Monday 9.20.2010

Goodbye Stockholm, Hello Oslo

We have another nice breakfast with Elisabeth this morning with all of the usual staples except the salmon she promised us on Friday. Guess she forgot. She is a very nice lady and she is almost weepy that we are leaving even though we haven’t spent 90 minutes with her in four days. She says she hates this part of her job.

Elisabeth arranges a taxi to the airport for us and he arrives in the time it takes us to get our luggage schlepped downstairs with her help. She has already given us her fair warnings about Oslo which are 1) it is painfully expensive there, and 2) while Norway used to be the well behaved little brother as part of Sweden they have suddenly become very self sufficient and no longer show the proper respect to their bigger neighbors. It has something to do with all that oil in the North Sea.

Our taxi driver is very chatty and is quite concerned about all the V-8s and other assorted gas-guzzlers in the states. We assure him that those SUVs are hybrids, and the big new Cadillacs have great technology that gets them 30 mpg which we calculate is close enough to his Prius cab to be acceptable. It’s good to do our part to keep the international peace. As we near the airport he takes a minute to warn us about how expensive everything is in Oslo.

As we get checked in at the counter and pass through the initial security check the security guy looks at our boarding passes and takes a moment to tell us how expensive everything is in Oslo. "Double," he says.

We spend way too much time referring to Mary’s preflight medication but this is too good. She thinks she may need a little something before we fly so we find the bar. Cocktails are about $15 (110 SEK), and while we have spent that much on a cocktail it is only done begrudgingly. Can’t wait to see Oslo prices. Now we pass through the duty-free shop and see a liter of Tanqueray for $17 (125 SEK.) They don’t put it into a sealed bag, they don’t give it to you on the plane, they hand over the jug right there. Suffice it to say that Mary flew quite comfortably.

We catch the Flytoget train from the airport to the Oslo Central Train Station and it is an easy 4-block walk to our hotel. It is an odd place found through a locked door and into an alley entry. The place is a combo apartment-hotel with reception on the third floor. The hallway lights are all out so we have to switch on the lights as we locate our room. Once again, the place is very Scandinavian with blonde furniture and straight lines.

The Swedes, even Swiss Swedes like Elisabeth, will tell you that their Norwegian neighbors are a step behind on the sophisticated evolutionary ladder. You can definitely see a difference. Everybody on average is about 3 lbs heavier, 5% less fashionable, and smoking. There isn’t a big difference, but you can tell.

We spend a couple hours wandering in and around Karl Johans Gate, the main pedestrian mall in Oslo, that leads from the central train station for a couple miles to the Royal Palace. Here’s what we can tell you about the prices in Oslo. A Big Mac is about ten bucks, a bowl of soup in a nice restaurant about twenty and a good dinner out is in the neighborhood of fifty dollars for a main dish. A glass of wine is about $25 and a large pizza a little over $30. We decide to eat in (remember that we have gin) and grab a couple good-looking deli sandwiches and a bag of chips. We could have dropped a quick $100 at the TGI Friday’s in the next block but think we should save up for tomorrow.

We are back in drizzle mode again. It is just enough to be irritating so we’re packing it in at about 7:00 and getting a good night’s sleep for a big day tomorrow.

Today’s Weather: Foggy and 48 in Stockholm, Cloudy turning to rain in Oslo, high of 60
　

Sunday 9.20.2010

Out to Sea

It's up and at 'em this morning. We have a 6:00 AM wake up so we can toss down some breakfast and be at the T-Bana station when they open at 7:30. Very relaxed hours for them on Sunday. We take the subway to the central station in the new city and then hike about a mile to the ferry terminal in Nybrovikin for our day on the water.

We are catching a Cinderella boat through the Stockholm Archipelago and are to find it at berth 14. The ferries are all lined up in the numbered berths, but no boat in #14. We are still early so we decide to sit on a nearby bench to wait, but the bench is still damp from the rain the day before. Across the street is a bench inside of a covered bus stop so we go over there instead. To kill time Mary is looking at the city map on the wall of the bus shelter and points out that we are on Waxholms-Batarna, not Nybrovikin. Oops, our boat is on the next canal over. We hustle the few blocks, find berth 14, and sure enough there is the lovely Cinderella. The moral of the story is that if you sit on a wet bench, you will miss the boat.

