Leaving Rome, Arriving in Germany, and Touring Europe

We got up Monday morning, our last day in Rome, and took our time getting ready for the day. Our flight to Stuttgart didn’t leave until 4:40pm, so we had some time to kill. We checked out of our hotel around 10:00am, left our bags with the bellhop, and headed out for one last tour around Rome. Because we had missed the Pantheon, that was our destination. We walked down to the Trevi fountain one more time on the way; it was empty and they were cleaning it out (both washing it and collecting all of the coins). We kept meandering down the alleys, past all of the vendors and shops (stopping in a few), and popped out in the Pantheon plaza. We went in and looked at it; not quite what we expected. It was great, but we thought there were going to be multiple rooms to go through, instead it is one massive circular room with objects around the outer wall. There were a few really neat sculptures and mementos. One that I thought was great to see was the artist Raphael’s tomb. He died and was immediately buried there in 1520.

After touring around inside we exited the Pantheon with more time than we thought we would have. We needed to kill time until 1:00pm, the time we had a taxi scheduled to pick us up at the hotel. We were also trying to not sweat too much, as we had to fly and then go to our cousin Melissa’s house, and it ended up being one of the hottest days we had in Rome. We just had to walk slower, stay in the shade as much as possible, and just take our time everywhere. Oh no!! (This is hard for me to do!) We didn’t want to walk too much farther away from our hotel, but a few blocks away was a really neat plaza, according to our tourist map, to check out. We walked through an alley and popped out into a huge, magnificent courtyard plaza, the Piazza Navona. There was a tall monument in the center, with fountains at each end. There was also a large building (I am not sure what it was) that was very ornate with a large dome. After a while, there are so many really old, ornate buildings that they sort of become “ho-hum,” but they are still always fantastic to see. There were also many, many street vendors in the plaza selling their wares. David made a purchase and then we started heading back toward our hotel.

We wandered back through some streets we had never been through, walking past some huge government buildings, and ended up back at the Trevi Fountain again. Still empty, but the area surrounding it was filling up with people. Even empty, the fountain has a special draw for people. We then walked back to the hotel area and went in to McDonald’s. We were both quite hot, and starting to get too sweaty, so we thought we would just relax in the air conditioning. We both ate a light lunch and sat there for about a half hour or so cooling off. It was then 12:30pm, so we walked the two blocks to our hotel and gathered our bags. The concierge called the taxi and he was there in less than five minutes! We then took off for the airport.

Taxi drivers are just fun. There is no other way to put it. He was flying through the streets, passing people all over, and almost making me hold on. He also took some shortcut, which made us both a bit nervous (some guy driving us through some deserted back alley on the outskirts of Rome), and we made great time getting to the airport. We walked in and found which desk we had to check-in at (which was not open yet) and saw the line for another flight. It was so long there was no way they could all get through the line before their flight left. There was one man standing in line for when they would open our desk and start check-in, so we decided to not risk having that long of a line and waited too. It took about 45 minutes before they opened the desk, and our line wasn’t that long, but we were still glad to have waited it out. We checked our bags, got our boarding passes, and then headed through the security. We figured that if the check-in lines were that long, we better not chance it. The security ended up being quite fast, so we had about two hours to kill waiting for our plane. Oh well, better than missing the plane, right? Because we purchased checked bags, we also had seats at the front with lots of legroom (and a “free” meal). As with a few other things on this trip, money well spent. It was only an hour and a half flight, but being able to stretch out was glorious!

We arrived at the airport in Stuttgart, Germany, and got our bags fairly quickly. We walked through the customs area and Melissa was right there to greet us. There are many good reasons to see our cousin, but seeing a familiar face, who speaks English!, was just a great feeling. We stopped off at a local restaurant and had dinner on our way to her apartment, which is in Böblingen, a suburb of Stuttgart. We then got to her apartment, she gave us the tour, and then we sat around visiting. As she had to get up for work in the morning, and she just got back from work after coming straight from a trip up to Sweden, Finland, and Estonia, she was very tired and needed to get to bed. She still didn’t go to bed until around 11:00pm or so! I love family J

The next two days were almost total relaxation for me and David. We slept in Tuesday morning and just relaxed until Melissa came home from work. Well, we both did laundry; clothes smelling like laundry detergent never smelled so good! After washing our clothes in sinks (except for one time in Inderøy) for the last 6 weeks, using a regular washing machine was just amazing! It is the small things in life…… I also got caught up on a few computer things that have been piling up. It is amazing how dependent we have become on Internet access. I was also finally able to post my pictures from Rome on Facebook!

When Melissa got home, she changed clothes and we went out. We first had to go to the military base to get permission for me to be able to drive her car. David was also supposed to drive, but he misplaced his international driver’s permit. (We think he may have accidentally packed it with the things he sent home.) After getting permission to drive her car, we went to the mall on base and picked up a few things and had a light lunch. We then drove to a couple nearby towns that Melissa wanted to show us.

The first town, Bebenhausen, was a small walled city. We walked around inside for a while, me taking pictures of course, and then we headed for the next town. Tubingen is much larger and is a university city. We parked the car and walked through the main part of town. There were many shops, some of which we wandered through, and many beautiful Bavarian buildings. It was like walking through a large, authentic, Leavenworth, Washington! We walked through the town and went to a park that is a skinny, but really long island in the middle of the river that runs through town. We walked down the length of the island and then back again, enjoying the scenery (many small gondola type boats going up and down the river, as well as the buildings along it) and each other’s company.

We then headed back to Böblingen and went to a Mexican restaurant that Melissa had wanted to try. Nobody was too impressed with the food, but it was sustenance. We then went back to her apartment. While Melissa was packing her clothes for her upcoming long-weekend trip to Poland, David and I visited with our cousin Sarah, back in Silverton, via Facetime on Melissa’s iPad. Technology definitely has its perks! Melissa went to bed while we were talking to Sarah, and then after chatting with her for a while, we said our goodbyes and we went to bed.

Wednesday was another lazy day. These two days of relaxation were so wonderful after six weeks of pretty much on the run traveling. Especially after 6 days of walking all over Rome! We lounged around the apartment, I finished catching up on some computer work, and we packed our bags for a long weekend jaunt around Europe. Melissa got home from work and we headed out. She was meeting three friends in Ansbach (Jim, Jan, and Joanne), about two hours away, at a house they own. They do not live there anymore, but they have rented it out to a friend of theirs. We all met up at the house and their friend that lives in the house, Bonnie, made an unbelievable meal for all of us. When it comes to hosting, she went all out! After a salad starter, we had (and of course I didn’t have everything) ham, a delicious potato dish, a yams and cinnamon apples dish, broccoli, and whatever else I am forgetting. After that she had two different desserts; a coconut cream dessert and a multilayered cake. Yes, she went all out. After we all ate, we sat around visiting for a couple hours before heading for bed.

We woke up Thursday morning and visited over pastries from the local bakery in town that Jim, Jan, and Joanne walked down to get. We then parted ways: Bonnie to work, Jim, Jan, Joanne, and Melissa headed for a pottery festival in Poland, and David and I headed out for a road trip. We drove a short distance to Rothenburg (full name is Rothenburg ob der Tauber), probably the best preserved walled city in the world. We were not prepared for what it was. We parked our car, paid for an hour and a half parking, and walked to the wall. It took us a couple minutes to find a way in, and then we entered through the opening. It was really neat. We turned left after we entered and saw some doors to go in. We walked past the doors to start with and went out to the main entrance to the city. After checking out the entrance, with a bridge across a huge moat, we walked back into the city and walked in one of the doors. It went inside the entrance buildings and we were able to walk up and around the front section of the city. We then exited this area, to the outside of the city, and walked back around through the moat (which has been turned into a nice park-type area). We then entered the wall through another door and went back up to the main entrance area. We then went in another door that went up and around the building to the perimeter wall. This was a walkway that went along the wall around the city. Not the entire walled-in city has walkways along the wall that is accessible to the public, so we hear. We never got to the end of it. We knew it would be bigger than Bebenhausen, but we didn’t expect what we saw. This was not a walled-in town; it was a walled-in city! It was gigantic! Walking along the wall we could see out over the buildings. The city is a fully functioning city; people lived in all of the houses, there were many, many businesses along all the streets that did not have houses on them. The place was huge! We kept walking quite a ways along the wall until I noticed the time; we only had about 25 minutes to get back to our car. We then went down one of the stairways off the wall walkway and worked our way back to our starting point. We walked through quite a few house-lined streets, and one of the main streets full of businesses, before we got back to where we started from. And we did not even come close to seeing a fraction of the city. Well, so much for thinking we could just bomb through and see it in a short time. Oh well, it is a place I could definitely go back to and spend some time roaming the streets. We made it back to our car with about 5 minutes to spare; not that there were any cops or meter maids in sight, but we didn’t want to have to explain to Melissa that we got a parking ticket within 2 hours of her lending us her car!

