. Short ones.

Our dinner came from a small vegetarian restaurant up the street, Sylvan. This has been the best meal of the trip by far. They serve vegetarian small plates and tasty cocktails. We might just eat here every night from now on (except for our night at Dishoom).

Smoked tomatoes + yogurt: the real MVP. Peas + fried egg in the background

Our first full day in Glasgow is mostly a lazy and laid back one. We started pretty late, after my morning lens purchasing, and decided to walk to the Cathedral and Mausoleum. I always like seeing at least one fancy church, and it’s strangely enjoyable to see old graveyards in Europe.

Glasgow also has a strong street art game, which we appreciate. Mixed in with the regular graffiti is artsy pretty graffiti, like this one on the side of a bridal shop.

There has always been a church on this site in Glasgow since the 600s, but the current structure dates back to around the 1200s, though it has been added onto and reconstructed over the years. It’s the oldest church in mainland Scotland (that’s quite specific) and the oldest building in Glasgow.

The upper level contains lots of pews, art, and artifacts, complete with high arched ceilings and lots of seals and crests from around Scotland. The wooden ceiling was particularly beautiful.

The lower cathedral contains the supposed grave of St Mungo, patron saint of Glasgow and of this cathedral. They don’t really know if most of the stuff about him was true, besides the fact that he died in 614 or 603, but for sure on Sunday, Jan 13th. And maybe in his bathtub, or maybe not.

Here lies St Mungo (probably, it’s easier if you just choose to believe the lore)

I particularly enjoyed the translation of the new testament in Scots (which is a variant of English that unfortunately gets derided as being lesser but is in fact, as legit of a way of speaking English as any other), some of the Munich stained glass, and sparkly modern tapestries in the lower cathedral.

Ok, there was also a cool sword.

The mausoleum is up on a hill behind the cathedral. The gravestones go back to the early 1800s, and most of them include the person’s profession on the gravestone. We found one person who was a dyer – it seems they found their calling in the end. Mostly both of us were horrified thinking about having our professions on our gravestones. Please no.

There was an area with a lot of Celtic crosses

We ended our evening nomadically attempting to get dinner at Ox and Finch and failing, so we ate at a nearby italian place that was prettyyyyy good. Italian food scares me, but it wasn’t salty, so I’m accepting tots and pears for my menieres behaving.

(I wrote this after dinner, it is now the next day, and I am fine.)

Next: Edinburgh!

Hairy Coos, Scenic Drives, and Construction Purgatory

October 17, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

First priority of the day: obtain carrots. Why? Because if you stop at Hector’s highland coos to see yourself a hairy coo, they love carrots! According to one google reviewer, that is. And so far, google reviewers have not steered us wrong. So we picked up a bag of carrot sticks (and snacks) and headed north to hopefully see the cows.

We were in luck: there was one mama and one wee young cow in the field! And just as Arielle reached into her bag for the carrots, the young cow trotted over extremely quickly. Yessss. Thank you, previous tourists, for training this coo to come running for carrots.

We were soon blessed with many kisses by his rough tongue as we fed him carrots, and we got to pet his fluffy head. He was so sweet and is our new best friend!

Of further import, today, we have finally named the car: Margarine You Dumb Bitch (“You Dumb” being the car’s middle name, and Margarine being pronounced marge-uh-reen so it’s a name but also a condiment). The GPS voice always spooks us, she tried to lock me out once, the auto wipers are decidedly erratic, and the car beeps too aggressively when things are not REALLY that close (like I have INCHES of room, come on), so we decided it was just a belligerent and anxious spirit trapped in the car.

But to cinch the full title, there is some weird thing we keep doing to invoke the digital assistant feature, sometimes in the middle of conversation, and sometimes when I tap my hands on the wheel to music. When we do this, the car invariably goes “sorry, I didn’t catch that” and we end up trapped in a conversation loop with Margarine trying to get her to shut up so the music comes back.

We didn’t really figure out the tapping cue, but we did learn (while stuck in Construction Purgatory for an hour, see the end of the post) that saying “Hey Mercedes” is what triggers the assistant. I guess it’s our accents?

Portree was our first stop for lunch and to walk around – it’s a small, quaint tourist town with a compact city center that was 75% souvenir and craft shops and the rest were restaurants. The harbor had some brightly-painted houses huddled around it as you descended the streets. Tourist catnip, if there ever was some.

We got lunch in one of the little cafes – a photogenic latte and masala eggs on toast – before we headed out for our scenic drive around the Trotternish peninsula.

The Trotternish peninsula loop is the main tourist loop on Skye: going north from Portree and around a scenic peninsula filled with all kinds of waterfalls, volcanic rock formations, and cliffs. About 2/3 of it is a one-lane two-way road with passing pull-offs. This isn’t too bad to navigate with few tourists, but this road is one that really throws off my sense of the left side of the car. Arielle has to beep like a proximity alarm a lot to warn me I am getting too far left, so I never fell off the road.

I discovered on this shit-ass road that I’ve become really good at dodging potholes on purpose. We refer to them as Craigs and no explanation can be given as to why. They are just Craigs.

The first stop is Bride’s Veil falls, which was not on our map but we saw other people stopped, so we stopped too.

Then, the Old Man of Storr. It’s a bit of tall, pokey rock that juts out from the rest of the cliff, and you can do a 45 minute one-way hike up to it. We did not hike up to it, but we stopped for a tea and stared at it. About 20 minutes after we stopped, we could see it was being pummeled by rain. Poor fools walking to the old man.

I didn’t understand parking or geography so you don’t get the iconic side view of the old man, but how about a verrry zoomy picture of it?!

After the Old Man is the Lealt Ravine, which used to be home to a salmon fishery. The seals were the enemies of the fishers, since they’d go up to the nets and take fish – I mean, free meal. Go seals! The remains of the huts are down on the beach in the ravine. There are plenty of signs posted saying not to walk down to the beach, but a lot of people must do that anyway, since there’s a well-worn path down there. We are most interested in the sheepies.

Kilt Rock is next on this tour. And guess what….it’s a rock that looks like a kilt! You can see layers of basalt on top of layers of sandstone. It’s got a gorgeous waterfall next to it, too. It was not horribly windy, so we didn’t hear the alleged entrancing sound it makes, but the view was so good that it didn’t matter.

