I guess not. We're off to Newfoundland.

September 24, 2005 - Our journey to Newfoundland begins. Our original plans were to see as much of eastern Canada as possible, and also see the fall colors. When I saw on a map that Newfoundland was a five hour ferry ride from mainland Canada, I decided that we probably couldn't fit it into our schedule. Part of my planning for this trip was requesting each of the provinces of eastern Canada to send me a travel planning guide.


One day I opened my mail and found a large 81/2 by 11 travel guide to Newfoundland. The picture on the cover immediately captured my attention. A man was standing on a large rock looking down a fjord. A fjord, yes, not in Norway, but in Newfoundland. Inside the guide were more pictures, and text, from people who had been to Newfoundland, extolling it as one of the "must see places in the world." Powerful stuff.

This was a travel promotion guide that really worked. I discussed my new find with Pat, my wife, and we changed our plans to make Newfoundland the focus of our trip, while still driving through much of eastern Canada and parts of New England and the MidWest.

September 25 - We arrive in Galena, Ill to spend a few days with our oldest son, Bryce, and his wife, Jen. Galena is a very picturesque town located in a valley near the Mississippi River.

September 27 - Today we drove north into Wisconsin, followed the Mississippi River, and ended up in St Paul, MN at our friends house, Nora and Tony. We were still uncertain of the exact path that we'd follow to get to Nova Scotia and the ferry to Newfoundland. But, both Bryce and Tony said we had to see Mackinac Island (pronounced Mackinaw).

September 28 - North to Duluth on Lake Superior, then east into Michigan. Today we really began to see some fall colors. North of St Paul and Minneapolis, the country is rural and the towns small. We stopped in one very poor looking little town to take a restroom break. They had four thrift stores in two blocks. The bank had a sign outside that said,"Guns are not permitted inside."

It was early evening when we got into Michigan. We saw a sign that said the worlds highest ski jump was off to our left. Since we had no particular goal in mind for a destination this evening, we took off in search of the ski jump. We never found the road that would take us to the jump, but we did get a glimpse of it way off in the distance sitting on top of a small mountain. The detour was well worth it. With the long golden rays of the setting sun giving brilliance to the reds and golds in the trees, we saw of herd of dear frollicking like dogs in a meadow off to our left. We stopped here along the roadside to watch them till they faded into the darkness. I've never seen deer play like this.

Around 8 PM we came across an Indian casino and resort. Checking in, the clerk gave us each $5 to gamble on their slot machines. With the first pull on a slot, I won $55. That about paid for the room for the night. Before going to bed we soaked in the huge indoor jaccuzzi.

September 29 - We're headed due east towards Mackinac Island. It was very cold last night. Probably neer freezing. The colors along this stretch of the northern peninsula of Michigan are awesome. We keep stopping the car to take pictures of superb trees whose leaves are either gold or red. During the trip we took over 800 photographs. About a third were of trees. However, I'm only going to post one tree picture in this report. You'll see it later on in New Brunswick.

One town we pass through is named, "Norway." With a name like that you'd think that it would be a very special place. The only thing special about this run down town was the sign entering the town that had a small viking type boat sitting in front of the sign. It's evening when we arrive in the small town that is the jumping off point to go over to Macinaw Island, which is about a mile offshore in Lake Huron. We get a motel for about $40, eat dinner, watch Alias on TV, and go to bed.




September 30 - We catch the 8 AM boat to Mackinac. There's at least three boat services that whisk you over to island in about 18 minutes. I didn't really know what to expect when we got to the island. I knew that they didn't allow cars on the island.





Once there, you walk, ride a bike, ride a horse,
or take a carriage. The air was crisp and the wind made it very chilly. But the brilliant sun that shined throughout the day made the weather bearable. This town is one of the neatest towns I've ever seen. It's clearly worldclass in that the buildings are almost all of the period in the late 1800's, early 1900's. There are lots of shops, so Pat and I go our separate ways. She gets on a carriage for a tour of the town and part of the island. I rent a bicycle to ride the 8 miles around the island and to check out some of the town off the main street.