We then decided to drive to the Czech Republic before heading down to Dachau. We were not that far away, so we could go and pin another county in our map of countries visited. We drove a couple hours and went to a bigger city, Plzen (Pilsen). It was so crowded and we could not find/figure out their parking system, so we just drove around town for a while and then headed out. (My regret is that we didn’t spend more time here, figure out the parking, and get out walking around and taking pictures. There were quite a few neat park areas and plazas that were pretty nice.) I was on a mission to find at least one geocache; I wasn’t to be persuaded! I punched in the coordinates to one not too far away and we set out. We ended up going down a rutted up old road, out in the middle of nowhere, and finally popped out at the edge of a really small town. The geocache was still over a half mile roundtrip, through a farmer’s recently plowed field, with houses around us. I wasn’t about to try for this one. Disgusted, I found another one closer to the freeway, and punched those coordinates into the GPS.

It brought us to an even smaller town that had a huge building along the road. We pulled in to a small parking area close to the geocache and I went to see if I could find it. It was located down some ravine with nettles and trees along the bank. Once again, I wasn’t about to try for it. Being this far out in the Czech Republic, where very few, if any, people speak English, I wasn’t about to risk any weird confrontations. Instead we just walked through the doorway in the large building. It went through a little portico into a very large courtyard. There were a number of restaurants and shops in it (mostly closed) and a large Catholic church making up one part of the courtyard. There were a few people sitting at some outside tables for one of the open restaurants, but they didn’t pay us too much attention as we walked in, took a couple pictures, and then walked back out again. Disgusted again at not finding a geocache, I punched in the coordinates for another one at a rest area close to the Germany border. I was getting down to my last chances here!

This rest area was quite large. It not only had a large truck stop, but it also had McDonald’s at it. Thank goodness! We had not eaten anything all day and it was about 4:00pm, we were hungry! We had wanted to eat at the McDonald’s in Plzen, but we couldn’t find any parking. We wanted to keep up with our tradition of eating at a McDonald’s in every country we visit, so this was our chance. And, most importantly, the geocache was in the McDonald’s parking lot and it was an easy find! Woohoo! I knocked out two birds with one stone! I tried to find one more that was supposed to be in the rest area complex, but the road was barricaded that we were supposed to drive down. Oh well, I got one so I should just be happy with it. We then set the GPS to head down toward Dachau.

One thing to mention here: the Autobahn is awesome! I will probably not get used to it, but it is a weird feeling to be driving down the freeway at 100mph and being passed by someone like we were standing still. This happened so often, but we were still in awe. It wasn’t just young guys driving fast, it was everyone from business men driving home from work to families in the family wagon driving somewhere. It was just incredible. I mainly drove between 80mph and 90mph, where it was unlimited speed, but once in a while I got up over 100mph. Because this is my cousin’s car, I don’t want to push it too much. (I am sure I will by the time the weekend is done! Sorry Melissa J ) It is tempting to rent a sports car for one day just to take it out and drive really fast.

Anyway, the whole point of talking about the Autobahn is that we made pretty good time getting down to Munich. I was not sure what the hotel situation would be in Dachau (or in Munich, for that matter), so we punched in a hotel on the outskirts of Munich and headed there. This is how David and I like to travel, just find a hotel on the fly, but I was nervous about how it would be in Europe. We figured we would have to search for a while and try many different hotels before finding one, but we got lucky on the first one. It was pretty cheap, available, had parking, and was nice and clean. We checked in, put our bags in the room, and then headed out to see what we could find. It was about a half mile walk to the main part of the town (a suburb of Munich) and when we got to the main crossroad we smelled pizza. Sold! Not only was it good (I had pizza and David had a calzone), but it was also cheap. After we ate we walked back to our hotel and relaxed. (I also took this time to write this blog post up to this point. I had not written anything since our last day in Rome, so I thought I better write down everything I could remember before I forgot more than I probably already have.)

We woke up Friday morning, checked out of the hotel, and headed for Dachau. We weren’t sure what to expect, but we thought we would spend about an hour there and then head toward our next destination. Little did we know! Dachau was very impressive. It was a mixture of emotions to be there: sad, disgusted, intrigued, fascinated. We spent three hours touring around the grounds. We went through the prison cell block that is still standing and open for visitors. We were able to walk down the corridor and peek into many of the cells. They had a lot of information about many of the more famous prisoners in the cells that they occupied, and they had a lot of information about many of the Nazis who served there. We went through another prison building that has been transformed into a museum. It had multiple banners and boards talking all about the camp and the war. It also had a room for the survivors where many of those who survived the camp and lived to be older were honored. Of course there was also the memorial room with many artifacts, etc. We took a lot of time going through this building, but there is only so much a person can take, so we went through it a bit faster toward the end.

We then walked across the grounds, which were very expansive, and looked at the perimeter wall that was recreated many years ago to what it had been during the war. Across the grounds were all of the foundations for the other barracks that housed prisoners. We walked to a memorial that looked like it was created out of some old structure, and we also visited a church of sorts that was built as a memorial to the Polish prisoners who were killed. We then went through a gate in the wall and entered the crematorium area. This was disgusting when you looked at it and knew what it was for. We toured inside and saw the furnaces and also went through the “showers” that were used to gas prisoners. We then walked around a pathway that went back behind the buildings and walked past the shooting wall where prisoners were executed. Along this path were also many small memorials showing where the ashes of a multitude of unknown persons were buried. We had enough of this area and walked back into the main camp. We went through the one barrack that was open for touring. It showed the bunk beds (newly recreated) that were used to house the prisoners. This was neat to see to be able to understand how they were able to imprison so many people; around 60,000 at one time at the height of its use. After this we exited Dachau and made our way back to our car.

We then set out to find the Neuschwanstein Castle. This castle is very famous, even though it was built in the 1800s. It was this castle that Walt Disney modeled his Sleeping Beauty castle after. The castle was magnificent! We read up on it and decided to not take the inside tour. It didn’t seem that you would see that much more, we were running late of our “scheduled plans,” and just wanted to see the outside. We took a little bus up to the top and walked to a bridge that spans high above a river and looked out to the castle. The view was amazing! The bridge was crammed with people taking pictures, and had wooden planks for the base, so we joked about how lucky we were it didn’t fall once we got back off of it. We took many pictures of the castle and surrounding area and then walked back down to the turn off to go to the castle, and then walked up. Up close and personal, the castle is immense. We took many more pictures and then walked up the pathway to the entrance. The tour is for the interior of the castle, but we could still go inside the inner courtyard of it and look around. I did not think we would be able to do this, so it was an added bonus. Inside the walls was also very impressive. We took quite a few pictures and then slowly worked our way back down. It was getting late in the day, so the bus would not sell any more tickets, so we had to walk back down to the parking area/town. It only took about 20 minutes to walk back down, so it wasn’t too bad. We went through a few of the souvenir shops at the bottom and then headed for our car.

We weren’t exactly sure what to do. It was already fairly late, so we didn’t really want to drive to the town I had originally planned on trying to stay in. We could drive back to Melissa’s apartment and stay there, but it was about a 2 hour drive, or we could just drive closer to where we wanted to go and hope to find a hotel. We went with option B. We plugged a hotel into our GPS and drove on. We got to the Austrian border and luckily, at the last minute, I pulled off the exit. As with the Czech Republic, we had to pull in and purchase a toll pass. We bought the toll sticker and the continued on. We pulled into the small town of Rankweil, Austria, and drove to the hotel.

The lady at the desk laughed when David asked if there were any rooms available. I guess a town not too far from there was having some festival or something and the whole town of Rankweil was gone. So yes, they had rooms available. Phew! It was after 8:00pm, in the “middle of nowhere,” and we didn’t want to have to drive all over to find another hotel. She asked if we wanted to see the room before we agreed, and we said, “No, it will be perfect because we aren’t driving anywhere else!”  We dropped off our bags and walked down the street to find a restaurant that the hotel clerk said would still be open. The streets were pretty much deserted, on a Friday night! So yes, I guess the whole town did leave for the festival. We ate dinner, which took about an hour and a half, and then went back to our hotel room, now 10:00pm. The hotel had Internet, so I finished writing this blog and posted it! Yahoo! We have now been in nine countries on this trip, and we hope to add at least two more tomorrow. It has been quite the ride!