Shortly after Kilt Rock and up the road a ways, you can turn left to get to the Quiraing. It’s another rock formation that you can park and hike to. This is the beginning of our encounter with one-lane two-way roads: it’s kind of shitty, lots of Craigs, and there are frequent pull-off points to let someone pass. Because a lot of the people on this road are tourists, everyone is morons, so a lot of backing up ensues so people can pass.

It’s also 15% grade up the mountain, which is a bit anxiety-inducing in the parts that don’t have a railing.

But we made it! Up on the mountain, it’s unsurprisingly very windy, and you have a beautiful sweeping view of the valley, the demon road, and the cool landslide rocks. You can hike out to it (nah, but also because it’s getting later) and in high season, there’s a coffee stand up here.

The rest of the Loop after the Quiraing is more crappy one-lane road, but this section is in better shape than the Quiraing road. We saw lots of sheepies, few people, and plenty of sweeping coastline as we slowly meandered on. The speed limit is like 60 but I think I topped out at about 40. I cannot imagine anyone tearing through this road at 60.

Sheep to the left, rocks to the front, sea to the right, and the road? Craigs.

It was at this point in the loop that Arielle decided she wanted to try to pet a sheep. Google told us sheep like carrots. Perfect bait.

There were a bunch of sheep in the road, so why not try? I slowed down, she pulled the carrot out, and the sheep refused and just kept going. So she threw the carrot in the sheep’s general direction, hoping someone would eat it. No sheep stopped.

We are going to be kicked out of Scotland on the basis of sheep harassment.

We left the scene quickly. I hope someone eats the evidence.

Our final stop on the northern loop around Trotternish was at some traditional huts, which are part of a museum that closes at the end of September. You don’t get to go inside, but you can go up and look at the little huts. I love folk museums so I was medium sad I didn’t get to go inside any. Oh well. Driving this road in high season would be a nightmare.

Back in Portree: tonight we got our first sit-down dinner! We stopped at a small inn and I got a noodle dish that had absolutely no salt added to it, so I was really happy. It had one ton of garlic on it though, so I am safe from vampires for the next few days. We shared a traditional dessert, a cranachan, which had good boozy whipped cream. Yum!

On the way back from Portree, about 10 minutes south of town, and precisely at 7:02 PM, we rolled up to this evil road construction sign:

What does timed access mean? There is another sign that says “only follow convoy vehicle.” So we waited. And waited. And watched the line grow and grow. And we had really terrible signal so no internet even to help us figure out how to navigate the situation.

We eventually shut off the car and befriended fellow impatient, stuck motorists, who walked up to the one construction worker and heckled him about how long exactly were we going to be stuck there? We met:

A Chinese tourist who did her damned best to persuade and cajole the iron-willed Scotsman to maybe find the convoy vehicle sooner PLEASE (she was unsuccessful)
An English guy who was working at a university in Glasgow and still had to drive down there tonight with a van full of fellow labmates (meaning he’d arrive around 1am now!)
A Scottish lady with a cute dog, and we pet the dog
Some other person in a puff vest who said they were gonna turn around (where will you go? There are like 3 roads on Skye) but they didn’t

I was just beginning to plan an insurrection with the other motorists (we decided us Americans had to lead it and I promised to throw out the tea everyone had as a warning shot to the construction workers) when Cute Dog Lady reported back and said that the “timed access” bit meant at the top of the hour. GREAT.

Cute Dog Lady also seemed like a local, and she said the only other way around (in pitch dark) was an hour on shitty one-lane two-way roads so….I will just live here now I guess.

Since we were the very first car, I spent the remaining 20 minutes of our purgatory informing other people who walked up front what exactly the dealio was, while we sat in the dark and our phones strained for signal and Arielle took some spooky dooky red-lit photos of us.

My wee bladder filled and I contemplated how much I cared going to pee in a nearby bush with all the construction lights shining on us, but at just after 8, we were FINALLY released from our construction purgatory. I was really not looking forward to driving the winding Scottish roads in pitch dark, but here we are. We got home just before 9 and I ran to the bathroom as quickly as I could.

We tried to re-train the car to respond to “hey Margarine” instead of “hey Mercedes” but it totally refused to do that.

Rude, Margarine, You Dumb Bitch. Rude.

Taking the High(land) road to the Isle of Skye

October 16, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

I think we all have our nemesis words, and I’m here to admit that Isle/Aisle is one of those word pairs for me. Is it the Aisle of Skye or the Isle of Skye? I know once I write the wrong one, but it always takes me a hot second to think about it. Today, we’re making our way up to the aIsle of Skye, renowned for its landscapes, Gaelic culture and language, and castles.

The Mercedes still has too many buttons, but we did have a plenty of time getting to get acquainted today on our five hour car trek. The lane assist proved to be pretty handy because I only consistently use like 1.5 of my mirrors (the left-hand mirror is dead to me due to being in a weird place, so Arielle has to beep if there are Danger Items there), and the automatic wipers were 95% wiping when I wanted them to wipe. That was a key feature, because it likes to rain hard for 5 minutes at random intervals, and then the road is spitty behind other cars.

We wound our way up from just north of Glasgow to catch Dunvegan Castle’s final open day of the season (recommended to us by my neighbors). Here is my cheater map that breaks down the various legs of our journey today (poorly annotated because I didn’t bring my iPad on purpose unlike my camera lens):

I’ve only driven off the road one whole time today, which is a marked improvement over Ireland, where it has similarly narrow roads and it took me a lot longer to get used to the fact that there is car on my left instead of just a window, and the mirrors are in all the wrong places.

When I fell off the road briefly, the car didn’t yell at me or try to warn me of my folly, though here are other scenarios when it does not hesitate to yell at me:

If I am driving on a somewhat curvy road and only using one hand, it demands I put two hands on the wheel
When I sometimes stray somewhat close to the middle line or, selectively, the left (not always, see above referenced incident)
When I back up and nothing is around me but it shrieks anyway (presumably, just because it is lonely)
One time Arielle unbuckled for 10 seconds to take off her jacket and it want ballistic
If you tap the steering wheel three times to turn on the assistant, and then tap it again, it yells at you that it has not subscribed to the service, so it won’t talk to you

On our way up, we stopped in the Glencoe valley since there are lots of scenic pull-offs and things to see and hikes for those who are not rushed to get somewhere before 5pm.

We stopped at the Coffin Cairn just before Glencoe, which is a really neat igloo-shaped cairn near a creek. It was restored in the 1990s by volunteers.

And when we reached Glencoe, we naturally became entrapped by a cafe and shop called Crafts & Things in Glencoe. We got lunch to go and souvenirs, also to go.