Is quaint an overused word? Maybe so, but this town is quiantness with a capital Q. Every building, shop, home is worthy of a picture. The Grand Hotel is just that. It is the most elegant, best maintained, 1800's style resort hotel that I have seen. It is formal. After 6 PM men must have on coats and ties and women be in dresses.

Pat and I put Mackinac Island on the list of everyone must see places in the world.



There were a lot of people here on this weekday.
In the summer, the streets must be jammed with people, bicycles and horses. By the way there are more vetenarians on the island than doctors. About every fourth shop is a fudge shop, and I have to tell you the fudge is the best I have ever tasted. We started with just a pound, but had to go back for more. Come January the lake freezes over. Things pretty much come to a standstill until spring.

We get back to the mainland in the late afternoon and head for Canada. Going through customs is a piece of cake. The customs man is very casual and friendly. He is a perfect welcome to Canada as we are going to find that all of the Canadians we come in contact with are warm and friendly. Because there is no great beauty of note, we drive till late evening and stay in a non descript roadside motel in Blind River, Canada.

October 1 - Heading towards North Bay, an accident has the road closed. We must take a detour that takes us about 60 miles out of the way. But, the detour turns out to be a blessing in disguise. Since leaving Michigan, we hadn't seen any outstanding Fall colors. This detour takes us into some high country and brings us into North Bay from the north. The colors we see are breathtaking causing us to stop the car repeatedly to take pictures.

We arrive in North Bay in the early evening with enough sunlight to find a nice campground just a few miles outside of town. This is a nice town on a big lake. We have dinner, take in a movie, and retire to our cozy tent where our camping bed is more comfortable than any motel we've stayed in.


Oct 2 - The towns are few and far apart. The country is beautiful. Sometimes we are in a forest and other times in nearly barren rocky plains. We arrive in Ottawa in mid afternoon. This is the capital of Canada. So, we have to take some time to get off the freeway and see the capital buildings. What we see takes our breath away. The capital buildings are situated on a bluff overlooking a river. The buildings are modeled along what you see in London. Along the river is a jogging path. The weather is warm and sunny. People are out enjoying their beautiful city. We linger to dusk. Dinner for us is a couple of hot sausages in buns bought from a sidewalk vendor on a pedestrian only street.

Once again we are driving into the night. We had wanted to avoid this. However, we want to be in Quebec City in the morning, and it's a long way from Ottawa. It's almost midnight when we get to the outskirts of Quebec City. The motel prices are too high for just getting in bed. We end up in a K.O.A.type campground right next to the freeway. Sleep is difficult because of the noise of the freeway and especially the big trucks.

Oct 3 - We've been to Quevec City before, but it's worth visiting again. The city is bigger than I remembered and the traffic getting to the old town, the only walled fortress city in North America, is congested. Once we arrive in old town, we know that we'll be here the rest of the day. The streets are lined with shops and restaurants. The architecture is lovely to behold. The city is perched above the St Lawrence River. The atmosphere invites you to linger.We have dinner in old town and leave the city as dusk is approaching. We drive until about 10 PM. Then we find a campground just off the highway. Luckily this campground is quiet and we get a good nights rest.

Oct 4 - By mid-morning we are in New Brunswick. The visitor center welcoming us into the province is the nicest visitor center we've ever seen. The building is pretty and situated behind a meadow surrounded by trees in full fall color. Inside, beside the usual brochures, they have very infomative exhibits and free Internet access. That night we camped alongside a river on the outskirts of Fredericton, the capital of New Brunswick. Before making camp, we toured a tourist spot where they had recreated a village similar to what would have been found in this area in the 1800's.

Oct 5 - This turns out to be a very full day for us. After walking around Fredericton, which isn't all that interesting, in the morning, we head off to the Bay of Fundy park. This is where some of the highest tides in the world occur. Unfortunately for us the tides were normal this day. Still, the park was pretty and the hike down to the bluffs above the bay a welcome relief from all of the driving we'd been doing.