Rome: Caput Mundi (The Capital of the World)

When my alarm went off at 3:45am (I know some of you normally get up that early, but I don’t!) I about croaked. I didn’t sleep too much, just off and on during the night, but it was still hard to get up that early after a day of a lot of walking and a later night. But all is well that ends well. We caught the 4:45am shuttle to the airport and we didn’t have any problems at the airport. We arrived at Rome Fiumicino airport a little after 11:00am and caught a shuttle van to our airport. We were going to take the train into town, but it didn’t leave for a half hour and the shuttle van would drop us off right at the hotel. It only cost a little more, and it was money well spent! We checked in to our hotel, dropped off our luggage, and headed out.

We had no idea where to go, but we headed out anyway! It was beautiful, sunny, and hot; just what we wanted/needed after a cooler month in Norway and a cooler few days in Ireland. Heat at last! We started wandering down the main street near our hotel and turned in the direction of the Colosseum. Well, wrong turn; exactly opposite wrong direction. No problem though, this is Rome. There is something fantastic in every direction! We ended up at the famous Spanish Steps and the fountain at the base of the steps in the Piazza di Spagna. After wandering around for a bit in the area, I used my phone to find out where we were and how to get to the Colosseum. (Yep, I used my phone quite a bit in Rome for directions. The roads are not laid out in nice, even squares, so it is easy to get turned around.) After looking at my map I saw that I took a right instead of a left from the main road near our hotel. No problem, we just started walking again. On the way we found the Fontana di Trevi. The Trevi Fountain is one of the most famous fountains in the world, and it is the largest Baroque fountain in Rome. After looking at it for a few minutes, we kept moving on toward the Colosseum and ate a sandwich at a little street vendor.

Walking up the street, we were able to see part of the Colosseum between buildings before it came into full view. It was looking quite impressive! Once we finally got to it, yep, it was a lot larger than we thought it would be. It was one very extraordinary ruin! We took some pictures and hung out in the area for a little while, but because we were doing a tour of it the next day, we didn’t stay very long. (I just had to find out how to get there and see where to go for our tour.) Because we were both tired and did not sleep much the night before, we headed back to our hotel and took naps; very needed!

We got up and walked back to the Spanish Steps and sat and people watched. The fountains of Rome are all drinking water, so there were lines of people to walk up to the two spots where you could fill your water bottles or splash water on yourself at the fountain. The water actually tasted better than at our hotel! After we walked around a bit more, we stopped off at a gelateria for some gelato. David got a small cone and I wanted a dish, the big one. He questioned me about it, but I said yes. Well, it was quite large. It was also decorated with many little pieces of wafers, etc and I was getting a little uncomfortable watching him make it! He knew it was only for me, but he gave me two spoons in it anyway. It cost a fortune, but it was worth it; it tasted great and it was just what I needed! We then wandered around the area a bit longer, and then we headed back to our hotel for the night.

We had to get up fairly early Thursday morning for our tour of the Colosseum. We needed to be there at least a half hour early, and we wanted to be sure we could find it! We left our hotel at 8:15am and walked the 1.2 miles to the Colosseum arriving early enough to go inside and to take some pictures. We then walked back out to our meeting point and waited for our tour to start. The tour was most assuredly worth it! Not only did we have a guide to explain things to us, but we were also able to go to different parts of the Colosseum that the normal public could not go. We started off the tour by going out onto the arena floor. They have recently built part of the arena floor back over the underground ruins to show what it all looked like. After explaining quite a few things, our guide then gave us a few minutes to take pictures. After that, we headed down to the underground; the place where the gladiators, hunters, and animals used to enter the Colosseum floor. Yes, most of the “underground” is visible from everywhere in the arena, but we actually went down and looked at everything from the actual underground perspective and saw the arena floor from the underside. After more explanations and picture taking, we headed back up to the public areas. Our guide explained a few more things as we walked through the public area, and then we headed up to the upper sections where the public could not go. Felt kind of special when our guide kept unlocking gates for us to go through! We climbed the steps to the upper area and she explained more about the history and workings of the arena. We then had time to take more pictures and wander around a little bit in the area open to us. Then our tour was over and we all walked back down to the main area. David and I then walked around the public areas, taking pictures and enjoying the fascination of actually standing in the Roman Colosseum! There is so much history here, and in all of Rome, especially for a Christian, that everything is quite awe inspiring.

We exited the Colosseum and took more pictures from the outside, and then decided to head to the Mamertine Prison. I wanted to go to Rome for two things: the Roman Colosseum and Mamertine Prison. Everything else in Rome, as great as it is, was just a bonus. The prison is not far from the Colosseum, so it only took ten minutes or so to get there. The tour is a guided, short tour using headphones to explain things. We were told when we purchased our tickets that it was a fairly religious tour; great! It did lean a bit toward Catholicism, but was actually quite good. I am sure that someone who is not a Christian might feel uncomfortable, but I thought it was great. We went down into one of the cells that has been preserved, went to another area where we could look down into some of the ruins, went to a couple different videos (which were very religious, explaining Salvation, etc.), and then ended in a small chapel. In the chapel was almost a sermon of sorts, and then it basically ended with a moment of silence for reflection on what Christ has done for everyone who believes.

We exited the prison and then headed to McDonalds for a quick lunch. It was the craziest McDonalds I have ever been in. There were many counters and they also had computers set up to purchase your food and then pick it up at a special counter. And the place was packed! It was a really neat setup for the restaurant, basically subterranean. We walked through a McDonalds Café, with a few seats, and walked up some stairs into the restaurant. (Because of the road elevation, we were still underground even though we walked up stairs to the restaurant.) We fought our way through the line, got our food, and then wandered around for a few minutes before we finally found a couple seats next to some people at a seating bar. After we ate we headed back to our hotel to rest. I knew we would be walking a lot in Rome, but not this much!

I didn’t think I was that tired and that I wouldn’t even take a nap, but I did fall asleep, for around two hours! It felt great and I was ready to head back out for more! We started walking in the direction of the Spanish steps, but once again my sense of bearing was a little off. Didn’t matter though, we found a little restaurant and stopped off to eat. David had lasagna and I had spaghetti; we wanted to at least eat something Italian while in Rome! We took our leisure time and then headed out. Instead of getting to the Spanish steps, I was a few blocks off and we ended up at the Trevi Fountain instead. The place was so crowded! It was some Italian holiday so there were many Italians out and about besides the normal tourists. I had to jockey my way around in order to take pictures, but it was worth it to be able to people watch at the same time. There was still a little light in the sky when we first got there, so it was a very beautiful setting; the fountain lit up, soft light on the sculptures and buildings, a dark blue in the sky. I just wished that it wasn’t so busy so I could take a really good picture. (Not that I am a great photographer, but I might be able to take better pictures if I wasn’t always being jostled.) We hung out for quite some time; I took many, many pictures hoping a couple might turn out decent, and we each threw a coin into the fountain (Rome tradition). We went in to a little gelateria and had more gelato (great stuff by the way) and then stood around watching people (and taking more pictures, of course). We finally decided to start the walk back to our hotel, so we headed out. It was probably a mile back to our hotel, and it was still very warm out, so we were both quite hot and sweaty once again. I love it! We got back to our hotel and relaxed for a while, did a few necessary chores, and then headed to bed.

We got up Friday morning and headed to the Palatino (the Emperor’s Palace) and Roman Forum. Our tickets to the Colosseum gave us entrance to these, but they had to be used by the next day. We didn’t know how long it would take, so we didn’t do it on Thursday after the Colosseum, instead leaving it until Friday. Good thing we did. The Palatino is huge! The Roman Forum, which is not that big of an area, did not take us too long to go through, but the Palatino took us over three hours to tour. There were a couple areas of the palace that we missed, but by the time we saw one nice one that we had missed it, we didn’t have the energy to go all the way back to it. The actual palace itself was very large, but it is the grounds that make the whole palace immense. Everything is ruins, but there are many, many that are still quite well preserved. The Roman Forum has very little in regards to large ruins; most are fairly small in stature, but great in historical value. After touring the grounds and looking in some of the museums, we exited and headed back to our hotel to relax. This has been a long trip for my legs and knees, and although worth the pain, I definitely need some downtime after walking so many miles and standing around so much.