The road up to Dunvegan after that wound through the highlands and was filled with rainbows at regular intervals, thanks to the intermittent five-minute rain bursts but otherwise generally sunny weather. The highlands are a 10/10 gorgeous drive, highly recommend our route to anyone going through Scotland. You wind your way up and through and around the mountains, through valleys, and there are plenty of places to hop out and take pictures.

As we grew nearer to Skye, the road signs started appearing in Gaelic. Arielle was getting sleepy thanks to one night of bad sleep, but then, we saw a sign that breathed life into both of us: Feral goats for 2 miles. Feral. Goats. FERAL GOATS???

Thank you Bill Herndon/Creative Commons for this image (I am like 80% certain this is the exact place we passed the sign)

Please let us see some goats. PLEASE. And after 2020, we’re both pretty feral. The goats are clearly our people.

We saw no goats, but chanted “Feral goats! Feral goats!” for at least two miles.

After crossing the bridge of Skye, we wiggled our way up to Dunvegan castle, in the northwestern tip of the island. It’s still pretty busy despite the remoteness, and we passed people at regular intervals. Arielle took a dope picture of some sheepies in the road.

Scottish blackface sheep (what a creative name)

The castle and gardens are the ancestral home of the MacLeods, and the castle was built up and added onto since the 1200s. It’s the oldest continuously occupied castle in Scotland. It also closes at 5pm on October 15th. We arrived at 3:30. We did it!

You can tour through the rooms, which are decorated with the clan’s historic belongings. Tops for me was the clan’s claymore in the basement, and the drinking horn.

Oh, and of course, it had a dungeon (Arielle has to listen to me refer to it as a “fungeon” the whole time), which was located right below the passages to the kitchen. They wouldn’t feed prisoners, but you had to smell food all day. Brutal.

The gardens were gorgeous, even so late in the season. All the plants were labeled! The hydrangeas still had blooms on them, and the water garden with its brook and waterfall must have been a great place to stroll through before the castle was a tourist destination.

Look, I am making the most of my lens folly, ok?

We left before it got too late, since I certainly did not want to find our lodgings in the dark.

We have a cozy little cabin just outside Breakish. There are sheep outside and cats somewhere and I really hope I get to pet something tomorrow.

The fun part about traveling in shoulder season is that at the tail end of it, sometimes your dining choices become rather limited. Tonight, we nearly became hangry because two of the restaurants google and the internet told us were open were, in fact, not, so we had to peruse the Isle of Skye’s grocery store aisles to feed ourselves. At least we got a good chance to finish off our Indian leftovers I guess.

Tomorrow: we find Highland Cows maybe (?!?!) and do the Trotternish peninsula loop! We read that the cows nearby like carrots, so we’re going to the co-op for a bag to tempt them. Please enjoy the AM view from our lodgings.

We Glas-go to Scotland!

October 15, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

Wallet, passport, phone: the three essentials of any trip abroad. “If you forget anything, you can always buy a replacement.” This is my mantra. But forgetting generally also serves as punishment: I learned on the trip to Ireland that if you forget deodorant, you get stuck with European Punishment Spray, which is a very cold and unpleasant way to not smell like armpits.

Which brings me to this trip’s tragedy: when I pulled out my camera, I realized that The Forgotten Thing on this trip is, in fact, my walkaround lens. Instead, I have with me my long lens. I used it to take a baller picture of the moon a few weeks ago and never swapped back, and didn’t look too closely when I was packing my stuff up. Look, when you are in a hurry to pack, the lenses are kind of sort of the same….if you squint. (No, not really! This lens is much heavier and longer than the other one! ugh!!! And I even almost packed both, which would have avoided this tragedy entirely!)

And so this is probably the story of how I might be buying a used camera lens. Oof. Well, at least that has utility and can be resold. Tune in a few days to learn the conclusion of my several hundred dollar folly (or not).

But hey, Scotland! That’s where we are! The land of clans, scotch, kilts, and highland cattle.

A few months back, I booked this trip on a deal-based whim via Icelandair. We had a 50 minute layover in Reykjavik on the way to Glasgow, which broke up the otherwise 8ish hours of plane time nicely.

I have never seen Real Night in Iceland, and I have also never seen snow there, either. Both of these things were happening as we were landing and then leaving again. At least I could turbo-stuff my bag with licorice at the nearest duty-free and then shiver as we waited to board our plane, while freezing rain pelted us in our eyeballs. Ok Iceland, I am awake now. Thank you.

I chose this over finding a toilet, I’ll have you know.

Glasgow! It’s sunny here. The airport is medium-sized and we were through all the security things in a jiffy.

In baggage claim, a local man informed us that we had to at least get an IRN-BRU soda, so we complied, lest we be kicked out of the country immediately.

Now to wait forever in the car rental line (this is my luck lately). Annnnd instead of having a smooth pickup, apparently if you do not pre-pay for your rental with sixt and you are later than your guesstimated arrival time, they release your car and then only have SUVs in stock for $200+ more than your rental rate. With a group of four I wouldn’t have cared, but with two I do (and our friend said NOT to have an SUV here, which I tend to agree with in the UK)….so Hamish the Helpful Sixt guy said he might have something in an hour if we wouldn’t mind waiting in the nearby starbucks.

Well he called me about 10 minutes later and confirmed that he wouldn’t have anything for 2-3 hours, and then he super kindly set us up with a replacement care from Europcar for only about $50. And it’s ready now. Yay. We’ll take it.

It turned out to be some fancy mercedes with a built-in GPS system and Far Too Many Buttons. It notably only has USB-C plugs inside, which is moderately annoying since I deliberately also left my USB-C cords at home. Oh well. We’re on the road to our first stop: our lodgings for a nap. I am really good at stopping more suddenly than planned because it is a gas car and just keeps going when I take my foot off the gas. Arielle doesn’t seem to mind or at least keeps her screams inside her heart because I keep startling myself by having to slam the break. Good luck everyone else.

Our loyal steed (yet to be named, maybe a Percival?)

We didn’t turn on the heat in our flat for our nap because “we didn’t need it.” This was assuredly a lie because we are both lizard women, and I woke up a little bit before my alarm went off because I was cold. And that made leaving our house harder, but we set off to explore a nearby abandoned 13th century castle, Kilmahew Castle, which I found just by diddling around in google as I was avoiding leaving my warm blanket cocoon.