From the bay we headed towards a town that claims to be the lobster capital of the world. Quite a claim, and we thought it would be a good place to have our first lobster of the trip.



On the way to the Lobster Capital we spotted what
we think was the tree that best captured the essence
of all the beautiful fall color trees that we had seen. So, out of thousands of trees, here is the one picture of a tree that you'll see in this blog. We were drawn to it because it stood alone in a field, and it's leaves ran the range of colors thant we had seen.


It was late afternoon when we arrived at the entrance to the Lobster Capital. Well, the only lobster we saw in this pitiful run down fishing village was a giant lobster sculpture at the entrance to town. This was no place to have dinner. We headed towards Nova Scotia. Dinner was at a McDonalds. We drove until about 8 PM, made camp, took in a movie, and went to bed.





Oct 6th - Today we'll catch the ferry to Newfoundland. The drive to Sydney, the jumpoff point for the ferry, is mellow but not spectacular.
We do see a bald eagle fly over the car. The ferry leaves in the mid-afternoon. We arrive about 30 minutes before boarding time and take up our place in line. The ferry is huge, able to carry hundreds of cars, including buses and semi-trucks.











After we drove our car onto the ferry, we went up to the lounge areas. We were quite surprised by the layout of the passenger areas. There were several separate lounges for watching T.V. or a movie. We saw two movies on the way over to Newfoundland. The bar area was cozy, and the food served in the restaurant, cafeteria style, was excellent. It was some of the best food we were to have on our trip.



The crossing to Newfoundland was smooth. We arrived in Port au Basque after dark. We couldn't find the place where we had reservations. The town isn't very big, but the streets follow the topography, and the street signs were hard to see. We went into a service station and asked the attendant if she knew the way to our destination. She knew, and drew us a map. But, guy in there to pay for his gas said he knew where we were going and we could just follow him. I stayed on his tail as we wound though the town maze. Arriving at the condos, there didn't appear to be anyplace to check in. The helpful driver got out of his pickup and went into an art gallery to ask if they knew where we were supposed to check in. It turns out that the art gallery was the check in place. I've told you that the Canadians were friendly. This is an example of just how friendly and helpful they are. Our condo was 2 bedrooms and only $75 for the night. After camping for several nights, lots of driving, and it was cold, windy, and drizzling, the condo was very welcome. We were going to take baths, but the water had a yellowish tint to it. We settled for showers. Later on the trip we learned that most of the water on New Foundland has this tint. Nothing wrong with it. It's just the minerals in the water. After showering, we settled into the comfortable living room and watched T.V.

Oct 7 - It was raining lightly as we headed out of Port au Basque. Low clouds obscured the tops of the mountains as we headed up the coast towards Gros Morne National Park. Newfoundland is much bigger than it appears on a map. It looks small on a map because you see it against the mainland of North America. The peninsula that we're heading north on is almost 500 miles long. We've decided that we'll just focus on one part of that peninsula, Gros Morne National Park. By the time we get to the park entrance it's mid-afternoon. Inside the park discovery center, I go straight to the information desk, point to the picutre of the man standing on a rock overlooking the fjord, and ask, "How do I get here?"

The answer was shocking. " You can't get there."

"What do you mean."

She told me that you had to get a specail permit to travel into the remote wilderness of Gros Morne.

"Okay, how do you get the permit."

"You have to make an appointmet with a ranger. Then, at your meeting, demonstrate that you have the skills and equipment for accomplishing this trip. If you are granted a permit, you will be issued a transponder which will allow us to locate you should you need to be rescued."

Very cool, I thought. Having been a wilderness ranger in the 70's, I was very familiar with the "wilderness permit system." However, we never had the authority to turn back adults who were not properly equipped. Now, even though we didn't have the equipment, nor time, to make this journey, I was very impressed with the park policy, and the fact that we were on the edge of such challenging topograpy.

Is the Journey Over?

We're back in Nevada City, a gold mining town which is in California not Nevada, in the foothills of the High Sierra about 1 hour northeast of Sacramento. After all of our travel over the last 6 weeks, we still find this town to be enchanting and on par with towns like Bergen and Ruros in Norway. Both of these towns are World Heritage Sites and Nevada City certainly should have a similar designation.

