Chalkboard walls.

found here at The Willows Home and Garden blog

In our next house, which will probably be a rental, I will make up for painting the walls by doing this. The possibilities are endless!

Road Trip.

The Gothenburg Ibis
The afternoon we picked up the car we made it to Gothenburg, Sweden. This trip we stayed at several Ibis hotels because they are affordable and everywhere in Europe. This Ibis happened to be a boat! It was nice and we had dinner there in the hotel and went to bed because the next day was going to be long. We got up early and left Gothenburg with our destination being Bergen, Norway on the fiords. We bought the Europe maps for our GPS and it worked perfectly! I was amazed. It would have been very difficult without it. And, we bought an audio book online and listened to it through our GPS all day. It would have been somewhat brutal to only be able to listen to Norwegian radio for 12 hours. Yes, that's right. 12 hours. I think that our top speed was 40 miles an hour. The roads were crazy, but there wasn't very much traffic so that was a good thing. And the tunnels! One tunnel we went through seemed like it corkscrewed down into the mountain forever. We just kept going round and round. A couple of hours outside of Bergen we realized that we had to take a ferry to keep going. There was some stress for a while because we didn't know how late the ferry ran and if we were going to have to sleep in the car to wait for it. Thankfully, it was still running and we were able to keep going. We had a hotel reservation in Bergen so we went straight to the hotel when we arrived and crashed. Long drive! I think I will save our adventures in Bergen for the next post because I have already gone on and on.

Malmo, Sweden.

It seems to be taking me a very long time to get through our trip. Oh well. Just to recap, we have already been to Amsterdam, driven through Germany and took the train/ferry to Copenhagen. After spending the night in Copenhagen, we took a train to Sweden over one of the world's longest bridges. We arrived in Malmo early, ready to pick up our car and begin our drive. However, the Hertz rental car office decided to not open until 3pm. So, we had some time to kill. It was so so foggy everything seemed like some kind of dream. And, we could barely see where we were going. We wandered into town and through it toward the old palace. Mike had been to Malmo before, so he knew where we were going. There is a botanical garden around the palace and it was just beautiful in the morning fog. The palace is a museum now and we went to the gift shop and then walked back to the square for lunch. It was cold and all of the restaurants have blankets draped over the chairs outside and heaters, so we ate outside. After lunch, it was finally time to get the car so we walked back to Hertz. Everything looked very different without the fog! We picked up our Volvo wagon and drove into the Swedish countryside on our way to Norway.

Copenhagen continued.

These things are hard to explain. They are part of the royal treasury and made from ivory and amazing! Most are from the 18th century and they are so intricate, with lots of little parts and pieces within pieces. Incredible.

The entrance to Tivoli Gardens.

Ok, so I found some more pictures from Copenhagen!

AZ State Fair.

Human bubbles. Hilarious!

All of the 'food' items on this table were actually rocks!
This little boy was four and he rode the flag around the arena and up on the platform and kept his miniature horse there through the Star Spangled Banner.

For the past few years, Mike and I have been saying that we need to go to the state fair. So, we finally decided to go on Halloween. There were tons of people and lots of things to see, including animatronic dinosaurs and an all indian rodeo. And, we ate a ton of cotton candy. Now, we can say that we've been to the Arizona state fair!

Copenhagen, Denmark.

The Harbor.
Somehow, I only have two photos from Copenhagen. I will check Mike's camera again.

We left our hotel in Luebeck Saturday, October 9 (according to my book) and walked to the train station. the train arrived and it was a small two car train. We thought, this can't be right because we are going all the way to Copenhagen. Little did we know... and let me tell that it is always good to get reserved seats on the train because this one was packed and I'm not sure that we would have had seats if we hadn't reserved them. As it was, we had to kick people out of ours. Anyway, the train went to the ferry port and then drove onto the ferry! Everyone unloaded and spent the 45 minute trip eating at the restaurants and shopping in the stores. The ferries are like cruise ships so there is alot to do. Then, back on the ferry and away into the Denmark countryside we went. We stayed at a new contemporary hotel called Wake Up Copenhagen and walked from there to the old town. Copenhagen is a big city with lots and lots of tourists. We had to walk past Tivoli Gardens (the oldest amusement park in the world) and it was totally decorated for Halloween. Very cool. However, it was closed for some reason, so we didn't go inside. We just wandered around old town and went to the old palace to see the crown jewels. There were some amazing things! Then it was down to the harbor for drinks by the water and people watching. We only spent one night in Copenhagen, so the next morning we took the train to Malmo, Sweden.

Germany continued.

The Holstein Tor at night.

Waiting for the laundry.

This is a model of the city of Luebeck built in the 1930's by school children!

Puppets!

Puppets!

In a store window. That is a real rose stem!

The fallen bells.

Door handle of the church.

Early morning in Luebeck on our way to the train station.

Okay, back to the trip. Our next stop was Luebeck, which nevermind what I said about Bremen earlier. Luebeck was really the important player in the Hanseatic League. The true star of the show. We drove our little red car there and got there after dark, but decided to walk to the old town for dinner. Luebeck really is a big city and the old town is big as well. There is a huge gate into the old part of the city and it now has a museum inside. We wandered around for awhile and finally found a restaurant. We have decided that restaurants are just better in Europe. It doesn't matter if it is the oldest, rundown looking place. The food is going to be good or great. When traveling, you can kind of just eat anywhere and it will be good. This restaurant was no exception. The next day we did laundry early and then went back to the old town. There is a puppet museum in Luebeck that is amazing! It was so cool and has puppets from almost every country in the world. Incredible. The church there is amazing as well. On Palm Sunday, 1942, the church was heavily damaged in a British air raid. The bell tower was hit and the bells fell to the floor of the church. The bells are still there as a remembrance. Almost everything in Germany was rebuilt after the war and you don't usually see things like this. Can you imagine the sound of those bells falling?


Next stop - Copenhagen, Denmark.