The Stockholm Archipelago consists of over 2000 islands, most uninhabited, that stretch 80 miles out into the Baltic on the way to Finland. These range from near-in "suburb" islands where Stockholm commuters can get to work in the city by ferry or bridge, to outer islands reachable only by boat that serve as rich city dweller vacation getaways. Our ride this morning takes us to the out-island Sandhamn where you can finally see the open water of the Baltic. This is the final day of operation for this ferry line (yes, we did know that beforehand) so the summer vacation season is officially over for the Swedes. We make several stops along the way at Vaxholm, Grinda and others where some passengers are perhaps returning from a weekend in the city.

The entire Archipelago offers a gorgeous mix of tiny red cabins and sprawling seaside estates, sail boats, power boats and jet skis, trees, rocks and water, water everywhere. We are moving from clouds to sun and as the morning warms we see more pleasure boaters and a few fishermen coming out for the day. We reach Sandhamn just before noon. It is a picture perfect little seaside Swedish village with all-red little cabins, gardens, shops and a substantial marina with more-substantial luxury boats. We take a leisurely stroll around the island peeking into yards and seeking out sea views from the higher ground. There are only little paths through the cottages, no roads, and no cars.

At one end of the village we find a cemetery with graves dating back to the 1800's. While nosing around we hear some shouts from a nearby grove of trees and sneak over to investigate. We find about a dozen young folks walking along ropes strung between the trees while blindfolded and feeling each other's faces when they bump into each other. Of course we wonder why, on a fall Sunday afternoon, they are not on a couch watching football and drinking beer.

We make our way back down to the waterfront for lunch at the recommended Sandhamns Vardshus. Finally! Finally we get some Swedish food. Mary has the assorted cold herring platter with four different fish presentations and a small bowl of boiled baby potatoes, and John has the fried battered herring with buttered mashed potatoes and lingonberries. Perfect!

A short stroll around the Marina and the attached resort after lunch and we are ready to get back aboard the return of Cinderella. The boat is packed as weekend and longer vacationers catch this almost last regular boat of the season (there is one more later this evening). We doze and watch the folks playing on the water on what has turned out to be a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

When we get back to Stockholm at 4:00 we decide to walk back. When we cross back to our island of Sodermalm we give in to one of our guilty pleasures and decide to find a few of the sites from "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo." We did find Mickaels apartment, the coffee shop, and Lisbeth's second apartment. We claim that we only read those books to acquaint ourselves with the culture of modern day Stockholm.

It is almost 7:00 when we get to our apartment so we take a short break and then hit the tiny restaurant we couldn't get into on Friday. We're tired and lazy so we have a bottle of wine, and share some crabcakes, a sausage plate and bread basket. A very good day.

Today's Weather: Early clouds giving way to sunny. Low 45, High 60.

Saturday 9.18.2010

Our City Day

Our B&B offers a with-or-without breakfast price so we opted for the "with" yesterday to have a chance to chat with our hostess and get the lay of the land, and we will again on Monday to share some stories. In between we are foraging for ourselves. Yesterday we bought the makings of your basic Euro breakfast of meat, cheese, bread and juice, and this morning are loading up for another day of hiking around the city.

There is a bus stop a half block from our apartment so we catch the #73 bus into Gamla Stan near the Royal Palace. At this time of year the official changing of the palace guard takes place only a couple times a week and this is one of them. We are a half-hour early but the folks are starting to line up so we grab a spot near the ropes down front. The whole thing is fun in a militaristic sort of way with the Swedish Army Marching Band and a bunch of Marines weaving in and out and back and forth with a bunch of hollering and twirling of weapons. It winds down with a medley of patriotic band numbers and finally everyone marching out of the square. The whole thing takes about a half hour, and while it isn’t Buckingham Palace we are pleased we are there.

