Saturday
Woke up around 7:30 (unheard of for me in Uppsala) and rode Nick’s bike down to the station to meet Mom, Dad, and Kelsey. They arrived on a gorgeous day, as it was already about 20 C out. We walked to Hotel Uppsala where Mom and Dad were staying for the night and they dropped off their bags. Then we proceeded back to my corridor so Kels could put her stuff in Lovisa’s room where she would be staying for the next 3 nights. After relaxing for a little I led the family around on a tour of Uppsala through downtown and by the cathedral. We then got some pizza for lunch before Mom and Dad went back to the hotel to nap and Kelsey went back to Lovisa’s for a nap too. I took this time to hang out with Katie, Dawn, Jonathan, and David and then say good-bye to all of them as they headed out to Goteburg to visit Jonathan and David’s homes. After everyone had had a good nap we continued our walking tour of Uppsala up past the castle and through the botanic gardens. We went down by the river for dinner at a nice/hip Swedish patio restaurant called Lignon. All of the food we ordered was very typical Swedish dishes. I had the meatballs with gravy mashed potatoes, pickles, and lignon berries which was superb. We headed to bed early so everyone could recover from jetlag and be ready to tour Stockholm in the morning.
Sunday
Mom and Dad moved to the little B&B/hostel they were staying in for the next two nights and then we all caught the train for Stockholm around 10. After taking sometime to get oriented in Stockholm we headed for the fancy stretch of waterfront properties where archipelago boat tours left from. We ended up getting a 3-hour boat tour of the beautiful Stockholm archipelago at 3pm.
With some time to spare we walked over to a nearby island to see the Vasa Museum. In the museum is a huge Swedish naval ship from the 1600s that was the largest and most ornate of its kind at the time, but it sunk on its maiden voyage in the Stockholm harbor where it lay until it was brought up and salvaged in 1961. The whole museum and ship was extremely impressive.
We then caught our boat tour and enjoyed the views and rest from being on our feet. After the tour we wound our way back towards central station. On the way we passed The Grand Hotel and just so happened to be by the door when Jerry Seinfeld was leaving the hotel to head to his Stockholm show later that night, unfortunately in my picture I only caught the back of his head. We then stumbled upon a music and food festival happening nearby where we had fish and chips for dinner while enjoying a Swedish tribute band to Tina Turner. We caught the train back to Uppsala all very tired from a long, but very fun day in Stockholm.
Monday
Today, Monday June 6th was Swedish National Day. We took the train down to Stockholm again. Outside of the station we ran into Anna with her parents, which was a nice surprise since I hadn’t been able to give her a proper goodbye before she left Uppsala. We first walked by the very impressive Stockholm City Hall.
Then we headed for Gamla Stan (Old Town), which is on a small island and has the Swedish Royal Palace, Parliament, churches, and many narrow alleyways with shops in typical Swedish style buildings. There were people everywhere around the palace sporting their Swedish flags and we watched a bit of the changing of the guard ceremony. We then headed to the front of the palace to find that its exhibits were open to the public for free for Sverige Nationaldag so we wondered through dozens of ornate royal rooms with heaps of history. We then headed into the alleyways of Gamla Stan and found a nice little café that was home to the oldest medieval cellar in Stockholm to get wraps for lunch.
We then did some souvenir shopping before catching a short ferry from Gamla Stan over to the island where the amusement park Grona Lund, the Vasa Museum, and our destination Skansen outdoor museum are located. Skansen is a large outdoor museum that shows the history of Sweden, its people, and their livelihoods. It also had an area of Scandinavian animals including: Moose, European Bison, Wolves, Owls, Wolverines, Wild Boars, Brown Bears, and Reindeer. The Swedish Royal Family was to come to Skansen later at night for a ceremony for their national day, but we decided to head back towards the train station. A parade was heading towards Skansen, as were numerous Volvos of different countries delegates. Luckily for us on the way though we found a good place along the road to watch the royal procession to Skansen and we clearly saw the royal family in their horse drawn carriages not more than 50 ft from us. We eat dinner at a Chinese restaurant before catching the train back to Uppsala. At night I had to put the final touches on packing and cleaning my room, as I would be moving out in the morning.