Last night we attended "Summer Nights" where the two main streets are closed to vehicle traffic and turned over to vendors, muscians, and hundreds of people to enjoy the warm summer evenings on Wednesdays in July. At the top of Broad Street, the main street, a band was playing music with a fiery latin beat. In the beginning, only one couple was dancing to the music. But by mid-evening, dozens of people, children included, were swinging to the hot sounds. When the band finally played their last piece for the night, Elisa, Mike, Maya, our Grand Daughter, and myself turned to walk down the street towards their home about 1/2 mile away. The light from what would become a giant full moon was just beginning to show over the pine trees in the distance.

Now it's time to start looking for land to build our home on. So, the journey continues.

Tallinn, Estonia - Two days here wasn't enough time.

Monday, July 11
We had one day in Sweden after returning from St Petersburg, then it was off to Tallinn, Estonia. The flight from Stockholm is just 45 minutes. No visa is required for U.S. citizens or members of the E.U. Within minutes of walking into the old town section of Tallinn we were going, WOW! At the end of our 2nd day there we were still going, WOW!.

The architecture of old town is beautiful and varied. Old Town is large in comparison to other old towns that we have visited. There are dozens of streets to explore, and each street offers numerous paths that lead off to, or down to, more shops to discover.

We stayed at the Reval Central Hotel, which is just a 1/2jmile from the entrance to old town. The rate for a deluxe room was just $80 US. A breakfast buffet is included in the room price. The hotel is modern and high tech. The staff are very helpful and friendly. We bought a Tallinn card at the hotel desk. The card gave us a 2 1/2 hour free tour of the city, free acess to all museums, free bicycle rental for two hours, free use of a row boat for an hour, and discouts at many restaurants. The card, which costs about $20 U.S., is a great bargain.

Our first evening we took in a free concert at the St Nicholas Cathedral. On our 2nd day we systematically explored every street, but by the end of the day we realized we still hadn't poked our head into all the nooks and crannies. The mail square is lively with outdoor restaurant seating surrounding the square. Beuatiful young women in yellow t-shirts stroll the streets selling Estonian strawberries. It seems that everyone in the city can speak English.



This country has been free for only about 15 years, yet the modern and high tech feel of the city of Tallin outside of old town is a striking contrast to St Petersburg, which to us seems to have a long way to go before it can claim to be a modern city.


One of the old entrances through the wall
to the old town.













Just part of the large plaza that is lined with shops and resturants.














Narrow streets invite you to explore nooks and crannies.













Lovely maidens wander the streets in period costumes.











Pat and I have great local beer and a mouth watering lunch at a sidewalk cafe.







Hidden away on a side street is a salute to Texas and Texas style food.











Outside a mall in modern Tallinn

















Inside the mall.
Very modern.
Very sleek.
Even I loved it.






We will definitely return to Tallinn to not only explore more of the city, but to also see other parts of Estonia.

St Petersburg - Russia, Is it another Paris or Amsterdam?

Church of the Spelt Blood. Neither words nor pictures can capture it's beauty.







Thursday, July 7
We arrived here this afternoon. The St Petersburg Hotel, where are staying, has gotten bad reviews from several sources on the web. On the bus ride into town from the airport, what we saw of the city was not inspiring, lots of traffic, dirty boring looking buildings. Pat and I began to think that maybe the hotel would be every bit as bad as the reviews had portrayed it. We were very relieved when we entered the lobby and found it fairly modern and nice looking. Next we were in our room looking at one of the most impressive views we have ever seen from a hotel room. One wall is almost all glass. We were looking out over the wide Neva River, and in the distance, in several directions, we could see the spires of some of the famous places in St Petersburg.

We took a hour walk to recon the area to determine if we needed a tour guide or not. Quickly we realized that St Petersburg is very big and the places of interest are spread around the city. At least too far to walk to all of them. Returning to the hotel we booked to see the Swan Lake ballet for that evening and a full day tour for the next day.