We have our Rick Steves walking tour of the Old City with us so we wander around for an hour peeking into churches and old shops with special notice of the building details that have been there for close to a thousand years. The old city squares are very entertaining and loaded with visitors on a Saturday lunch hour. Just as we reach the last sight on our tour it starts to rain hard and the little cobbled streets turn into raging rivers splashing over shoe tops and scattering the crowds. We duck into a little grocery store for shelter and after about 15-minutes decide that this isn’t going to stop. We find a pizza joint a couple doors down and snag a window table for a pizza and beer lunch.

When we finish eating the rain has let up a bit so we cross through Parliament into the "New" City, which is the real downtown commercial area. We are on a pedestrian mall (Drottninggatan) lined with shops and crammed with people in spite of the weather. The main square in the center of the mall is lined with all of the politicians making their final plea for votes in the election tomorrow. Each party has their little EZ Up tent and we go from the Feminist Party pink, to the Communist red, the Christian Democratic blue, the Conservative white and guess which party is "Green." The place is loaded with film crews, cops and energetic political supporters. Okay, maybe the commies are a little lonely and dour.

We find our way to a corner of the square to visit Ahlen’s Department Store, the Swedish version of Macy’s. (There is an orange tent in front where the politicians are passing out carrots.) Ahlens covers a square block and a big one at that. Even if it is massive, Mary finds no "sale" signs so she is completely uninterested in the million items on display.

We roam around a bit more in what is now a drizzle, find the main train station, and a couple old churches, but mostly just absorb the sights and sounds of the city. We catch the subway (Tunnel Bana) back to a Sodermalm station a few blocks from our apartment, grab a 4-pack of beer and some crackers and hunker down for the evening with our left-over pizza, cheese and crackers. We have an early wake-up tomorrow so with the rain outside this is a good night for a Chevy Chase vacation movie on TV.

Weather Today: Clouds and rain, high of 55, low of 43.

Friday 9.17.2010

Our Stockholm Introduction

Our part of the city, Sodermalm, has been described as Stockholm's Brooklyn, probably because it sits across a narrow strip of water from "downtown." When here, it feels a lot more like Manhattan's SOHO or Greenwich Village. It is leafy but bustling, residential and commercial, and quiet while having an energetic vibe.

Our day started with breakfast prepared by our host Elisabeth. She and her husband purchased three adjoining studio apartments on the fourth floor in this building and then added an additional couple rooms in a loft above. When their daughter left home they separated her room from the others and turned it into a rental. They only take couples and only one couple at a time so it is a pretty well managed operation. Breakfast is in their apartment with gorgeous views of the city. We had a small breakfast of eggs, cheese, smoked turkey, Danish rye bread, flat breads, sliced vegetables, melon, grapefruit, kiwi fruit, cereals, juice, coffee and home-canned lingonberries. She had to roll us out.

We started our tour walking about 30 minutes to the "Old Town" of Gamla Stan, one of the principal islands that make up the city of Stockholm. First on our list was a tour of the Vasa Museum and we needed to catch a water ferry to get there. We approached a woman selling tickets and she said our passes only worked with another company and they are over there, pointing over her shoulder. We started walking in that direction and after about 15 minutes we pulled out the map to get our bearings and to see if we "missed the boat." A fellow noticed our confusion and in perfect Swenglish asked if we needed help. We explained our situation and he pointed us back to where we began. After asking again we finally found our ferry docking area about 8 feet from the first person we asked and directly in line with where she pointed. Stupid tourists.