After we napped, relaxed in the room, and cooled down, I went online and purchased tickets for the next day to visit the Vatican museum and the Sistine Chapel. We then headed out and wandered around town a bit so I could find a few geocaches. At one place I was fiddling around with a wolf statue connected to a flag pole when a local woman came up to me and started talking to me in Italian. I tried to convey that I didn’t understand and she kept pointing at the wolf and jabbering away. Finally she said a word I understood; Polizia. I tried to tell her that I wasn’t doing anything, but she was very adamant. I wasn’t about to try and explain geocaching to the Italian police, so we just left and searched for another one. After we wandered around a bit, we found ourselves close to the Spanish Steps. We found a little restaurant nearby, so we stopped off for some dinner. David had lasagna and I had some short noodle pasta dish. I thought mine was fantastic! I was tempted to order another helping, but decided I would be better off with some gelato. We wandered over to the Spanish Steps, which were quite busy once again. This was a Friday night after all, plus many of the Romans were now on their normal vacations. We walked down to one of the gelaterias, got some gelato, and ate it on the way back to the steps. We found a spot partway up, which was still very warm from the daytime sunshine, and sat and enjoyed another warm evening in Rome. After dinner we stayed for around the Spanish Steps for almost two hours, until close to 10:00pm, and then walked the mile or so back to our hotel for the night.

We purchased tickets to the Vatican for 10:00am on Saturday. I wasn’t sure how it would all go, so we took the subway and arrived a little after 9:00am. There was a line a mile long; ok, not really a mile, but it was about a quarter mile, maybe a little more. Luckily someone, selling tours, told us that if we had a reservation for our tickets we did not have to wait in this line, but walk around the block to the entrance and take a different line. Wow, I was thankful we got our tickets online the night before. We never would have waited in that line to go in and we would have missed the museum and the Sistine Chapel. The guard would not let us enter until 9:30am because our reservation said ten, so we waited around for fifteen minutes and then headed in to the Vatican.

We went through security, picked up our tickets, and entered the museum. To say they have a few artifacts there would be a huge understatement. We went through some of the area fairly quickly, and we took our time in a few others. There was basically one way to go through the whole Vatican Museum, with many “museums” along the way, which went through many corridors that were so ornate and with such beautiful paintings, that words cannot describe them. After the museum we entered the Sistine Chapel. It is a holy place, so pictures were not allowed and people were asked to be quiet; nobody took pictures, but they had to keep “shhhing” people. The paintings all throughout the chapel were amazing. To think of the great Michelangelo painting the ceiling was a neat image to have. The work that the artists put into the chapel is incredible. We looked at all the paintings and paintwork along the walls and ceiling, and of course stood and gazed at the most famous of all, Adam and God with their arms reaching out to each other in the center of the ceiling. The whole place was mesmerizing. After spending time admiring the Sistine Chapel, we left and went to the exit area. There was a gift shop at the exit (there were also multiple gift shops/booths along the corridors of the museum) where David and I both bought postcards so we could send them from the Vatican with the Vatican postmark. We then exited the Vatican and had to walk all the way around to the other side of the Vatican in order to enter Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Tickets were not required to enter Saint Peter’s Basilica, but there was a fairly long line that we had to wait through. Because we were entering the Vatican again, we needed to go through security once more. It didn’t take too long and we gained entry to the famous church. It is immense! The church is still used for normal services; they were holding mass while we were there. We wandered around the many areas of the church (I am calling it a church even though the word church does not conjure up a correct picture of how large the basilica is), taking pictures and admiring the walls and ceiling, and then saw a line heading down some stairs. We weren’t sure where it went, but we figured we better go! It went down to where the burial areas are located. It has many popes buried there, along with (the supposed) burial tomb of Saint Peter. After walking through the tombs (where pictures were not allowed) we exited outside to another line, this one to climb to the top of the cupola. This was a fee area, but of course we were going to go up! We paid the extra two euros and took the elevator partway up. We still had about 330 steps to take, but the elevator cut out an additional 225 or so. Money well spent! We walked in at the rotunda where we could look down into the basilica, right in the center. They had a fence around it where we were allowed to go, so pictures were not the best. We then exited the rotunda and hit the stairs. It was single file, person to person, throughout the whole climb. There were areas of circular staircases, regular staircases, switchback staircases, and a couple sections of ramp. As we went up to the top of the cupola, the sides start slanting, so we were walking up stairways with the left wall leaning in on us. It made for a bit of an awkward climb, but that was not the bad part. The bad part was that it was very, very hot in the close quarters. Much of the stairway was so tight two people could not pass each other if they wanted to, and there were only a couple places where there was a slot in the wall going outside. Other than that, it was a very closed in, hot climb. We finally got to the top, exited the stairway, and walked out onto the small area surrounding the cupola of the basilica. It was completely crowded and we had to fight our way to make it all the way around. Except for a few areas, the pathway around the top was only about four feet wide. It was also a game of patience to wait for an opening at the rail to take pictures overlooking the Vatican and Rome. It was worth waiting in line and the climb to go up to the top.  The view was spectacular and very breathtaking. After slowly fighting our way around the top, taking pictures along the way, we exited and headed back down the stairs. Same situation on the way down, except it went much faster (and of course the wall was slanting from our right!). We exited the stairway, took the elevator back down, and exited back inside the basilica. We spent a few minutes inside before we exited, two hours after arriving, and left the massive church. We took some more pictures of the outside of the basilica and the surrounding grounds (which were spectacular), and then we walked back to the subway station. We grabbed some lunch on the way back to the hotel, eating it in the room, and then sat around relaxing our tired and sore legs.

After resting for a couple hours, we headed out once again. We strolled in the direction of the train station to go and check on tickets for the next day to make a short day trip to the coast. On the way I went and grabbed the geocache that the lady had threatened to call the police on me for the previous day. After that, we headed in the direction of Trevi Fountain and decided to just eat pizza and gelato. Well, I ate gelato twice. We strolled in and out of many shops, just following the crowd, for a long time. We kept walking until we popped out into a large courtyard area; what do you know, we stumbled upon the Pantheon. I had forgotten about it, so I was glad we went out walking. It was closed, but at least we went and saw it. After hanging out there for a bit we decided that our legs had had enough. I checked my phone and we were about a mile and a half away from our hotel, so we started heading back. Ouch! We were both feeling quite sore by the time we reached our room. It had been a long day, with a lot of walking and standing. We started just before nine in the morning, took a couple hour break, and then went out again until almost ten. Not counting our break during the day, we only sat down for about ten minutes at night eating a quick dinner. No wonder my legs hurt! We got back to the room and I started trying to organize some pictures to post on Facebook and finish writing this blog post.

We took our time getting up and ready on Sunday morning. David got up earlier than me, but I didn’t get up until 9:00am. We wanted to go to a beach, so we researched it and found one to go to. We knew it would be busy because it was a Sunday and that a lot of Italy was on their vacations, but we figured we could at least dip in the water. We went to the train terminal and purchased our tickets for the 12:15pm train to Santa Marinella, and then tried to figure out where to go! It was a very large train depot and it was very confusing. We finally found someone to ask and he pointed up to the rail we were supposed to go to. It was a long ways away and, because the train was behind schedule by five minutes, we had about twelve minutes to catch it. When we were at the correct rail, we weren’t sure what car we were supposed to go to, so we asked someone (who we luckily found) and he told us any car. As we were walking back to the cars a “bus boy” of sorts came up to help us out. He grabbed our ticket and ran us down to the machine to validate it (which I had already done, but he didn’t see it) and then ran us back to a car and found us two seats. I gave him the change in my pocket (a couple euros) and he was offended; he wanted more! I was going to dig out a five euro bill, but then he told us ten each! I said not a chance and didn’t give him anything else. He asked a few times and I told him to forget it. He finally left to go find some other sucker. I don’t mind helping people out, but we had everything done except step onto the train and grab our seats and he wanted 20 euros! Rail robbery! I am not sure what some of the locals thought of us; tightwads or suckers, but a while later they helped us figure out where our stop was, so they didn’t think too lowly of us!

It was about an hour ride to Santa Marinella. We got off the train and walked the few blocks down to the beach. We read before leaving the hotel that most of the beaches were private and you had to pay to use them, and that there were a few public beaches. We were right in our initial assessment, it was crowded! We also found out that all of the sandy beaches were the private ones and the public beaches were just a rocky shore. All of the sand was trucked in to make the nice beaches (roped off into private sections), therefore the private owners (hotels, etc.) charged to use them. All of the private beaches had umbrellas and chairs that you could rent, and the beach was covered with them except for the shoreline. We tried a couple beaches, but they would not let us on. They were “sold out.” They only let so many people on (which is a good thing) and told us we could walk down to the public beach. The man was nice enough to tell us how to get to the public beach, because we tried earlier and couldn’t find a way down to it. We could just walk through the private beaches down to the waterline, and then walk along it to the end, past the last umbrellas. There was still a bit of sand at the end that overflowed from the last private beach and it was fairly crowded. After all, it was only about fifty feet by twenty feet big. We walked down and found a spot on the rocks where we could sit. Because we didn’t have any way to secure our belongings, I went in the water first while David watched our stuff, and then we switched. I didn’t really need to go swimming, but I just wanted to be able to say that I took a dip in the Mediterranean Sea. Been there, done that, check it off the bucket list!