Kilmahew is also conveniently located near an abandoned seminary, St Peters, which is this graffitied and abandoned brutalist structure smack in the middle of the woods near the castle. Supposedly there are also secret bridges and an old garden in the woods somewhere, but we decided we were too stupid and tired to hunt for those, so just the seminary and castle for us.

It is worth noting that none of these places really have an address that the car’s GPS can handle and I’m too addled at this point to care. I plugged in just the name of the road like any sane person would do and we leftly drove the car away.

Upon arrival, the GPS gave up and the road quickly turned into a one-lane, barely paved path. There are pedestrians with dogs. Some of them are old ladies who we are pretty sure are mocking us (as they should be), for our moronic attempt to drive on the road (pictured below).

So I drove up the road, turned around, and then left to park in the neighborhood, past the pedestrians who I’m sure were double shaming us at this point. At least it is through nice countryside – it’s the golden hour, you can see some nice baby mountains across a bay, and the road goes through rolling farm fields with ancient stone fences, a golf course, and normal-not-highland cows.

And boy, this trip is gonna feature a lot of high-quality cow pictures if I don’t rectify my lens situation.

It took us walking up and down the road incorrectly one time to realize we ignored a key fork in the road which would lead to the seminary and castle (there are NO signs except for one that tells you to look out for “stray” golf balls), but we eventually found our way to some big, welcoming, barbed wire-topped gates.

The gates were before the seminary, which has lots of keep out/unsafe signs telling you not to climb it (ignored by many people). I’m also sort of here because I saw graffiti in google reviews that said “cheese tits” and I want to see it.

No cheese tits were found, but the graffiti and the structure itself was pretty interesting. There was a lot of pooled water, it looked like the lowest level of the foundation was totally flooded, and you could wander through the structures on the premises. Nature was busy reclaiming it with lots of vines, which were also graffitied.

We explored all of its crannies but could not, for the life of us, find the path to the castle.

The only way to find the path to the castle is via aggressive zooming and spinning around on google maps and then using directions to the castle that are located In the reviews of the castle on google.

Yes. That’s right. This is exactly what my running-on-two-hours-of-sleep brain needs: a digital scavenger hunt.

One person said “just past the pond” (I see the pond on the map but how do I get to it????)

Another said “this place is easy to walk around in without getting lost! You just keep finding things!” REALLY?? Have you met me? I am someone who left their most appropriate camera lens at home and all I keep finding is the ravine with the river.

But the final and most important clue was “Go through the tunnel of trees.” We saw a car parked near an area that looked more trampled than the rest, and discovered the magical tunnel of trees.

The path was soggy and muddy, as foretold by the reviews, so our hiking boots kept us happy. The trail also at one point narrowed to deerpath status, which we weren’t sure was correct, but we traipsed through some waist-high flowers like fae women anyway.

At last! We found our old castle. 13th century, abandoned since the 1800s, and with a small amount of graffiti – there it was. And the light is long and beautiful, and we can hear the nearby creek rushing through the rocks, so everything feels just a little bit magical. Yay!

Nobody had graffitied “cheese tits” on it (yet), but you could see where the levels were, and changes in brick and stonework on the original structure. Neat!

Brought to you by HDR making this picture look fake

There is some neat in-depth information on the castle here if you’re interested, offered by the group that acquired the land in 2020 which is aiming to restore the castle: https://www.kilmahew.org/medieval-castle

Mission achieved, we headed home for Indian food (because why not) and plotting our day to Skye tomorrow.

Vikings and dead kings (and boats)

June 15, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

When you think of the north atlantic, surely you think of….vikings! (Actually, I think of licorice, and then NATO, and then vikings, and now nudie spas, in that order) And we have not done too many viking things on this trip yet, mainly due to being thwarted by construction in Oslo, and not wanting to fall into a tourist trap in the fjords. But Rhett’s One Wish was to go do a viking thing, so we went to the second best viking ship museum we could find – the viking ship museum in Roskilde. I guess if the best one is currently closed, that grants “best” status to the one in Roskilde?

From Copenhagen, Roskilde is about a half hour train ride. That means that from our lodgings, it is an hour, as we have to go into Copenhagen, and then back out west again. This is the only time I wished we had a car on the trip because the train route was weird, but whatever. At least the local trains are nice, if not late (always, always late).

Roskilde itself is a charming smaller city. Our walk to the viking ship museum took us through a lovely shaded park that had ponds and ducks. Google maps only mislead us slightly one time by dead-ending us in a parking lot that is closed due to construction, so that’s a victory.

Roskilde was a trading hub for the vikings in the early 12th century, and as such weathered many raids and attacks over the years. To block entry in the bay, ships were scuttled to route would-be attackers around a different way, defending the town.

Fast forward over 700 years, and the ships are rediscovered in the bay and then set up in a museum, so that tourists like ourselves with Copenhagen City Cards can get in for free. Boop! Time for some boats and history, and I really hope they have outfits I can wear.

The museum has five ships, dug up with experimental techniques in the 60s. They took great care to maintain the ships and not cause further damage or decay once they’ve been removed from the cold waters of the bay. The museum has the parts of the ships on display, and the short film they show about unearthing (unwatering?) the boats is definitely worth the watch.

You can stroll around the museum and read about the types of boats – some trading boats, and some boats for attacking (because vikings). They’ve got examples of goods that were traded, viking weapons, and outfits you can wear. YES! Fashion!

The museum also has rebuilt viking ships in its nearby harbor, using techniques and tools that would have been available at the time. As you explore the outside, they’ve got a woodshop and some exhibits on how they’d use all the parts of the trees, and how they’d split the wood and prepare it for becoming a boat. They had even tested the seaworthiness of the boats by sailing one of the ships to Ireland and back. You can walk all over the ships to your hearts content when they’re docked.

This ship sailed all the way from Roskilde to Dublin

On days where the wind isn’t a hazard, you can go for a ride in the bay, too. But today was a windy day, and I know from experience that wind + boats = misery for at least half of our party. They would have made very poor, barfy vikings.

Our lunch at the museum cafe was pretty tasty, and I made an important discovery: my very favorite pukka tea CAN be found somewhere in this country. I order it for lunch and make a mental note to go on the hunt for it for the rest of our trip, because I’m almost out and importing it at $9+ a box makes me weep.

My sweet child, I will find boxes of you.

After lunch, we headed back up to the station, stopping at the cathedral. The cathedral is on the UNESCO world heritage site and was one of the first brick buildings in Scandinavia. Our boy Absalon (the founder of Copenhagen, see previous post) started construction on this church in the 1200s.