The ballet was at the Fontanka Concert Hall located on the Fontanka Canal. The ballet was excellent. When we walked out of the theater, our taxi driver was there waiting for us just as we had agreed. We had read that foreigners will be charged more for event tickets that Russians. That proved to be the case here. We thought we had gotten very reasonably priced tickets, $30 apiece. During the first intermission, we struck up a conversation with the gentleman next to us. He was from Finland, spoke excellent English. He had paid $3 for his tickets! This was, he explained, because he spoke Russian. Not a big deal to us though. We were very happy with our concert package.

Friday, July 8th
The InTourist booking agent at the hotel St Petersburg arranged for us to have a private guide and driver for the whole day. The total charge for this, including admission to the Hermitage, was $100. Our guide was Natalia. She spoke excellent English and understood the nuances of our humor. Besides a general city tour she took us to a couple of places out of the routine to satisfy our requests. At one point during the day the subject of George Bush came up. She had a tour group once from Texas and they were all supporters of Bush. Natalia told us, without us prompting her, that she thought these Bush supporters were simple people, not well educated. By the end of the day, 5 PM we had seen every side of the main city and toured parts of the Hermitage. The Hermitage was the winter palace for Catherine the Great. Now it is a huge musem revialing the Louvre in Paris.







Our guide, car driver, and my wife, Pat outside an art academy.














Our room has become a welcome refuge at the end of a long day. Looking out the large glass window at the Neva and St Petersburg is like watching a movie unfolding befor you. There are many boats on the river and the city with its many spires and domes makes for a great backdrop. I even woke up at 2 AM to see look out the window and see one of the many bridges open to allow for big ships to pass through. During the day looking at the bridges, you'd never guess that they are draw bridges.

Saturday, July 9th
Today we did the town on our own, returning to many of the key sites that we had seen the day before. We took the underground Metro. The underground stations are beautiful to behold. They are very clean and we felt very safe using the Metro. The cost per trip was our equivalent of 30 cents. Very cheap. It was easy to figure out where we were going and where and how to get off.



Our tour guide told us that we must take a canal boat tour. She was absolutely right. We saw this beautiful city from a completely different angle. One of the highlights of the boat tour was seeing a wedding party come out onto a bridge that we were about to go under. They looked very happy and waved at us as we passed under the bridge. We learned that in St Petersburg it is very popular to get married at historic places.





Part of the day was just hanging out on the main street, watching people, doing some shopping for souvenirs. We had a late lunch in the Hermitage Restaurant. It is located across the huge plaza from the Hermitage. We loved our food and the decor, which is like an art gallery. Lunch with a tip, which the waiter was quite surprised to receive, came to $50. Very reasonable for the quality of food, service, and decor.








The plaza at the Hermitage.












St Petersburg has some lovely tree lined avenues off the main boulevard.











We headed home around 6 PM. The street performers were out now, though there weren't as many as you would expect for a city this size. Only one group could be ranked as good. The rest we saw ranged from being amateur to three drunk young men banging away on guitars.

All in all we found this to be a fun day. I was impressed to see people working on a weekend cleaning up the public places. The trash receptacles were well used and even the numerous people we saw drinking beer seemed to know to put their empties in the trash receptacles. We were surprised to see that drinking in public places is allowed and that so many people, men especially, were obviously drunk.

Sunday, July 10
The sun sets late, barely gets below the horizon, and is up early at this latitude. Most mornings we were able to sleep in till 8 AM. But this morning Pat worke me up at 6 AM, thinking it was later, to start packing. After another excellent breakfast buffet, we checked out of the hotel, put our bags in the safe luggage area, and went out for a leisurely morning walk over to the Peter's Fort and the cathedral of Peter and Paul. This turned out to be a lovely morning, even though both of us are tired and ready to return to Sweden.

We'll get to our son's apartment this evening around 8 PM. Then we're up around 5 AM in the morning to fly to Tallinn, Estonia. We'll spend a night there. Return to Sweden for one day, then fly home via Iceland, the way we came.