We sat around on the rocks drying off a little bit, but felt a little uncomfortable sitting there. We gathered our stuff and walked over and up to the main walkway that overlooks the beach. We sat on the stairs for awhile until we dried off sufficiently to put our socks and shoes back on, and then we walked around a bit. (We had said the night before that we didn’t want to do any walking, but we still ended up walking a couple miles!) We had about 45 minutes to kill waiting for our train back, so we found a bench that overlooked the beach and sat there people watching and relaxing. We then walked to the train depot and waited for the train. There were a lot more people there than we expected, but we figured it was a Sunday evening and people were heading back into Rome. The train was already crowded when we got on, but I was able to have someone move their bag and sat down, and then David did the same. Many people had to stand and we still had about five more stops to go before we got to Rome! Not only did we get to go swimming in the Mediterranean, we also got an Italian sauna. The train was so unbelievably hot that I was almost as wet with sweat as when I got out of the water! There wasn’t any air conditioning in our car (there had been on the trip there) and there were only a couple small windows at the end of the car. That was one long hour! All part of the experience, right? We survived, arrived in Rome around 6:00pm, and walked to our hotel. We sat around cooling off for an hour or so and then went to grab some dinner. Neither one had the energy to do much, so we just went to a little pizzeria located close to our hotel; we ate and headed back to our room. We got back at 8:00pm and stayed in for the night. This was our first night where we actually got in early and had time to just relax in our room before going to bed. Splendid! After five days in Rome, our bodies are screaming at us to stay still! It is our last night in Rome and I hope that our time in Germany (and elsewhere) is a little more relaxing. I am planning on driving to a lot of places and touring that way, but we will see.

Because our Internet is really bad in the hotel (hence the really long blog; I kept typing more and more even though I couldn’t post it), I have never been able to connect my computer. I am now using my iPhone as a hotspot to at least post this blog (probably cost a fortune!). The things we must suffer! Until next time…….

 

Good Ole Ireland!

We got up Saturday morning, packed up the rest of our belongings, and walked a few blocks to the main bus terminal. I didn’t have a clue how big the Stavanger airport would be, so I wanted to get there early; plus I knew we would have to go through immigration. We took the bus to the airport so we would get there about 2.5 hours early. Well, not only is it not a big airport, they don’t bother opening up certain things or giving out certain information until really close to when the flight is supposed to leave. The British Airways desk didn’t even open up until 2 hours before the flight left. We were then able to check our bags and head to the departure area. After going through security, we looked for what gate we were to be at. They don’t even give that out until closer to the departure, but someone was able to look it up for me early. Then we tried to walk over to the gate, but first you have to go through immigration. The immigration office didn’t open up until 40 minutes before the flight. Grrrr. It wasn’t like our gate was far away, but I just wanted to get to our gate so there would be any problems. We were finally able to board our plane, but we just sat at the terminal until we were about 10-15 minutes late. A couple people were having problems at immigration so we were waiting for them. Well, open up the office a little bit earlier and this wouldn’t be a problem! Hah, there, I said my piece.

We got to London Heathrow and had to go through all of their immigration and security measures; after taking a bus from one terminal to another. Yes, London Heathrow is huge. Once through immigration and security, we had to sit in a large seating area (basically a huge long shopping mall) and wait to find out our gate. Yep, once again they do not give out the gate until 30-40 minutes prior to departure. I am sure this has something to do with them not knowing what gate a plane will be at yet, but when their sign says it takes 25 minutes to walk to some gates it is a bit frustrating. Anyway, we finally got on our plane and had about an hour flight to Dublin.

We arrived at Dublin airport and finally figured out where to catch our hotel shuttle bus at a little wandering around. It was only a short distance to our hotel, so we were checking in about 15 minutes later. Our room was the largest room we have had on our trip by far. Because I asked for a room on the quieter side of the hotel (I read about doing this on TripAdvisor), she gave us the top floor, corner room. Not only was it quite big, because it was the corner unit is also had a balcony; sweet! After dropping off our luggage in our room we headed out for dinner. Except for some candy at London Heathrow, I hadn’t eaten anything all day (David had a little breakfast) and it was now closing in on about 8:00pm. Next door to our hotel is a TGI Friday’s. Perfect. We loved the price difference from a month in Norway, so we each got their two course meal special! After dinner we just went back to the hotel and relaxed watching TV (many channels, and all in English!) until we went to bed.

Sunday morning we asked the front desk about getting to downtown Dublin. We were staying in Swords, about 7 miles outside of Dublin. We took the public bus to the city center, which took about half an hour, and enjoyed listening to a few people still celebrating their Saturday night; they were quite comical. We got off and wandered around Dublin; we had forgotten our tourist map at the hotel, so we just walked around figuring stuff out. There were quite a few tourist arrows pointing the way to the main attractions, but we eventually got a map at a tourist shop and it helped make sense of where everything was located that we had already found.

We walked through Temple Bar (which is an area, not just the actual famous bar) and then made our way to Dublin Castle. There were some artists creating sculptures out of sand inside one of the castle courtyards. They had pictures of previous years’ works around the cordoned off area, as well. We then walked to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. It had a beautiful park setting on one side of it where there were many people hanging out, so we stopped and I took some pictures. We were a little disappointed that the church was not open for visitors to look inside, but it was still a very impressive church from the outside. We then wandered around the streets, wandering past Christ Church Cathedral, and made our way to the famous Guinness Storehouse. We didn’t feel like standing around on a tour (nor did we feel like paying to tour it), so we just kept on walking the streets. One thing that we were very grateful for, because Ireland drives on the left side of the road, was that at most crosswalks they painted on the street which way to watch for traffic. This may seem silly, but after always looking for traffic from the left, it is very hard to look to the right first! We eventually worked our way back Temple Bar and we went to a walk-up pasties stand. David had a pork and apple pasty and I had a chicken pikka pasty (chicken with a similar sauce to curry). We sat on some steps in the Temple Bar center and ate our pasties and people watched. I don’t know how crowded it is on weekdays, but there were quite a few people out on a nice Sunday afternoon.

We then decided to work our way back to our bus stop and go back to our hotel. Work it was! We walked up and down the main street that had all of the bus stops (and where we got off the bus), but we could not find the stop with the bus number that we needed. We finally passed a transportation office, which was closed, that had a map showing the city center bus stops. We figured out that we needed to catch our bus on a side street, a couple blocks away. We finally found the stop and had to wait about ten minutes for our bus to arrive. The bus dropped us off a few blocks from our hotel, so we walked back and relaxed before we went out for dinner. After a tasty meal (at McDonald’s) we went back to our room to figure out our plans for the next day.

We got up Monday morning and took the hotel shuttle bus back to the airport. This was the easiest and cheapest way to connect to their bus line that would take us to Belfast in Northern Ireland. We looked into taking a tour up there, but one was sold out and the other was closed when we called to make a reservation. We decided to just go up there and see what happened. The bus ride took about 2-1/4 hours and was great. We were able to see a lot of the countryside and the bus also made a few stops in some smaller towns.

We arrived in Belfast, got off the bus, and looked for a tourism shop. Luckily there was one not far from the bus station. We purchased the Hop-on Hop-off bus pass that toured throughout the city and walked to where it the tour started. We got off at the Titanic Quarter and walked along the wharf to the next bus stop, and it began to rain on the way. We caught another bus and just stayed on it for the next hour-plus seeing the sights from the dry bus and listening to the commentary from the tour guide. It brought us all over Belfast, including the “bad” sections of town where the Troubles were centered. We saw many of the buildings and areas where bombing was prominent, many of the memorials throughout Belfast, many of the murals depicting both sides of the Troubles, and also the Peace Wall, which actually separates the two sides of the fight. Although there was a treaty of sorts made back in 1998 or so, there are still quite a few people with bad feelings and the wall remains. The wall was built right down the side of a road, through the middle of a neighborhood. It goes along the road on one side, and it is the backyard fence for the other side. Belfast is now one of the safest places in the world for tourists, but one always has to be careful. Another place that we went by was Campbell College; one of, if not the, most prestigious colleges in Ireland. It is very expensive and hard to get in. We were just able to drive past it; it is not open for touring. This was one of the schools that the author C.S. Lewis briefly attended when he was younger. Inside the grounds of the college is a lamppost; this was the lamppost that, later in life, C.S. Lewis depicted in his famous story, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. For someone like me who loved the book, and the Narnia series, it was a pretty neat bit of history/trivia.