The ferries bounce around Stockholm harbor from island to island and you just need to ride along until they get to your stop and we wanted stop #3. The Vasa Museum has one real exhibit and everything else revolves around that. The Vasa was a warship built in 1628 by Gustavus Adolphus (the King, not the school) and designed to be the most powerful ship in the world. Take that you pesky Poles. As the mighty beast was launched to rule the world, it cruised into Stockholm Harbor and promptly sank within twenty minutes. The King was angry and the Poles delighted. After laying there for 333 years the Vasa was rediscovered in 1961 and gently raised to the surface. Over the ensuing years 14000 separate pieces were reassembled and restored so today the ship looks just as it did when the King was waving goodbye. It is really impressive as a piece of history as well as a masterful restoration. The museum does a 25 minute film in English and has many displays detailing the restoration, the lifestyle of 17th century Sweden, and even the skeletons of a few unfortunate souls who did not get off alive. All of our research suggested that the Vasa was a "don't miss" and they were right.

We caught the ferry again and decided to explore the next island in the harbor even though we had no reason to do so except "why not." We gave ourselves 30 minutes--the time ‘til the next ferry--to wander and we were done in ten. Well, we needed a little break and sat on bench for twenty minutes resting up. The next stop was Djurgarden, an island offering a mix of residential and recreational. It was originally set aside as the King's hunting ground and gradually reverted back to the folks in the form of an amusement park and a huge open-air folk-museum called Skansen. Skansen has a completely restored Swedish village with all the essentials of glass blowing, saddle making, machining, baking and more. All of the exhibits are alive with folks working away at their crafts.

We spent a good two hours wandering around the extensive property. There were restored churches, reconstructed parks, market areas and a full complement of Swedish critters including reindeer, moose and bears. It was a nice touch of living history and a full dose of current people watching.

It’s almost 4:00 and we had not eaten since breakfast so John needed some topping off. We found a Korv (hotdog) stand outside the amusement park and he had an all-world bratwurst that hung about 3 inches out of each end of the bun. The guy behind him had a regular korv that was topped with some pink stuff so that will have to be on the list in the future.

We grabbed the next boat and got off on our island but a long way from home. Where we disembarked there was a steep bluff and a set of intimidating stairs to get to the top. We chugged up all 124 steps, walked the mile to our apartment and then climbed our 92 steps to our fourth floor pad. We stopped along the way for some do-it-yourself breakfast makings for the next two days and were happy to find the Danish Rye, meat and cheese combination we had with Elisabeth. We get her treat again on Monday morning.

We crashed for a couple hours after our 8-hour forced march and headed out for Swedish food. The place we were hoping for was of course packed (Friday night, no reservations) so we saw a nice Italian joint (La Cucina) that had a couple empty seats, albeit at someone else’s table. Apparently that was not a problem, but being Swedish they never made eye contact with us and left a short time after we arrived. Mary had a spaghetti with olive oil, peppers and garlic (the Swedes have definitely discovered spice) and John had a “Calzone” with chicken and cheese that was much more like a Wellington wrapped in puff pastry. We divied up our two dishes and each had half which was perfect. Our waiter/host seemed to think it was a good idea as he lavished Prego-Pregos on us.

Sleeping well tonight.

Weather today: Sunny, breezy, high 60, low 44

New Trip September 15, 2010

Wednesday September 15 – Thursday September 16, 2010

We’re Off

We’re underway with what we assume will be our last huge, foreign, driving, exploring, getting lost trip. This one is taking us to the Northern Capitals of Europe including Stockholm, Oslo, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Brussels followed by a couple months driving through France, Spain and Portugal.

We did the final packing and worrying on Tuesday morning and left the lake right after lunch to spend the night with Mary’s Brother Paul and wife Lynn and join John, Joann and Bill for dinner. (Blue Heron – pretty good!) John has volunteered to baby sit our car while we are gone and we are delivering important secret documents to Bill’s son Patrick in Copenhagen. We swapped identical brief cases at the restaurant.

John K. drove us to the airport on a rainy Wednesday morning to give us our two hours to get checked in and through security. Of course it took ten minutes to do that so Mary had plenty of time to get medicated. And, here’s the headline: When asked what she would like to drink before takeoff, Mary replied, "Just a decaf." Who are you and what did you do with my wife? Really! She did grab a quick martini as soon as we were on the plane to Chicago.