I woke up around 7 to finish packing and cleaning my room. I went down to the Posten to mail my large suitcase home so we wouldn’t have to drag it around for 9 days for the rest of our Scandinavia trip. The suitcase weighed in at 19.5 kilos (42 pounds) just below the 20 kg maximum. The rest of my stuff was packed into my backpack and backpacking backpack with overflow going into the less full bags of the rest of the family. Although I had scheduled a checkout with my landlord company no one showed up and on the phone they said I didn’t have to be there for the checkout so I gathered all my stuff said bye to Nick and my corridor mate John. I dropped my keys off at the land company office and headed to the train station. Franzi and Anneloes came to say goodbye to me at the station, which was very nice. It was pretty strange leaving my home for the past 5 months. I know I’m really going to miss all my new friends, my laid-back lifestyle, and Uppsala itself. We got to Stockholm and after some confusion about needing a reservation or not to catch our next train to head south for Kalmar we caught the second possible train now fully booked using our Eurail passes to Kalmar, Malmo, Copenhagen, and Goteburg. We transferred trains for Kalmar in the small town of Alvesta where we got some lunch food. The trains were rather delayed and we arrived in Kalmar around 8pm. Luckily our accommodation was very close to the station in the small town and we settled in before taking an evening walk to the awesome nearby Kalmar Castle.
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| Kalmar Castle |
Wednesday
We had a great brunch breakfast at our hotel and then walked around the newer part of Kalmar through the very foggy morning. We then walked back over to the castle to tour the inside. The castle was very impressive being on an island with a bridge to it, turrets, a large earthen wall around it and very cool displays of history and art inside.
We packed up and headed out of Kalmar by train through Alvesta and then down to Malmo, Sweden’s 3rd largest city. In Malmo we checked our bags in lockers at the station and took a couple hour walk around the city. The city itself wasn’t as impressive as other Swedish towns although the central park was very nice. It happened to be graduation day for the local high schools, which is a huge celebration in Sweden. Students were riding around in the back of large trucks in their white sailor looking graduation hats and blasting typical Swedish party music. We grabbed some kebabs and falafel at a stand near the station and then reclaimed our bags to catch a train across the new Oresund Bridge to Copenhagen. After the 30 minute ride across a narrow section between the Baltic and North Seas we walked to the Old Town section of Copenhagen where we were staying in the top floor apartment of a Danish lady who rents it out when she is out of town. The apartment was an awesome funky little thing with two bedrooms and a pull out couch and was right in the center of town. After putting our stuff down we headed out to Tivoli Gardens, the oldest amusement park in Europe if not the world. The Gardens had typical old-fashioned rides along with restaurants, performing venues, and decorations. We only had a couple hours at the Gardens and unfortunately it started to pour rain shortly after we arrived so we just walked around taking in the sights and didn’t ride any of the additionally expensive rides.
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| Tivoli Gardens |
Thursday
We had breakfast in the apartment while it was still raining outside. Because of the rain we didn’t rush out of the apartment, but the rain started easing up and headed out to explore Copenhagen. The old town part of Copenhagen is rather disorienting with its narrow and winding roads after some wandering around we stumbled upon the picturesque Nyhaven neighborhood with its famous colorful canal side buildings.
We then continued on to Rosenborg Slot (Castle), a nice castle in a park with great displays on the history of the Danish monarchy and an even more impressive treasury of royal crowns and jewels.
We then headed back towards the apartment and grabbed some deliciously large paninis for a late lunch. After lunch we went to the very impressive and thorough and free National Museum that had more than one could ever take in about the history of Denmark as well as many other displays. We checked out a royal palace on the way back to the apartment and had dinner. After dinner the weather had greatly improved and it turned into a very sunny evening. We did a walking tour past City Hall, the Hans Christian Anderson statue, some nice plazas, the university, Nyhaven, the opera house and finally out to the famous Little Mermaid statue. The sunset was gorgeous on our walk back to the apartment and we all crashed after a long day of touring the city.