When the bus returned us to the starting point of the tour, David and I wandered around the streets looking at shops and landmarks for a bit longer, and then headed back to the bus station. We only had to wait a short time (we had a schedule) and then hopped on for the ride home. On the ride back to Dublin Airport we had a double-decker bus (and we sat in the top), so we had a great view of the countryside during the trip. We arrived back at the airport, had a half hour wait for our shuttle bus, and then arrived back at the hotel a little after 9:00pm. A pretty long day, but well worth it. We ran down to McDonald’s for a late snack and then headed back to our room for the night. Another country marked off our map!

We didn’t have anything planned for Tuesday, so we slept in and didn’t get going until around eleven. We took the bus back down into downtown Dublin and walked around. One place of interest that we went to was St. Stephen’s Green. It is a large park in downtown Dublin. Not to the same scale as Central Park in New York City, but felt similar. We then ate at a little café in Temple Bar and then wandered around some more. We checked out a few landmarks, watched some street performers for a while, and then went back to Temple Bar and sat on some steps and just watched people. People watching is a great pastime, and there were probably more people here now than on Sunday. Luckily the weather was not too bad, cloudy but not rainy, so we were able to just hang out. While sitting in the Temple Bar center we saw a newscast of some sort filming a small clip for their program. They were doing it right in front of us, and it took many, many takes for the fifteen second clip, so we (along with others) enjoyed “the show.”

We finally decided to head back to our hotel so we took our time and ambled back to the bus station and jumped on the next bus. We didn’t get back to our hotel until a little after five or so; we dropped off our stuff, relaxed a bit, and then went out for some dinner. We had seen a sign for a hot dog and pizza place near our hotel, but we hadn’t been able to find it before. This time we walked around the whole building and then saw it tucked in an out of the way place. It was great food, and we were both stuffed! We then went back to our hotel, now closing in on 8:00pm, and started packing our belongings once again. Early morning flight to Rome; we have to catch the 4:45am shuttle to the airport!

Farewell Norway; Farewell to the Motherland!

Monday morning was decent weather; it was cloudy with a few sun breaks. Because the weather was fairly good, and the line was short, we decided to go up Fløibanen, the funicular that goes up on the mountain overlooking Bergen. We got to the top and saw a magnificent view of the wharf and old town Bergen. You could also see a lot of the newer city as well. We walked around on top for a bit and took pictures and then wandered in the gift shop. When we came out it had started to rain; and the rain did not stop until Tuesday night, literally. We decided to go back down the funicular and we went through many of the shops on the wharf for a few hours. We went back to the hotel for a rest and then went back out for dinner. After dinner David stayed in the room and relaxed and I went out in the rain and found some geocaches. At least my rain jacket works! I walked around the city in the wharf area for 2-1/2 hours and then went back to the hotel for the night.

Tuesday we awoke to another day of rain. We wandered around the shops again and then walked around some different parts of the old town area browsing in different shops. One in particular was a unique shop. No other way to say it except junk; two store of it! But one man’s junk is another man’s treasure. I am just glad that I had no way to bring anything home; otherwise I would be the proud owner of even more junk! We wandered through his store, and then he went and opened up his other store across the street and we wandered through it. He had some fascinating things, but he had so much stuff that it was all piled up on top of itself. No way to even look through most of it! We went and ate at a hot dog stand that I had seen the day before; I had a regular dog, but David had a reindeer dog. He said it wasn’t too bad. We walked around behind the famous wharf and looked in a few more shops that had not been open the day before. Because our time in Norway was coming to a close, and I didn’t know how “touristy” Stavanger would be, we decided that we better buy our souvenirs now. We knew pretty much what was out there from wandering around most of the shops, so we each bought a couple trinkets and then headed back to the hotel.

After drying off a bit, we headed out for dinner. We wandered around for a long time, just looking at all the places again. We wandered into the regular part of town, but did not find anything we felt like eating. We eventually made our way back to the wharf and found a local restaurant. (We did not want to eat at an American chain restaurant again!) I had chicken BLT sandwich and David had a fish dish (I can’t remember the name), in a roundabout way, similar to lutefisk. Except for the soup/broth it was in (which he didn’t really care for), he liked the fish. We were leaving early the next morning, so we went back to the hotel to pack and try to get to bed early. That never works for me. On the bright side, the rain stopped and the sun peaked out a couple times!

It was clear and beautiful Wednesday morning. Go figure. We walked around the wharf to the ship terminal and boarded our boat to Stavanger. This boat is a commuter boat and it pretty quick. There were about 5 stops or so before we arrived at our destination; a 4-1/2 hour boat ride along the coast and through the fjords. When we arrived we walked to our hotel from the terminal and checked in. We then ventured out to do a little exploring. We wandered through some small side streets/alleys until we came to a pretty big courtyard and park area. There were quite a few street vendors and a multitude of people milling around. Then we noticed that a cruise ship was in port. (This was a different wharf terminal than the one we arrived at.) As we walked along the wharf we noticed another cruise ship; then another; then another; then another! There were five large cruise ships in port and a couple smaller ones. No wonder there were so many people around! After walking around exploring the wharf buildings a little while, we went back to the main area and just sat people watching and enjoying the beautiful sunshine! It felt like forever since we had seen it. I was getting hungry, so we went into the local 7-Eleven (I swear there are more in Norway than at home) and got a snack and then went to a different section of the courtyard and people watched for a while longer. We then walked back to our hotel, stopping off at the grocery store to pick up snacks for our hike the next day, and relaxed before we were going to head out for dinner. After an hour or so, we went out to dinner; we didn’t want to think too much, so we just went to Burger King down on the wharf. Fancy. We then took our time walking back to the hotel for the night.

Preikestolen. Wow! Enough said. We got up on Thursday morning and decided the weather was pretty good, so we decided to go on our hike. The weather was supposed to be better on Friday, but we didn’t want to chance it to our last day, so I packed up my camera gear, snacks, etc into my backpack and we walked down to the ferry terminal. We lucked out and the ferry was there when we got there, so we were able to walk right on. It took about half an hour to go across the fjord and then we waited for the bus to Preikestolen. We didn’t have as good of timing for the bus, so we had to wait for a half hour before it came. But we lucked out again, because, for whatever reason, the bus driver did not charge us the fare to get there. Sweet, it saved us about $15.00! The bus ride was another half hour, where it dropped us off at the base camp for Preikestolen.

Preikestolen, which means Pulpit Rock, is a rock formation that juts out into the fjord, 1,932 feet up! It is about 82 feet by 82 feet square with a large crack across it; no problems, right? I didn’t think I would have the guts to actually put my feet over the edge, but I figured I would at least be able to lie on my stomach and look over the edge. Not only is it almost two thousand feet up in the air, but it doesn’t go straight down, it actually angles back under you! We started up the hike from the base camp and the first part was a steep, gravel path. We switch-backed a couple times and came to a really rocky part. We had to climb over boulders to continue on the path; which didn’t really get much better! There were a few parts of the path that went through some wetlands, and they had wooden plank walkways through these areas. Then it continued on with very rocky, steep terrain. It was very tiring going up, but I knew the hike back down was going to be havoc on my knees. We were just hoping that the view, hike, and experience would be worth it. It was.

We finally got to the top; about 2.5 miles and taking a little over an hour to hike the 1,150 feet in elevation change. The view was spectacular and very jaw dropping! The weather had clouded up a bit, but by the time we had driven to the base camp it started to clear off. Because of the nice weather, it was very crowded. We took a few pictures and then walked out on the rock. (I never really even paid too much attention to the large crack across the ledge until someone asked about it later. The view took all of my attention; and the fall hazard!) We worked our way out to the ledge and sat and soaked it all in. David put his feet over and sat on the edge, so I had to take a couple pictures. I lay on my stomach and worked my way out to the edge and peeked over. It was a long way down! I took a couple pictures looking down, but without anything else really in the picture, the depth and perspective is lost. We people watched a little bit and then worked our way over to the popular corner.

David walked out the edge and I took some pictures, and then I walked out and he took some of me. Then I sat down, scooted out to the edge, and put my feet over. That was a bit nerve-racking! David took some pictures of me sitting on the edge and then I scurried back to safety! I was leaning back and looked pretty nervous in the pictures, because I was. I am not really afraid of heights, but come on! this was a two thousand feet tall cliff I was dangling my feet over! We then sat around relaxing on the rock, taking pictures, and people watching. Then we hiked back up and over Preikestolen and took more pictures. We sat around for awhile, ate a snack, and just enjoyed the moment.

