Danish Design

On our last day in Copenhagen we went to the Designmuseum Dänemark. Going to a museum on a rainy day wasn’t quite the relief from the weather that I expected. Like so many places in Scandinavia, there was no air conditioning. In fact, the windows were open, letting in the humidity, and the rooms were […]

Copenhagen

We spent three days in Copenhagen. I had booked a bike rental from the hotel for one day, so we biked around the first day and walked around the second. M took SO many pictures of bikes – because there are SO many bikes everywhere. Not as many as Amsterdam, I think, but enough to […]

Stockholm Near and Far

The Stockholm archipelago has, in round numbers, a bazillion islands. (Okay, around 25,000.) We took a 2.5-hour ferry ride out to Sandhamn, which is one of the furthest out. It’s so far out it’s a blast from the past with no paved roads and no cars. People get around on bikes, motorized bikes, and ATVs. […]

Cardamom Central

It’s easy to tell we’re in Sweden – everywhere we turn we find cardamom bread and cardamom buns: at the breakfast buffet, at restaurants and cafés. And it’s not the mild cardamom flavor of the cardamom buns in Oslo; they’re serious about it here. It tastes like they use the whole pod, not just the […]

Oslo

The train ride between Bergen and Oslo lived up to its reputation of being especially beautiful, but unfortunately it wasn’t highly photographable. The train tracks along the fjords gave stunning views but if you blinked you might miss them as the train went through tunnels or into wooden snow-protection “shelters”. By the time M had […]

Southbound

The weather wasn’t as good on our southbound trip from Kirkenes back to Bergen. But it was definitely what we now call “Norway weather” – changing every couple of minutes. Both of our southbound excursions were cancelled, one due to high winds, one due to needing to refuel unexpectedly (presumably also due to high winds […]

Ships Everywhere

This post is for my naval architect friends! I suppose I should have realized that there would be a lot of boats and ships along the coast of Norway, but I never expected as many interesting ones as we’ve seen, from LNG tankers to very short and tall fishing boats. We’re sailing on the Havila […]

Far North

The scenery continues to be spectacular as we go north. We’re past the time of the midnight sun, but the sky is still light at 11 pm: We did an e-bike tour in Tromsø, the “Paris of the North.” According to the book “Exploring the Norwegian Coast,” that’s “not because the people are arrogant, or […]

Mostly Asea

We boarded the Havila Castor a week ago in Bergen. She looks just like her sister ship, Havila Capella, which we passed a few days later: The Havila ships are mail boats, delivering mail and packages all along the coast. We’ve booked a 12-day roundtrip, but some people use it to travel shorter distances. They […]

66°33′44″ N

We’re above the Arctic Circle! I’m behind on the blog – it’s tough to tear myself away from the scenery to work on it, and the internet is quite slow on the ship. I’ll go back to catch up, but right now I’m super excited to be in the Arctic with fabulous scenery. Pictures never […]