Friday June 10th
We grabbed some Danish pastries in the morning to go along with our breakfast and caught the train to Goteburg around noon. It was a nice brief trip to Denmark and we returned to the Sweden with a nice 4 hour ride through the Swedish west coast countryside. In Goteburg we walked about 2km to our B&B, which turned out to be another fully furnished apartment. We headed towards old town of Sweden’s 2nd largest city and had dinner on one of the city’s main boulevards. After dinner I ran into a group of exchange students from Uppsala! Lucie, Caity, her sister, and Pierre had just arrived in Goteburg with a rented car and just so happened to be walking around at the same time as us! It was good to see them all one last time before. We toured around Goteburg very briefly for the evening. The city isn’t as old or as pretty as the other cities we’ve been too so spending just one evening there was sufficient. Apparently at the nearby amusement park Ringo Starr was playing a concert that night, but we all were satisfied to stay in, me in particular as I felt a cold was coming on. I think I got the cold because I haven’t been on my usual 10 hour sleep schedule that I was used to in Uppsala and which had kept me amazingly healthy for the whole semester.
We left early from the apartment and caught a tram back to central station where we caught the 4-hour train to Oslo. The train had free wi-fi which was pretty cool. I was awoken by a Norwegian border patrol on the train to check my passport. This felt strange to have to show my passport to travel in Europe as you don’t have to show it when traveling between EU countries, but Norway being so independent and proud of their strong economy had decided not join the EU despite all their Scandinavian neighbors joining. (Sweden and Denmark are part of the EU, but both have declined to use the Euro in favor for their still rather strong krona/krone.) It was raining most of the way to Oslo and we passed by some beautiful seaside scenery. We had to get off the train before Oslo and board a bus as all train service to the city center was cancelled for some construction. Once in Oslo the rain had momentarily stopped and this allowed us to move down the very busy walking mall towards Slottsparken (Castle garden) and to our accommodation for the night.
The rain returned in full force shortly after we settled into our room and we took our time before heading out into the rain to check out the palace in the park we had passed along with the very impressive Oslo City Hall, and parliament building. I wasn’t aware Norway had a royalty and thought they might not due to the fact that they had been part of Sweden until 1905. City Hall was a kind of Orwellian like dual brick tower on the outside, but the interior main hall and room was very impressive and nice.
We found some souvenirs before returning to the apartment where we all napped for about an hour. After the nap we went in search for a place for dinner in the very expensive place that is Oslo, Norway. We finally ended up stumbling into a funky Thai restaurant. The paneng curry I had was one of the best curries I had ever had and the whole family enjoyed their dishes and good thing too because this affordably priced restaurant ran about $25-35 per dish. We all went to bed very early for a long nights sleep to recover and help prevent my cold getting any worse.
Sunday
We checked our big bags at our accommodation in Oslo as we will be staying there again on Tuesday night. We packed our day bags for the next two nights and headed for the train station to Norway’s second largest city Bergen. Because of construction we first had to catch a train out of Oslo before getting on a train to Bergen. The 6 hour train ride to Bergen was a gorgeous ride through the countryside then mountains then fjord country of Norway. The train goes up to over 4,000 feet which at 60 degrees North is well above tree line. The scenery was very green and then turned to a lot of waterfalls, lakes, and streams being fed by the still significant, but fast melting snow on the top of these mountains. The train weaved through the beautiful landscape and through dozens of tunnels and snow sheds.
We arrived in an overcast Bergen (the city only gets 60 days of sunshine a year) in the late afternoon and headed just down the street to our accommodation, Citybox. The idea of Citybox’s is to have minimal staff as you check in through a computer with your credit card. Unfortunately for us the machine did not work. Fortunately for us there was an employee there that was able to check us into our room for the next two nights. We settled into our room on the 5th floor with a nice view of the city. Then we headed out for a meal. We decided on Peppe’s Pizza (a pizza chain) and enjoyed one delicious huge pizza and an appetizer for the whole family for the “cheap” price of about $60. We then walked around downtown Bergen. The weather cleared up and it was a very nice evening, as the sun didn’t set until about 11pm. We bought tickets to do an all day fjord tour for the morning and walked around an old church and fortress dating from the 1200s and past the historic Bryggen row of shops. We called it a night early in order to get enough sleep before exploring the fjords.
We caught the first boat from the Bergen harbor a little before 8am and rode away from the city through a long series of nice islands for a couple hours. The weather turned out to be perfect in the 70s with hardly a cloud in the sky, a very lucky turn of events given how poor the weather is on the west coast of Norway most of the time. We then started up the Sognefjord, the longest fjord in the world. The fjord had small towns along the edges and continued to get narrower, dramatic, and impressive as we continued farther up it. We stayed inside the ferry most of the time, but did brave the top deck in the fierce wind caused by the fast moving ferry.