Today, it’s the final resting place of the Danish monarchy, and it’s been added on to over the years, as various monarchs saw fit. This results in a bit of interior chaos, but that makes the church no less grand. You can get up close and personal to the royal sacrophagi in their various chapels, and as you do in many grand cathedrals, there are lots of rich people buried beneath the floor of the main cathedral. In case of a zombie uprising, churches like this in europe would definitely be the least safe place to be.

Did I make this joke the last time I blogged about visiting a cathedral? Probably yes. I am just too lazy to go look.

The cathedral has a little museum upstairs, which is all in Danish. Duolingo has not yet taught me church words or history words and there is negative mobile signal so I can’t use google translate up there. It mostly was an interesting collection of dresses and models of the church and the pipe organ through the years. The upstairs does offer a great view of the main floor of the cathedral, so that alone makes it worth viewing.

On our way back, because we must go into Copenhagen and then out of it again, we went on one of the free boat tours included in our Copenhagen city pass. The city has a lot of canals running through it because one of the King Christians or King Fredericks decided they wanted the city to look like Amsterdam, to tempt the Dutch with all their money to come spend it in Copenhagen instead.

This was a stupid idea and therefore it didn’t work, but it makes for great touristing today, so I guess the plan paid off after all. The tour did take us past the back of the little mermaid sculpture, which is somehow Copenhagen’s symbol and was also rated the second most disappointing tourist attraction in Europe. Make of that what you will (jk, I actually really enjoy Copenhagen, but why this statue as the symbol of the city???).

Overall, it’s a nice tour, and a good way to see the city without doing too much walking.

The city is also gearing up for a huge festival, and I’ve forgotten people Do Loud Things, so it’s starting to get pretty hoppin as we depart for our peaceful Vedbæk refuge. Our last full day is soon upon us 🙁

Copenhagen: it got lit (a lot)

June 4, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

Google Maps may be my friend at home, but is my sworn enemy in literally every other trip. At least we don’t have a car this time so it can tell us to turn down pedestrian-only walkways like it did in Belgium. It is about the time in the trip where Google Maps has enraged me for the last time and I swear it off, but never quite manage to do so. Really, this means that there is probably a better app I should be using for Danish transit, but at this point in the trip, I would rather complain than change my ways.

The local trains are frequently delayed and the labeling confuses me, so I’ve just learned to obey the signs on the platforms. Google is completely unaware of the delays. If these trains were in Japan, I think it would spark a rebellion. Yes, they’re very nice. And they’re also extremely tardy. At least my duolingo Danish train words are coming in clutch, because I can sometimes understand like half the announcements, which is very helpful on the local trains where no announcements in English happen.

Pictured: a train. Currently, it’s four minutes late.

On our first day in the city, we started with a walking tour, so that we might identify the best places to hit, or at least identify the ones that were kinda meh, in the eyes of our guides. We picked the Politically Incorrect Copenhagen free tour, and really enjoyed it – it was both entertaining and educational (edutaining? entertational?).

Our highlights tour took us through the heart of Copenhagen, starting at the feet of the statue of its axe-wielding founder, Bishop Absalon, and ending just after the changing of the royal guard by the royal residence, Amalienborg and Frederiks Kirke (aka the Marble Church, which is actually not marble because they ran out of money). Fun fact about Amalienborg, you can just walk into the gift shop and use their toilets. This came in clutch several times.

The city burned down often, because of how dense and wooden it was, so there isn’t a lot of medieval architecture left in Copenhagen. Geography notwithstanding, it’s also quite flat, because for fire detection reasons, nothing could be built taller than St Nicholas church (which is no longer a church any more, but is an art gallery). Ironically, they chose to cut costs and fire the fire detection person – six weeks later, the Great Fire of Copenhagen happened, and the church burned down, with all the firefighting supplies locked in the basement. Whoops.

We enjoyed our swing past the New Port, which is mostly a charming tourist trap of restaurants and boats, and then watched the changing of the guard at the royal residence. The Queen supposedly smokes like a chimney, so her residence has the most chimneys on it. She also enjoys sports and riding roller coasters, so she seems to be quite the interesting lady.

A statue of Christian V out front of the French Embassy

Our guides gave us a few good pointers on what else to see in the city, which meant our afternoon activity was checking out Christiansborg Palace, which was close to where we had met the guide. The palace is home to the active government today, as well as the Queen’s stables. In its basement, you can check out the foundations of the original castle – Absalon’s castle – in the 12th century. Neat!

Well actually, this is a 12th century well

In order to go into the palace, you get to wear cool blue booties so your peasant feet don’t ruin the floors.

The Palace showcases room after room of Danish art, history, and present state of affairs. There is a dining table for 50 people and many of the reception rooms are used today by the royal family and other government members. The best room was definitely the library.

The stable was the real surprise – I didn’t expect to see actual horses in it. I figured it would be a historical artifact. They have a small museum that teaches you about the history of the original Frederiksborg horses, which came in many colors. This practice ended in the 1700s because the horses became inbred, so now, the royal horses are beautiful Kladrubers from the Czech Republic.

The round tower was on our way back home and it’s included with our Copenhagen card. This tower was one of Christian IV’s many building projects in the city. It was built as an astronomical observation tower and is part of a complex that has a church and a university. The tower was also originally home to a library, but now it’s got a little historical center where you can read about the university and church.

To ascend, you must go round and round its big ol’ spiral corridor – if you want to be fancy, it’s called a helical corridor. The corridor was built so that horses and donkeys could traverse it. Now, it hosts a unicycle race up and down it in the spring (the more you know).

You have to go up a few stairs to get to the lookout at the top, which offers a nice view of the flat city.

Tomorrow: viking ships!

We’re not in Norway, we’re in Bergen

May 31, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

Fun Bergen fact: it’s the rainiest city in Norway, averaging over 90 inches of rain per year. That’s nearly double the rain of Seattle or Portland, and tracks with or exceeds some Hawaiian cities.

Second fun Bergen fact: according to our tour guide yesterday, this May is on track to likely be Bergen’s coldest on record. Neat. This luck lines up well with our cold cold visit to the Netherlands and Belgium last spring, where it snowed on us and I had to buy some (really excellent) gloves and Serious Socks.