Our flights were perfect, as in undramatic. We were traveling on American in business class (on miles of course) so we got into the club for our 4-hour layover in Chicago where we had a bad pannini sandwich and a Bloody Mary. We decided that even if we were really frequent travelers, we would still not join the American club. It is just a quiet place where they take one more shot at squeezing a few more dollars from their customers.

Our next leg was on Iberia Airline (an American partner) to Madrid on an overnight flight. The front of the plane is really very nice for these trips. Our very wide seats had about 20 different controls to get us reclining for relaxing and almost horizontal for snoozing. There was a choice of ten different movies to watch on our personal TVs along with an assortment of sit-coms and many music channels. We did get our martinis, some Spanish red wine, good chow (John Veal Ragout and Mary Vegetable Lasagna) and a little after dinner Brandy with our desserts. These round trip tickets retail for about $7,000 apiece so there is no greater benefit to using a credit card to pay for everything than using the miles for this.

When we got to Madrid we had a 26 mile run through the airport to get to passport control, followed by a 110 mile train ride to terminals HJK, and finishing with a 2 mile swim through crowds and up escalators to the Iberia Business Class Club—the perfect airport triathlon. The Madrid airport is a monster with terminals spaced around the property like Atlanta. We did a bit of shopping in duty free, followed by a relaxing two-hour layover. We chatted with some folks and kept pressing "one" for English, but all the "numbers" turned out to be Spanish.

Our next flight to Stockholm was once again on-time with a 10:20 departure and a 2:20 arrival (7:20 back home so about 24 hours on the road so far). Traveling within the EU is certainly easy these days with no passport checks and in this case no luggage check. We were able to purchase "Stockholm Cards" to get us onto all the public transportation and into most of the museums and attractions for the next couple days, and hit the ATM for a few thousand Kroners. We were advised to interview Taxi drivers and never pay more than 550SK for our trip to our lodging in Soderholm. The first guy with a Mercedes quoted us 495SK so it was a done deal right away.

Little did we know that the Mercedes Guy was a frustrated NASCAR driver. We were told that the trip from the airport would take about an hour but perhaps a little longer during late afternoon—we were there in 40 minutes with many minutes spent in a traffic snarl. Rick Steves said, "Only a Swedish Meatball would drive in Stockholm" and we found ours. He was hitting 140KPH (about 90MPH) on the airport highway and we were making lane changes with inches to spare at all speeds. Phew!

Our studio apartment in Soderholm, a residential and "in" area just south of the old city (similar to Uptown in Mpls), is a bedroom/sitting room, small kitchen and bathroom that had a former life as a small closet. How small is it? John has to decide between number one and number two so he knows which way to face when he goes through the door. Mary has to go out the door to change her mind. The apartment is an IKEA display moved into the city with teak floors and whitewashed walls. Very Swedish which is exactly what we were looking for. Our hostess Elizabeth is really Swiss, but nice in spite of that. The apartment is on the fourth floor with no elevator so we were huffing and puffing lugging our two-month’s worth of supplies up the stairs.

There is a little fold down stool on each floor landing for the elderly or out-of-shape to catch their breath. Thank you King Olaf.

A quick nap, shower and we are ready to go again by 6:00 PM local time. We did a mile walk around our neighborhood checking out the local restaurants (3 per block) and watering holes (4 per block) as well as some grocery stores and bakery windows. The area is dynamite with tons of young folks and a few like us wandering the streets and having fun. We pop into a non-descript, unbusy restaurant on Skanegaten for a bottle of South African Red Wine and fish with white mushroom sauce and steamed potatoes for Mary, and Swedish beef with a brown sauce with mushrooms and diced potatoes for John. Our waiter was from Chile and had worked for SAS Airlines for some time and decided to settle here. He said we should go to Santiago and we said he should go to New York where he has a friend. American cross culture exchanges in Sweden.
A leisurely walk home to bed.

It's only 4:00 PM back home but for some reason we think we will sleep well on our clean-lined Swedish queen bed with ultra-modern silver lamps, stylishly shaped throw rugs over the teak floors, and piles of naturally matched throw pillows. OK, just go to IKEA to see where were sleeping.