Oh yes, the question, "Is St Petersburg another Amsterdam or Paris?" It may have some similarities to both cities, canals like Amsterdam, an architectual style similar to Paris, but it is St Petersburg and should be appreciated for its uniqueness that makes it St Petersburg.

Norway - It's way more than you can possibly imagine.

June 24, we've spent a few days with Helene's parents on their farm which is about 3 hours north of Stockholm by car. Someone from Helene's mother's family has lived in this house since the 1600's. Talk about a connection with the past. Siv and Kent are great hosts. We love them dearly. One day they took us out to a wonderful buffet at a resort overlooking a wide river with a sandy beach. Another day, Siv and Kent prepared a traditional mid-summers eve dinner for us and then took us to a local village for a traditional mid-summers celebration. Chad, Pat, and I said goodbye to Helene and her family around 4:00 Pm and began our drive towards Norway. We have no idea of how far we will get this evening. Once again, it doesn't get dark. Fatigue is the only reason to stop.

I'm going to jump ahead for a minute. Norway is so much more than you can imagine, I'm not going to attempt to describe in detail what we saw each day. That's because every bend in the highway revealed something new and spectacular. Just when we'd think the natural beauty couldn't get any more beautiful, we'd be surprised again. So, I will just describe the main highlight of each day. On our journey we drove 1600 miles in 7 days. Food in Norway is as expensive as people have told us. To keep within our budget, we stocked up on sandwich makings. While we drove, the person in the back seat of our tiny Kia was the designated sandwich maker. This allowed us to cover great distances without having to stop to spend time and money at a restaurant.




Back now to driving into the mountains of Sweden on our way to Norway.
I've never seen so much timber in my life. Miles and miles for as far as we could see there were snow covered mountains, trees, and lakes.







Around 10:30 PM we decided that we should make camp. We pulled into a camground at the edge of a river. The sky was overcast. We set up our 3 person tent and prepared to go to bed. I stepped out of the tent and found that the cloud cover had disappeared and everything, including me, was bathed in the most golden and soft light. I called Chad to come out, and then Pat came out.
Other people in the campground emerged from their campers to look at the light. Down on the river a marsh owl flew out of the marshes and swooped along the banks of the river. We took pictures like crazy. A guy from Belgium said that he had been there for 2 days and hadn't seen the sun. Off in the distance, maye 10 miles, a mountain that had been non-descript, bathed in shadows, began to catch the rays of the sun and glow against a grey background.




June 25, up at 7 AM, nothing is open, no coffee, start driving.Down the road we see a fox
crossing the highway. I stop the car. He walks towards us and stops across the road from the car, gives us a look and then goes down the embankment. Soon we are above the treeline.












We pass several herds of reindeer and catch a closeup of this one by him self.








Ruros, a copper mountain town that is a world heritage site, gives us a break for a couple of hours to walk the streets and have our coffee and roll. Next stop is Trondheim. Great cathedral there but ait's closed for a wedding. The town doesn't appeal to us. We head south now towards Alesund. We stop to camp about an hour north of the town. It rains during the twilight of the artic night, but our tent keeps us warm and dry.






June 26, break camp and head towards the Atlantic Highway. We'd been undecided about our route, but at the campground we'd seen a poster of the highway and decided that was the way to get to Alesund. If you have the choice this section of about 10 miles of highway and bridges is worth your time to travel.










Alesund came next. It's a cute little town.









We had great fish n' chips for dinner, climbed the hill overlooking this lovely town, then headed
off for the fjords. Our goal was to get near to Geringer. This is the fjord where you see all of the photographs of cruise ships floating beneath the towering walls of the fjord. We were a little concerned about which road to take to get there. The guy at the campground last night had suggested a route where the road was so narrow, and the cliffs so steep that the police wouldn't drive there. A lady we met at a tourist shop on the Atlantic highway told us we need not worry and that we should take the world famous breathtaking Trollstigen (Trolls Highway).