So it’s wet and cold here, and I am somewhat regretting at this point not bringing my winter hat because how chilly could it get? I have been adamantly refusing to purchase yet another winter hat (because I own so many), despite Rhett’s argument that at least a hat is “more useful” than a mug. Wrong, it is not, because a hat can only be used at certain times of the year. Mug? Mug is timeless. Mug knows no season. Mug is best.

Also, it’s going to be 70 in Copenhagen for the rest of our trip, so a hat is definitely a stupid purchase (and then I’d have less room for candy, and also what happens when my hat gets wet?).

But back to Bergen: the locals are very proud of their distinct culture and dialect. They say other Norwegians are born with skis, but in Bergen – it’s the umbrella. “I’m not from Norway, I’m from Bergen” is a bit of a local joke that runs so deep that when Brexit happened, a local news station created a commercial for Bergxit, joking about how Bergen was going to break away from Norway, and anyone who couldn’t properly roll their Rs in “rhubarb” would be left behind.

Anyway, little did we know that Sunday would be the last day we’d see the sun in Bergen!

Rhett’s comment: “all those homes are screwed when the sea rises”

We’ve spent most of the day not walking around, so we decided to go for a walk once we find our little apartment. All of the houses here are excitingly colorful and densely packed, at odds with Oslo’s modernity and the traditional homes in Balestrand, and our place is just a five minute walk from the ferry terminal, right next to Bergen’s narrowest street.

It hardly qualifies as a street – it really looks like just a path – but we’re right between the two major docks in the town, so we get to watch a parade of cruise ship tourists coming up our street for most of the days. They like to stop and take pictures of the little alley, which opens into a really cute courtyard between several colorful homes.

Our apartment was in the red house on the right

Our evening walk took us to the end of the peninsula to a look-out over the fjord. It’s cold and windy (what a surprise), but still a really pretty view over the fjord that we had just passed through to get to Bergen.

Our first full day in Bergen was all kinds of rain. We discovered some wonderful cafes and bakeries nearby, and went on a few moist walks in our neighborhood. Bergen has a beautiful city park, and lots of tulips and lilacs are in bloom right now. We hid in a gazebo because the gazebo was sheltered. Most of the locals are relatively fearless, because you can’t let the weather run your life. Most people are in rain jackets and have nice rubber boots, and I somewhat regret leaving my waterproof hiking shoes at home. At least my shoes dry quickly.

Our dinner was traditional Norwegian fare at Pingvinen (The Penguin). Lots of fish and meatballs and mushrooms (yay). Rhett’s mashed potatoes looked like normal mashed potatoes, but they had fish mashed in them (I so regretted my fishy stolen bite).

If you are a vegetarian who doesn’t like mushrooms, I pity you when traveling

We had opted to put all of our activities on our second day – going up the funicular to Mt Fløyen, and then a guided walking tour of the city’s historical section, Bryggen.

The funicular is a fun little tram up the mountainside. I suspect most of the locals just walk, but I have weak flatlander legs and I didn’t want to murder our elders, so funicular it was. We got in just ahead of a tourist group and rode up the steep mountainside, just as a cloud was beginning to vacate the mountaintop. It offered a really nice but chilly view of the surrounding fjord.

We did a few short hikes on the mountain, around a tiiiiiny tiny lake and then up to a viewpoint. This was the moment a spooky cloud decided to roll past, making our hike lovely and hard to see. There was a group of kids picnicking on the shores of the pond by the lookout, singing a song in Norwegian. We skirted around the rambunctious children, and their voices only somewhat faded across the small pond. It felt like we were soon to be murdered by the spirits of the children who were Totally Not Ghost Children. And we weren’t gonna get away fast, because we had weak ankles and the trail was small, muddy, and quite uneven (but mainly the ankles).

However, the cloud did pass for about thirty seconds at the lookout point, offering a nice view of the town and its port.

Hiking all around Floyen is delightful, as ferns and moss abound on almost every surface it can. It was a really great short hike, and there are plenty of non-intimidating options if mountains aren’t your usual walking terrain.

After lunch, we embarked on our walking tour of Bergen, through the historic town of Bryggen (all of the pointy, colorful houses you see in the photos), and up into some nice historic residential neighborhoods. These neighborhoods were mostly car-free, which made for excellent walking.

Here are some more Fun Bergen Facts, because apparently I’m educational today:

It was primarily a very wealthy fish trading community, playing a key role in the hanseatic trading league with its neighbors
If you painted your house white, you were mostly trying to flex on your neighbors (so all the houses you saw coming into port were white)
It was the capital of Norway for a whopping 66 years
Wood was primarily the cheapest and most accessible building material
On average, Bergen started on fire every 30 years for a long time because of said abundance of wooden structures, and despite people’s best efforts for that to not happen
Otherwise, it had key military importance, and now there’s a lot of oil business that gets run out of Bergen
A ship in the harbor blew up during WWII and is the primary reason the other side of the harbor is all modern buildings
All the historic buildings can be painted only from a list of approved colors, so the town remains historic-looking

Our tour took us up some of the winding slopes and past key restaurants and old stock exchanges. The buildings in the old districts are beginning to lean as their old foundations are rotting, and the city is using fees from cruise ship passengers to fund the restoration.

Bryggen to the left, more old houses to the right (most are businsesses)

It’s an easy city to walk in and explore. My favorite is how there’s a huge carnival on the shores just outside of the old town, so you can stand in Bryggen and catch strands of Post Malone drifting through the alleys.

Oh yes, and I found a place to finally get my waffles in Bryggen. Waffles!

On our final morning, we bade farewell to our favorite little cafe (Løvetann Cafe, mediterranean fare) and took the bus to the airport. When you arrive at the airport, you are greeted by a big ol’ sign that says Bergen? And I was at first unsure if the airport even knew where it was.

Anyway turns out it’s ✨ art ✨ by an Icelandic artist, design to inspire curiosity about the region. Well, mission accomplished?

I forgot how wonderfully automated European transit hubs can be – we did not speak to one person (minus the security people) during our swift self-check-in and self-baggage deposit process. I put airtags in every bag just in case we managed to goof that up or Norwegian air lost our stuff, but we landed in Copenhagen successfully, to finish the last leg of our nordic journey: Denmark.

Sognefjord and ciders

May 29, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

Fun Norway fact: everywhere we go, there is someone telling us where the nearest place is to have a swim (generally a fjord). And likewise, there are locals (or other Scandinavians) swimming at almost every point in the water, little ladders poking out in many places. I guess when it never really gets hot – why wait to swim? (Or why swim at all, if you are a delicate lizard?)