We got off the first ferry at the small town of Vik and there transferred to another ferry, which continued to take us up the fjord. This ferry met up with another large ferry in the middle of water and after some careful maneuvering the two ships sat side by side so my family and a few other people could transfer to this larger and slower moving car ferry.
Our ferry headed up the narrowest navigable fjord in the world the Nærøyfjord, which a UNESCO world heritage site. This fjord was utterly stunning with its landscape. At its narrowest point it was only 200m wide and 12m deep. The cliffs on either side went up over 1000m and were strewn with numerous gorgeous waterfalls cascading down from the snow high above.
We enjoyed the perfect weather as we slowly moved through the fjord before finally getting off the ferry at the small town of Gudvangen, which was so picturesque with the fjord valley and large waterfalls everywhere, including the tallest waterfall in all of Norway.
From here we caught a bus back towards the railroad to get us back to Bergen. The bus ride provided us with even more amazing scenery as our bus driver narrated facts about the scenery. We went up a very steep road to an old hotel that overlooked a gorgeous valley and then proceeded down the steepest road in Norway that through a series of switchbacks provided amazing views of two huge waterfalls and the gorgeous valley that was sculpted by glaciers in the last ice age.
After the bus ride we grabbed some food and then rode the train for an hour back into Bergen where we quickly headed to bed after a long, perfect, and gorgeous day in the fjords.
Tuesday
We woke up and decided to catch the earlier train back to Oslo since it was heavily raining in Bergen (the weather cooperated perfectly for us to see the fjords!). The train ride was amazing once again and we arrived back in Oslo in the late afternoon.
From the train station we headed to the nearby Oslo Opera House right on the harbor. The opera house was an impressive modern building that allows visitors to walk up its slanted roof tops to get a nice view of the city. We then headed back to the same accommodation that we stayed in 3 nights before. We found a great little Indian restaurant near our room for our last meal out for the trip.
Wednesday
We headed out with all of our gear before 830 and caught a train to Oslo International Airport. Our flight ended up being delayed over 2 hours as they worked to fix a leak in one of the water tanks on the plane. On the flight we flew right over the southern tip of Greenland and we got some amazing views of the Greenland coastline with glaciers, mountains and ice caps.
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| Greenland glacier draining into fjord |
The 8-hour flight back went fairly well until some turbulence near our destination of Newark caused a few children around us to vomit. We touched down around 4pm in Newark, New Jersey, which was consistently advertised as being New York (even Jersey isn’t proud of itself). After baggage claim and customs we headed to the airport train station where we caught a train to Trenton, NJ and the transferred to a train to Philadelphia and from there we transferred to our last train to the west suburbs of Philly where my aunt picked us up around 8pm to take us to her house. The total time traveling time since we left our room in Oslo turned out to be about 20 hours so we were all exhausted, but I managed to stay up and watch the Boston Bruins beat Vancouver in game 7 of the Stanley Cup (this set off some major riots in Vancouver). I went to bed after being up for just over 24 hours finally back in the US after 5 months abroad.
Thursday – Sunday
We hung out at my aunt Georgia and uncle David’s house as we arrived a day earlier than the rest of the family that was coming for our little family reunion to celebrate Georgia and David’s 40th wedding anniversary as well as an opportunity for the family to see Anthony and Nolwen’s two young children Owen (23 months) and Evan (2 months) before the family moves to Paris, France later this summer. It was great relaxing and seeing most of one side of the family.
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| Most of the Portner cousins |
On Sunday we caught a plane from the awful airport that is Philadelphia International to the horribly hot Houston Intercontinental and from there we flew back into Grand Junction to a very pleasant 60 degrees and an evening rainstorm. It was strange finally being back in GJ, but nice at the same time too. I am returning to Boulder on Thursday, which will be a fun homecoming to see a good number of my friends after 5 months!
This concludes my blog for my experiences abroad. Thanks for following along with me and I hope you enjoyed sharing in my travels as much as I have in doing them. I will continue to use this blog for exciting events and occasional updates on my life in the future. The next events I will definitely be writing about will be my two trips to LA to work with ESPN, but if anything exciting happens before then I will be sure to include it too!
Jesse
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