We were at the top for a little under two hours before we started the hike back down. I had to stop off and find two geocaches along the way, but we were both pretty tired on the way down and didn’t really stop anywhere along the way. There were many people hiking back down and it was pretty much a single file line going back down. Probably good because it made me keep a steady pace and keep my eyes on the trail. We got back down to the base camp and had a forty minute wait before the next bus was going to be there. That was fine; I found a bench and sat down. The bus picked us up (unfortunately, we had to paid the fare on the way back) and dropped us off at the ferry terminal just as the ferry was coming in; perfect timing again! We arrived back at Stavanger and walked the few blocks to our hotel. It was closing in on 7:00pm so we walked out and ate dinner and then went back to the hotel to rest our weary bones. It was a very rugged hike (at least for my poor body), so we just relaxed in our room and watched a little TV before going to bed.

Friday was our last full day in Norway. We were pretty tired so we slept in; David made it to breakfast, but I did not even try. Around eleven we wandered out and roamed the streets of Stavanger. We walked down to the wharf and again and then walked through their famous “Old Town” area. We then wandered back into the main area and went through a few shops before heading back to our hotel to relax once again. We went out to eat dinner at a small, local restaurant and then wandered back to our hotel. While David packed his luggage, I walked around town for an hour or so trying to find some geocaches. I only found a few (there were too many people at some of the locations), but I walked two to three miles wandering around some neighborhoods and parks. The weather was sunny, so it made for a great walk. Plus, my calves needed some stretching out; there are still quite tight after our hike. I went back to our room and packed my bags and then decided to finish writing this blog post. I am not sure how much time I will have/want to spend writing in the next day or so, so I better just finish it now and post it. Tomorrow we leave the Motherland and travel down to Ireland. We have absolutely nothing planned for our time there, so we will see what we end up doing. I am imagining that Norway might be the place where I have the most things to write about, especially meeting so many relatives, but hopefully I still keep writing this blog. Until next time, which will be written from another country, have a good day (or night)!

Farewell to Inderøy!

[Picture placement is about worthless in this blog, but I still tried to add some.]

Thursday was our completely free day; nothing planned whatsoever. So we decided to drive to Sweden; one to say we have been there, and two so I could get a geocache in another country. The drive was only a little over an hour or so away from our cabin, so it was a nice drive and we passed a really neat place to stop on the way back. We drove over the border and I found a geocache right away. I wanted to find at least two, so we drove a short distance and I went up into the hills to find it, only to be stopped by too much water. We then drove a few miles up the road to the top of the mountain and I went out to find another one. There was still a lot of water, but I was able to miss most of it; on the way there. My feet were soaked through by the time I got back to the car. But I found another geocache, so it was all worthwhile. We then drove back to Norway and stopped at the actual border. There was a sign that we took pictures of and also of the actual rock monument marking the border. They have open borders, so there was nothing we had to stop at. There was a customs place, a couple miles into Norway, but no one was manning it when we were there, so we just kept on driving. We stopped at a neat waterfall to take pictures, and then continued on to the place we saw before.

The top of the mountain in Sweden

Standing on the Norway/Sweden border

There was a suspension bridge over the river that we crossed and then started walking up the trail. There were a couple paper signs at the trailhead, but we couldn’t read them. Luckily we never found out what they meant. We walked down the trail and came to the place we had seen from the main road. The trail turned into a walkway that was made of rebar and wood that hung on to the side of the rocks. This walkway wove in and out following the rocks, up above the river, until it ended up at another smaller suspension bridge that crossed over a waterfall, partway up the falls. It was a great view and we took many pictures of it and the impressive walkway. We then worked our way back until we found a branch in the trail that went down to the river’s edge and we went down and took more pictures. There was also a nicely built lean-to type building with a fire pit that we stopped and looked at. After we were done taking pictures we hiked back to the starting bridge. We took more pictures, screwed around with filming a video clip of us walking across the bridge, and then we went back to our car and headed back to Åsen.

David walking on the "pathway"

The first suspension bridge

The bridge over the waterfall

A neat picture of the swirling water in a still part of the river

We stopped off at the mall on the way back for some dinner. The mall does not look that big from the outside, but it is actually quite large. It has 170 stores and 22 restaurants; in what felt like the middle of nowhere! So we went and ate at the same restaurant we ate the day before and then headed back to our cabin. On the way we stopped off at the store and picked up a couple boxes to mail items home. We placed the couple books we each had from Hammerfest (gifts from Liv Hanna and Ernst) into the box and then stuff the rest of the room with clothes that we hadn’t worn or didn’t need any more. We packed quite light for our trip, and we didn’t even need all that we brought! We spent the last few hours of the evening relaxing before retiring for the night.

Heffi (Kvistad) and Sverre Lilleeng

For Friday Jan Olav had made plans for us to drive down to Trondheim and meet Heffi and Sverre Lilleeng. Heffi was a Kvistad and wrote a book about her family many years ago. She let me use some of her research in my family history book, so I have had a little contact with her over the years, mostly through Jan Olav. Heffi and my grandfather Alfred were third cousins; a little distant, but not that far! Heffi also gave me a picture she had of my great-great-great-grandfather Lorents Wittrup Pedersen Kvistad; probably my greatest family heirloom.

Jan Olav drove down to Åsen and together we all went to Trondheim. I didn’t think we would be there that long, but we ended up visiting for about 4 hours. Heffi is 87 years old and Sverre is 91 years old, so we didn’t think they would be up for too much visiting. But I really wanted to meet her and visit with her. She was very excited to meet us and hear more about us. She has a copy of my book, and I think she has studied it intently! Obviously she loves genealogy, but she was also a teacher so she is very studious. Our family is the first Kvistad family she knows of that emigrated to the U.S. and uses a variation of the Kvistad name. There were other Kvistads who moved to the U.S., but they dropped the Kvistad name and used Pederson instead.

Both Heffi and Sverre have minds as sharp as anyone I know! I think Sverre was a teacher of some kind in his working days, but he has also authored many books. One book was about WWII in Norway, and this book was just published in 2011! We talked about his experiences during the war, with were quite impressive. There are many things that we see in movies and on television, and even people we know who fought in the war, but he is the first person I have ever visited with who can remember Nazis parading down his town’s streets! Sverre imitated them marching down the street and giving the Nazi salute; it was actually quite humorous. We could tell that they were starting to get tired (we were too!) so we politely said that we had to leave. David and I both wished we could speak Norwegian, because we could have visited with them again for many hours just listening to their stories! Sverre spoke some English, but quite often used Jan Olav to translate, and Heffi spoke quite a bit English, but was a little rusty and had Jan Olav translate a few words when she got stuck. They were two very impressive individuals and it was an honor to meet them and be able to visit with them.

After we said our goodbyes, them waving to us from their front porch until we were out of site, we headed back to Åsen. We dropped Jan Olav back at his car and then we went into our cabin and grabbed our boxes to send home. We stopped off at the store and mailed our packages and then we headed back to the same mall and ate at the same restaurant for the third day in a row. Are we creatures of habit?? It was fairly late by the time we got back home, so we just started preparing for our departure on Sunday. We knew we had a long day planned for Saturday, so we wanted a head start on our packing.

Saturday was our last day in Inderøy; what a way to end our time here! Jan Olav’s sister Ingunn and her husband Gunnar invited us out for the day. They were going to bring us out to climb the Skarnsunddetbru (Skarnsund Bridge). This bridge is a concrete cable-stayed suspension bridge (the longest of its kind in the world for two years) that is 3,310 feet long, with its longest span at 1,739 feet. It has two 499 foot tall concrete pylons that hold up the multitude of large diameter cables. I saw this bridge while researching the area for our trip, so when driving around with my parents, I told them we should go and take pictures of it. We went and took many pictures of the bridge and enjoyed the view. I didn’t really want to tell Ingunn and Gunnar that we had already been there, so I just left it at that and we could go out and see it again. They were also going to try and see if we could go out on the oldest wooden sailing ship in the world that is still in use; the Pauline (pronounced Poe-leena) built in the 1860s. This was the neat old sailboat that we saw in the harbor with my parents a few days before when we were out exploring Inderøy. Gunnar told us to meet them at their house around 11:00am and we would go from there.

The Skarnsund Bridge

The Skarnsund Bridge

David and I showed up at their house a little apprehensive; we weren’t exactly sure how the day would go. We had met Ingunn and Gunnar and their two sons, Andre and Espen, at dinner on Saturday. We were only with them a short time, but we really enjoyed their company and they were very outgoing. So, we were apprehensive about how the day would go, but not about the company we would be enjoying. When we got to their house we went in and visited for a short time, and then Gunnar said we should get our day started! He handed us each a pair of gloves for climbing the bridge and he loaded his backpack into their car. David and I both became a bit nervous. What exactly were we climbing? How were we going to climb it?