We left Oslo on Friday, destined eventually for Bergen, but not until we traversed the dramatic Norwegian landscape. I take deep offense at paying markup for something I could book for myself with a bit of effort – and that was how I felt about arranging our scenic passage from Oslo to Bergen – aka the Norway in a Nutshell tour. This the time-worn tourist trek between the two cities takes you from Oslo on a train up through a mountain pass, down on the world’s steepest railway, the Flamsbana, and then a boat through fjords, followed by a bus ride, and a final train into Bergen (or the reverse).

It’s a representative sampling of Norway’s wild topography – mountain passes, fjords, waterfalls, and lots of trees.

You can pay way extra if you let a booking agency handle everything (why tho), or you can book tickets for various trains, boats, etc individually if you are willing to battle with your potentially cranky credit card and the European credit card processing system. I chose to fight and my credit card only occasionally spurned me with nonsensical irregularity, and ended up victorious after the ferry company’s very helpful customer service.

Because I have a bus curse and a disdain for other tourists on buses, we’re not doing the train-train-boat-bus-train of the Norway in a Nutshell route, we’re doing an alternative called Sognefjord in a Nutshell, which has the first train-train-boat part, spending two nights in Balestrand in the fjords, and then a final boat through the Sognefjord to Bergen. It means we skip the really narrow, dramatic Næroyfjord, but how different can these be?

The first train: Oslo to Myrdal. It’s pretty standard for the first hour, but then you get into wild mountain lakes, lots of trees, and eventually….snowy passes. In hindsight, I am not sure why I thought there would not be snow up at elevation, but there it was. Feet and feet of snow, and some very abandoned train stops by research stations. We had only just left the snow behind.

At Myrdal, you switch and take the Flamsbana to the tiny tourist trap town of Flam. Before the pandemic, you could not book this online (according to several sources I found from 2018 and 2019). Now – I could! The train ride is barely an hour and very scenic. The rail line was built originally in the 1930s to service goods to the town of Flam, and now it’s a tourist train. I’m game, because it’s super pretty, and also half empty this time of year.

You have to get outside in the snowiest bits

It even stops at a waterfall for pictures, where a mountain spirit lady comes out and dances and tries to tempt interested parties into the mountain wilds forever. We all survived her dancing wiles and piled back onto our train car for the rest of the ride down into the valley.

The train ends in the small town of Flam. We have an hour to spend here. It’s a bit chilly (hah! finally my clothes are weather-appropriate!) and there are many little stands and bakeries here to refuel and relax. I got a big hunk of warm cheesy pesto bread from the bakery because bread at home hates me and we people watched in the cold until it was time to board.

Flam is a great place to spend a night or two if you don’t mind being in a tourist trap and want to do fjord activities. By this point in our trip, we have moved around and done lots of things, so we’re here to just chill – and that’s why we’re headed to Balestrand.

We catch our ferry to Balestrand, a swift boat that takes just over an hour to arrive. Notably, it has a small cafe on board that will sell you hot dogs, sandwiches, hot drinks, and ice cream: the staples of the tourist diet. My cheesy bread was superior, but I will be back for this cafe when we leave.

Balestrand is a smaller resort town, home to a Swiss Chalet-style hotel, the Kviknes, the favorite of Kaiser Wilhelm II and also the town’s claim to fame. Why is it Swiss? No idea. The town has a few hotels and is a charming intersection of smaller Norwegian town and tourist things.

The Kviknes was more money than I cared to spend and it’s not even in Norwegian style, so we went with the more affordable Balestrand Hotel, recommended by the guidebook. Unbeknownst to me at the time of booking, they’re hosting an adults-only (read: young drunk adults, and literally why I hate going to adult night at the zoo) camp for the weekend. Most of the time, this was fine and somewhat hilarious, except for the bumpin’ party they had downstairs that woke me up briefly at 2AM on Saturday night (the hotel was very apologetic).

They had also recently installed a sauna at the waterfront, and people were enjoying swimming in the water and then sauna-ing all weekend long. I guess when there is no such thing as warm water season here, you really just jump into the cold ocean any chance you get. As a lizard, I would die. Our room overlooked the fjord and we passed the time with many games of bridge and walks around the small town.

View from our room of the Fjord and the hotel’s sauna

Generally, tourist town food is kinda meh, but we found some real gems in the handful of restaurants around the town (or at least, what was open before high season commenced). The Kviknes has a dress code for dinner (formal attire, no sandals or shorts), which we discovered on Sunday when we went there for our breakfast. We are Too Poor for this hotel.

Balestrand has a really neat little heritage walk along the shores of the fjord, which was nice even in the all-day rain we endured on Saturday. I think the fjords are best in the rain, with the clouds spilling over the mountaintops and mist passing across the water. And I am saying that even though my walking shoes got thoroughly soaked – which could have been prevented had I brought my Serious Shoes with me, but I didn’t want to lug more shoes around, so I chose moist suffering.

King Bele’s burial mound, supposedly from around the 500s

The town’s history is pretty deep despite its size – it also has a great cidery (which we sampled many times, but it is closed on offseason weekends), and is home to lots of cool dragon-style homes on the heritage walk.

Our boat to Bergen on Sunday is a continuation of the one we boarded on Friday, but alas, we do not have tables this time. I had a small veggie sandwich and we passed our four hours on our boat admiring the many fjords and islands on the way to Bergen.

Kicking babies and taking names in Oslo

May 26, 2023 LK Comments 0 Comment

We’ve got two full days in Oslo to explore to our hearts’ content. Armed with our Oslo Passes, we have free rein of the public transit and free entrance to many exhibits and attractions. I discovered that it would also get us via bus to the fancy spa, as it was just on the outskirts of the free zone. The person who recommended the spa to us assured us that you could go in with your swimsuit. Oddly specific, but I’ll take it.

But first – we explore Oslo. I thought this was mildly unremarkable on Tuesday, but as we were pulling into port, from our room I spied a US Coast Guard ship being pulled by a tugboat (pictured below because Rhett didn’t believe me). I was moderately perplexed but figured “idk NATO???” and didn’t give it much more thought than that.

I mean also there is no way this ship is practically functional unless it can time travel??

On Tuesday night, Oslo was pretty devoid of cars. I figured it was just successful European de-carring of a downtown area (yay for the road Norway built under the city) combined with the fact that Oslo is not that populous (about 1m people, including the burbs) and enjoyed jaywalking to my heart’s content.