When the pass was in sight, we couldn't believe that a road really went up the face of what appeared to be a near verticle cliff. Waterfalls poured out of hidden valleys and thundered down to the river by our right side. We spent an hour here just taking pictures, driving aways, getting out taking more pictures. This is the most powerful place that I have ever been to.








At the top of the pass we looked back down at the road we had come up. Towards the direction we were heading their were snowfields, and a road that had only been cleared of snow a few weeks ago.







We found a campground about an hour's drive from Geringer. To our surprise we could rent a small cabin for only a little more than a tent site, 30 dollars US. The cabin had no running water. But it was cute with four comfortable bunk beds and a table, and it had heat.







June 27, we went to the grocery store just before the ferry crossing to the road to Geringer. Loaded with our food supplies, we chose to have a brunch on the sand on the edge of the fjord about a mile from where we got the ferry. We didn't get out of this town until around noon.







Geringer proved to be just as impressive as it's pictures, but there was nothing to keep us there besides the tourist shops that feed off the thousands who disembark here from the cruise ships. Off on a ferry for about an hour to an old viking port and then through a remote seldom seen by tourists valley to a famous old hotel, the Hotel Union. It has been completely restored. Kings and queens have stayed here as well as many famous people. It sits on the shores of a lake and a very big waterfall is just across the valley. More driving and great scenary. Around 10 PM we stop at a great camsite ran by a cheerful farmer. He has four cabins. Not large but just done with beautiful wood inside and a TV to boot. The bathrooms and showers are immaculate. Reading in the guestbook in our cabin, everyone comments on the bathrooms.



June 28 fjords, fjords, fjords, and ferries, ferries, ferries. Each ferrry boat ride costs about 15 dollars US. The drive isn't boring though. We love every minute of this journey. We'll be in Bergen by late afternoon. What will it be like? We'll be there for 2 nights. It'll be nice to stay in one place for a couple of nights, to park the car and not drive for 2 days.







Our lodging isjust several blocks from the heart of Bergen. The place is marketed as a youth hostel, but in fact is more like a boutique hotel. We have two rooms, one for Chad, one for Pat and I. The rooms are just 75 dollars a night each and have TV's bathrooms, and mini-kitchens.

June 29, Bergen,we love this town. It is the coolest most alive town any of us have ever been to. Everything is in walking distance. We have been looking at handcrafted wool sweaters but the prices are too high for us. Norway is very expensive. A six pack of beer cost me 15 dollars. However, we happen across a thrift store that looks more like a department store than a 2nd hand shop. In it we find great looking norwegian wool sweaters for around 10 dollars a piece.

Today is our 37th wedding anniversary. We chose to celebrate at a restaurant that features Norwegian foods of the 1600's and 1700's. The service was excellent and the food wonderful, but the bill was quite high, the most we've ever spent on a dinner, and we didn't have drinks. The tab came to 240 US dollars. But we're not complaining. The meal and service was worth every penny.








After dinner we strolled along the Bergen waterfront. It was 10 PM. The sun was bright, and everyone in town was out enjoying the great weather.






June 30, we couldn't drag ourselves away from Bergen. We needed more time to soak up the energy of this great place. We'd thought we'd be in Oslo late this evening. We didn't make it.

The road to Oslo still had more magnificent beauty to reveal to us, and we just had to stop and take in each new sight. Along the way we passed through the world's longest automobile tunnel. 15 miles long. Can you believe that? We found one of those cheap, but cute, cabins to stay in around 10 PM. That seems to be the time that we stop driving every night.

July 1, the beauty continues right up to about 10 miles out of Oslo. Then the countryside just becomes plain beautiful rather than oooh beautiful. Oslo has some nice buildings but the traffic is awful. We were in and out of the town in 2 hours. Now headed for Stockholm we did take one last small detour to the town of Fredrickstad. It's a well preserved 17th century village. What really impressed me there was that we came across a bicycle shop that specialized in fixing up old bicycles. Most shops tell people to junk there older bikes and get new ones. This shop even had retired Norwegian postal service bikes for sale. They were around 40 US dollars apiece. Being a bike lover, I went into the store to congratulate the bike mechanic on the work he did.
Then we headed home.