Bali Bound

Day 10 What with today being a bit of a boring travel day (I don't even get highway scenery out the window, but Greenland is decidedly NOT green) I figured I could share some of my random observations on this trip so far.  I was a little unimpressed that my free airport shuttle got me to the airport 5 hours early.  I was apparently the last person to leave.  It did mean a few hours of waiting for the check in counter to open and then a leisurely lunch before the flight.  Also, the Helsinki airport is a strange place.  They have very little seating.  I guess they expect you'll just camp out at a restaurant and wait it out there.  And the bathrooms have birds and nature playing in the background.  At first I thought it was some one's cell phone, but no.   Finlandia Hall This morning I went for a bit of a walk to Helsinki's Finlandia Hall.  It's an event venue for lack of better terms.  But quite striking compared to the...

Day 9 Old town Tallinn As lovely as Helsinki has been, I'm off on the day trip Tallinn, Estonia, officially country #5.  I think there is a chance of rain, but I'm prepared with my trusty umbrella.  It's the last full touring day with the bus tour already.  Tomorrow is the big travel day, which means back to Reykjavik for me.  This tour included an add on to Russia, which did intrigue me a little.  I decided against it as I was a little concerned it would be like the London add on that I did where we were on our own other than a trip to the airport and a city tour.  And I felt like maybe Russia wasn't the best place to visit on my own.  And it sounds like there are a lot of hurdles to jump to visit.  I think about 10 people were continuing on. Tallinn was a great day trip.  It's a beautiful city with much of its old town still preserved.  The reality of the ferry schedules did mean that we spent more time on the ferry there and ...

Day 8 Helsinki Good morning open waters.  The ferry is about 3 hours away from Helsinki and all I can see is ships on the horizon.   I can count at least 5 from cabin window right now.  I get the impression there is a lot of shipping and ferrying people on the Baltic sea. It is exciting coming into port and seeing Helsinki.  We've definitely left Scandinavia behind.  It's a subtle difference, but it's there.  Buildings are a little more functional than attractive, but this does change when you get away from the ferry terminal.  It's still has more of a working class feel sort of city. Since we arrived around 10 am we have no hotel rooms, so we are heading straight into our city tour.  As always on this trip, we were greeted with an overcast day.  I'm starting to miss the sun and warmth of spring at home.  Speaking of home, the ferry had a small NHL section, including hats from the Toronto Maple Leafs.  It seemed an odd ch...

Day 7 House in Skansen Is time ever flying by all of a sudden!  It's still a little surreal that I'm actually here in Sweden.  But I am and the city is a great place to visit.  It does feel like I had a lot of time here and I have really.  Rather than having an afternoon to myself I've had almost 2 full days aside from the city tour.  I was a little concerned that I might have a lot of free time to fill.  Because while I haven't had a lot of time in many of the places, I do feel like I've seen the vast majority of things while I was there.  And an extra day and some in the cities would be a little dull unless you left the city.  My backup plan was to bring a book over to the park but today's weather isn't so much sitting in the park reading weather sadly. Street of old building in Skansen But I do have an actual plan for today.  I'm going to visit Skansen.  The best way to describe it is to call it Sweden's version of Fort E...

Day 6 It's a full day in Stockholm today.  And the whole morning tomorrow.  It feels like we have a lot of time here compared to all the other stops. As always, we start off with our city tour, with stops at the City hall, where the remaining Nobel prizes are awarded.  As well as the Abba museum that I'm not entirely sure what to expect as I'm not from the Abba generation.  But the tour is geared towards an older crowd so perhaps that is what they were thinking. The Blue room in City Hall Every year Europe had a music contest, Eurovision, and Abba won it.  I didn't realize that the contest had been going on for so long.  It's actually going on right now and if so inclined I could watch the finals while I'm in Helsinki. The gold room in City Hall The Scandinavian city halls are quite ornate here.  The one in Stockholm is only open to guided tours, but I believe you can join a tour so it's not like you have to find an outside guide to br...

Day 5 Today the group is heading to our third destination, Stockholm.  I'd say it's the third country but were in Sweden for awhile to get to Oslo.  I'm curious to see how many Ikeas I will see going through Sweden this time.  Current Ikea count: 3. One of my favorite things to do on vacation is to check out grocery stores.  The mall we stopped at in Sweden has a few grocery stores.  And a giant candy store, that was even open at 9 in the morning unlike all the other stores in the mall aside from the grocery stores.  One had what they called the USA aisle.  Which consisted of Minnesota pancake syrup and some very strange Kraft dinner knockoff.  And next to that an entire asile of Mexican stuff, all old El Paso brand and knock off tortilla chips.  And the smallest bottles of Garnier shampoo and conditioner I've ever seen. Current Ikea count: still 3, now I'm a little disappointed. I've learned that Norway isn't a part of the EU, howev...

Giant Flag in hotel Today is Oslo day!  We're starting the day with a city tour that includes Frogner Park, which my travel agent tells me is amazing. The weather yesterday was fabulous and now today it's rainy and a little cold.  All those capri pants I packed are just a space waster right now :(  I am amused that I've had the same umbrella since around high school.  But realistically I only use it on holidays as at home it's usually more of a heavy rainfall that is steady, whereas so far it is usually just little showers that pop up and are gone right away. The hotel I'm staying at is really big.  All the rooms are around a giant atrium that currently has a giant Norwegian flag, to commemorate their national day I suppose.  I have learned that the Danes were the one who spent all their time conquering the the other Scandinavian countries.  Denmark was actually the largest European country at one point.  So the Norwegians are excited to ...