We ended up meeting a friend for dinner on Wednesday, and we learned that was most certainly not the case. A huge aircraft carrier and several American warships were in the area, preparing to embark on joint naval exercises in the Arctic circle (for funsies clearly) with Norway. This makes Russia grouchy because Clearly There Is No Reason For This Behavior and it has been spewing some grouchy rhetoric. It does border Norway and contrary to propaganda at home, the rest of the world is not always keen on us being the World Freedom Police, so security is extra tight.

So thanks my tax dollars I guess, because I’m sure they subsidized the security measures which were probably quite inconvenient to everyone else, but allowed us to walk everywhere without getting run over by just one of the many sneaky EVs roaming about.

All that aside, the public transit was mostly up and running for our entire trip (except for the one time our tram was shut down due to the event at city hall). Our first stop: the Folk Museum, an open-air museum that has lots of old Norwegian farmhouses from the 1600s onwards, demonstrations, and guided tours by hosts in local costume. It was started by King Oscar II in the late 1800s, when national romanticism began to grow and Norway began to agitate for its divorce from Sweden.

Norway is Just Trees, and importing stone was extremely expensive, so all of the old houses are made of wood and have really delightful sod roofs. The roof was changed every 30 years, so when the farm was inherited, the right of passage was replacing your sod roof.

Everyone lived in a tiny one-bedroom house, which was definitely especially pleasant in the winters, when there was almost no light outside and you were snowed in and probably stinky. If you really wanted to flex on your neighbors, by the 1700s, you’d have windows on your farm house (and a proper fireplace and chimney).

Our guide, in the tniy farmhouse, around its one firepit

The folk museum has an old stave church, built in the 1200s, and moved to the folk museum in the late 1800s. Inside, our guide showed us the graffiti from the 1200s. Most of the graffiti was about prayers or faith, but one said vagina (as you do).

Oh yeah, and they had farm animals!

This is a fjord horse (check out its stripes)

We were looking forward to the Viking Ship museum (located behind the Folk Museum), but it’s closed until at least 2025 for reconstruction 🙁

After lunch, we wandered to the Fram museum, dedicated to the exploration of the arctic and the antarctic and the search for the northwest passage. The ships Fram and Gjøa are both preserved inside the museum, restored and held up for tourists to crawl all over them.

The museum contains movies, diaries, and a lot of exhibits about surviving (and not) in the harsh arctic conditions. The Fram was designed ten years after they had figured out theories of ice floes, and had been designed to be lodged in the ice and float on it for years on end. Over winters and not, the crew spent a lot of time clearing ice buildup off of it and making sure it wouldn’t get crushed, in between doing Science and punching each other. It also had a collapsible windmill that was used to generate electricity.

In fact, at one point, for a few years, the lead scientist and explorer, Dr Nanson, left the ship with one other crew member, in search of the north pole. The crew was mostly happy to see him go as he had become an ass.

Crawling onto the boats gives you a sense for how packed in the crew was, and how much room they all had to share all winter long. Definitely very claustrophobic and probably stinky.

We took a boat back to the city center and met up with a wonderful friend for dinner (this was when we learned about the traffic restrictions).

We told our friend we were also thinking about going to The Well Spa, which has all kinds of hot tubs and hot springs. She joked about checking to make sure it wasn’t nudie night before we went. Ha ha. Nudie night. Imagine that. Iceland had been pretty insistent about wearing your swimsuit in spas and pools and surely every Nordic country was the same, right? Yes. That’s gotta be right.

Our Thursday was mostly plan-less and slower, so we made our way to the sculpture garden (also at our friend’s recommendation). The sculpture garden is an entire installation of works from Vigeland, one of Norway’s most prominent sculptors and the designer of the Nobel peace prize. His sculptures are mainly studies of the human form and are designed to depict everyday life.

The sculpture park is the most famous for the angry boy, but I would like to submit that the guy drop-kicking babies is the best statue in the whole park and possibly even the world.

Ask me again when I’m gonna have kids, the statue

Lunch was Yet Another Food Court, Oslo street food. I will eat at these things forever. Our friend spoke highly of it and also said it can get really crowded. We went at a bit of an off time and really enjoyed our meals of noodles and korean food. When in Norway…eat asian food.

And then we revisited city hall – which we had been told was closed for a while due to an event. I checked on their website and it seems they’re open a few days with an odd schedule. We got in after all! But only the one floor was available to visit due to whatever event was going on (overhead people saying it was “some EU meeting” but I couldn’t figure it out, as all the English language news is about the warship). The murals inside are incredible. I wish we had been able to go upstairs.

We detoured to the church on our way home just to check out the interior. Rhett pointed out that it was sponsored by Microsoft, because the ceiling said “Excel is god.”

After a siesta at home, Rhett’s mom and I decided we wanted to check out The Well spa because what are the chances it’s nakie night? It’s not too bad for the cost – 490 kroner/49 bucks gets you in from 5-10 pm. Just before we booked, I remembered our friend’s warning – better check and make sure it’s not tits out thursday or something like that. I scrolled through the website.

And I kept seeing a smiling, naked dude enjoying the spa’s various activities on their marketing pages.

I mean that was great marketing clearly, but why was he everywhere and naked always? And then I found their schedule of events – “Swimsuit Tuesday.” Why just Tuesday?

So I thought “let’s check the reviews.” And….most of the reviews mention you use the spa naked.

My prudish American sensibilities are intimidated so we tabled this excursion. We decided to enjoy a leisurely night in with some nearby Indian take-out and we called it a night.

Lastly, a small note on the expenses of being in Norway: certainly it is more expensive than most places I have been and usually go, but I was really expecting it to put Iceland to shame, the way people talked about it. And if you were here five or even ten years ago, that definitely would have been the case (looking at the exchange rate, it seems like it was between 5 and 7 kroner to the dollar-ouch). But today it’s just about 11 kroner to the dollar, which makes it Not As Bad as Iceland. So I guess – pleasant surprise?

Dinner out for five at a decent restaurant – 1300 KR (about the same as home, maybe a little high)
Entry to the nudie spa – 490 KR for an evening pass
Lunch for me and Rhett at the street food court – 360 KR (a little high)
A bottle of Coke Zero – 20 KR (on par for an island country)
Lattes and bubble teas – 60 KR each (about the same as home)
Convenience store sandwich – 30 KR (about the same as home)

Tomorrow is a transit day, as we are heading to our home in the fjords for the weekend.