There is the saying that “It is not what you know but who you know.” In basic terms, Gunnar is the head of police for the Inderøy area; with that he knows many people and has many connections. He told us that we were going to climb one of the pillars of the bridge. Remember, we do not really know them that well, and we don’t know how daring they are with extreme sports, so I had thoughts in my head of them planning on us scaling the column and repelling down! Gunnar told us that he knew the man who has the keys to the column and that we were going to climb it on the inside. Phew, a bit of relief! Then he told us that we were going to climb up ladders to the top. What?? Gunnar liked to joked with us and see our reaction. Thankfully. Then he told us that most of the way was switchback stairs and then ladders at the top, and that the gloves were mainly because it was dirty/dusty inside. Ok, but it was still a long ways. Plus, he told us that the top of the column has a fence around it that is about two feet tall, but he quickly laughed that one off and told us they have a taller fence. I am not really afraid of heights, but this was way up there and I was imagining a chain link fence at the top with the wind whipping around. So we began our ascent.

The stairs in the column

Ingunn and Gunnar when we
were coming back down the stairs

 

The ladders near the top

Andre met us at the bridge for the trip up the column. Neither he nor Ingunn had ever been up it before, only Gunnar. He unlocked the padlock and opened the door, we all stepped inside, and Andre found the light switch. The stairs were steel, with grip holes drilled into them, which were Hilte drilled into the sides of the concrete walls. Their safety standards are not what we would expect in something like this, but then again, this was not open to the public. Each flight of stairs had some movement to them, and Gunnar told us to not have more than two people on a flight at the same time. He and Ingunn went first, and then David and I, and then Andre brought up the rear. It was a little intimidating because the stairs had many places where you could fall through, and many of the flights were slanting and the platforms between flights were leaning hard to one side. I kept looking at the Hilte drilled bolts into the concrete and wondering, “How good is Norwegian construction?” The flights of stairs got shorter as we went higher because the whole columns became skinnier as they reached the top. We finally reached the top of where the stairs went to, and we reached the ladders. The ladders were made of the same steel with a cage around it as it went up. The cage did not start until you were partway up off of the stair platform, the cage was little more than the minimal required to stop you from falling out (similar to the water tower at my parents’ Clearview home), and the cage actually overlapped over the stair platform we were starting from. Yes, a little intimidating once again. Ingunn was chosen to go first with Gunnar behind her. It took her a few tries to actually go through with it, with a bit of pushing from Gunnar; literally. Once she got going it wasn’t too bad and she continued up to the first platform break in between the sets of ladders. We all followed suit and came to the last ladder that brought us onto the top of the column. Gunnar went up the ladder and unlocked the padlock to the hatch that opened up to the top.

Gunnar propped up the hatch and went up and over the lip onto the top, and then we all followed. Luckily for me (and everyone else) the “fence” was a concrete wall about four feet tall or maybe a little bit higher. Wow, we were up there; and the view was amazing! It took a little bit to go and look over the edge, but looking down on the bridge below was an impressive site. The views all over the fjords boggled the mind. After many pictures, Gunnar opened up his backpack and took out coffee and snacks. That is what his backpack was for! We spent at least a half hour up on top of the column taking pictures, enjoying the view, visiting with each other, and David and I getting explanations to much of the landscape and the municipality of Inderøy in general. We then started our descent back down the ladders and stairs. After looking over the edge of the column at the top, the ladders and stairs did not seem as bad. It was still a bit hairy walking down the stairs, where each flight was angled a different direction and flexing and wiggling as we walked back down, but it seemed to go much faster and we popped out the door at the bridge level. Now looking over the edge of the bridge at the water far below wasn’t that bad!

The view from on top of the column

The view from on top of the column

 

The view from on top of the column

The view from on top of the column

 

Gunnar, Ingunn, and Andre at the top of the column

We walked back to their car and we started to head back to their house. We stopped off at a public, picnic type area that has a great view over the fjord and landscape. We took some pictures and signed a guestbook that was in one of the shelters, and then we drove back to their house. When we arrived at their house, Jan Olav’s (and Ingunn’s) mother Marna was there. (Jan Olav was busy, so he met up with us later at the harbor.) They brought out some food for a late lunch: sliced ham and mutton, pork and deer sausage, chicken wings, some flat bread, and a mixture of a few other things. We all sat around visiting for a while before we headed down to the harbor to sail onboard the Pauline.

She was a magnificent vessel! It was not windy enough, and we were not going too far out, so we did not use the sails, but it was still a great experience. The captain showed us around the ship, below decks, the crews’ quarters; there was beautiful woodwork everywhere. One of the reasons we were sailing out was to pilot in another vessel as it came in to the harbor. The vessel was another old, unique ship: the Hansteen. It is the only remaining steam sail ship in the world. It was built in 1866. We sailed out on the Pauline until we met the Hansteen and then we sailed alongside it until we reached the harbor. We then docked and the Hansteen docked a short time later. The weather forecast called for thunderstorms that evening, but when we boarded the Pauline it was cloudy with no rain. The entire trip took close to two hours, the last half hour to forty-five minutes it rained. Not only did it rain, but it down poured. We were all completely drenched by the time we got back to shore, and the rain let up within five minutes of docking, so we drove back the few minutes to Ingunn and Gunnar’s house and dried our clothes. While we waited for our clothes in the dryer, we visited more and they showed us pictures of their life, including pictures of their cabin up in the mountain. After our clothes were dry we went back down to the harbor for a light dinner.

Pauline in the harbor
(On a previous day)

The captian handling the rudder
(With Jan Olav and Ingunn at the right)

The captian and Gunnar

The crew tightening up one of the sails

Looking up the mast of the Pauline

Ingunn, Jan Olav, and Gunnar
below deck of the Pauline

 

 

Spotting the Hansteen from the Pauline
(The Skarnsund Bridge is in the background)

Looking at the Hansteen from the Pauline

 

The Hansteen cruising down the fjord

Me and Jan Olav on the Pauline

 

We went and ate on an old ferry boat, tied to the dock, which has been converted into an outdoor pub. The harbor is famous for its famous fish burgers; they serve many hundreds during their special time at the beginning of July. After Ingunn and Gunnar treated us to the fish burgers, Gunnar talked the captain of the Hansteen to let us tour his vessel. For about a year, a long time ago, this vessel was used as a Royal ship. Although the king was only on board one time (if I remember correctly), it was finished for royalty. The woodwork was exquisite, even though the interior was small, and it had pictures of the kings around the room. The engineer, who gave us the tour, showed us around the ship, including the steam engine room. The engine was quite large (and it was very hot in the room) and still uses coal to heat it. He opened the door to the furnace and showed us how the engine worked and was a very nice guide. We then left the ship and walked back up onto the dock a little after 9:00pm and we said our goodbyes to Ingunn and Gunnar. They were incredible hosts, and made our last day a very special one. We then drove back to our cabin in Åsen and packed our bags and didn’t get to bed until fairly late.

 

The Hansteen at the dock

Inside the Hansteen

 

A true porcelain throne
The Royal Bathroom onboard the Hansteen

The crews' quarters onboard the Hansteen

 

 

Sunday morning we got up, finished packing our bags, and picked up the cabin and then drove back up to Jan Olav’s house. We sat on his back deck visiting for about an hour and a half and then we went next door to Marna’s house and said our goodbyes. Then Jan Olav drove us back down to Værnes to the airport. We said our farewell and we went and checked in for our flight. We had about a two and a half hour wait, but we weren’t taking any chances on missing our flight. It turns out that it is quite the small airport, and we probably could have gotten there 45 minutes early and been fine. Oh well, it gave me time to write part of this blog.

Our flight was a little delayed because we had to wait for passengers from another flight that was running behind schedule, but it wasn’t too long. The flight went well and we arrive less than an hour later. I like short flights! We caught the Flybussen bus to the Brygge (wharf) and walked the couple blocks to our hotel. After checking in and dropping off our bags, we headed out to try to find some dinner. The weather forecast has been, and pretty much still is, rain, rain, rain. But when we got there, it wasn’t too bad. We walked around the wharf in search of some food and ended up, of all places, at TGI Friday’s. While we were eating, the rain came down; just as hard as it did when we were on the Pauline. People were ducking under any cover they could find until the worst passed. By the time we finished eating the rain had stopped, so we took our time walking back to the main wharf area. We looked through some of the food tents on the wharf and then started wandering over to the shops. And then it started to rain again. We barely made it to some little covered tourist kiosk before the monsoon came again. We waited under there, with many other people, for about five minutes or so before the rain stopped again. We then went over to the shops and browsed in a few of them and then wandered around some of the neat alleys of the wharf before heading back to our hotel. It was then 9:00pm and we were pretty tired out, so we just called it a night.

A neat alley on the wharf in Bergen

Looking back on the same alley in Bergen
(If you look carefully, you can see how badly
the buildings all lean. Quite the sight.)