A Reputable Journal

Last night after we ate our dinner at the Ship Inn we came out to this sight.

The tide had gone out and left all of the boats stranded on the sand.







This morning we flew from Aberdeen Scotland to Bergen Norway, the landing was absolutely spectacular. I’ve never seen so many small islands in my life. Plus, the sky was perfectly blue for the first time in many days, and so the whole scene was amazing. Getting through customs and the rest of the airport went just as smoothly as you would expect from a scandinavian country.

We immediately found our SAS Airbus to take us downtown to our hotel. We are at the Hotel Thon, it is on the end of Byrggen Street, right across the road from the harbor. Its a very nice location, except that it is next to a huge city park. What is wrong with that you may ask. Well, it turns out that we picked the wrong night to stay at the Thon hotel next to the park, as tonight is the night of the Rammstein concert. Who are Rammstein you may ask? After a little internet searching I quickly learned that Rammstein are a German industrial metal band.

We are actually on the opposite side of the hotel from the concert but at the moment it is making no difference. We are trying to watch the world cup, but the sound from the concert is so loud it is drowning out the Brazilian national anthem. I would much prefer the sounds of those dumb world cup horns to the sound of a german industrial metal band. We can only hope that the concert will wrap up at a respectable time. Josh just found a view of the concert and said it looks like a bunch of black ants (yes all the concert goers are dressed in black T-shirts) streaming toward a rotting apple.

OK, enough grousing, Bergen really is a nice city. We started our tour of Bergen by meeting one of Kaia’s facebook friends named Thomas at our hotel. Thomas had visited Decorah with a group of Norwegian students a couple of years ago, and volunteered to get us oriented to the city when he saw Kaia’s Facebook status. He showed us around the area including the wharf and the fish market and the central park of Bergen.

Jane and Kaia spent some time shopping around the city for a sweater for Kaia. They were successful, and so Kaia can proudly celebrate her heritage at concord, and at Christmas time.

We took the Funicular up high above the city this afternoon and the view is amazing. We took Thomas' recommendation for a restaurant for supper tonight and went to Egon’s. It is a Norwegian chain restaurant and the food was OK. I think we have officially reached the point of vacation where choosing a place to eat for supper and dinner in a new strange city has become somewhat of a chore. We miss the home cooking.





Tomorrow morning we have another fairly early morning, as we must be on board our ferry boat at 8 AM for the trip to Balestrand, of course early morning takes on a whole new connotation at this time of the year at this latitude. We are now far enough north that there is only a couple hours of darkness at this time of the year. Darkness is only from midnight until a little after 2 AM. The Ferry trip tomorrow promises to be a beautiful trip through the fjords, we are all looking forward to it very much.

For now we are resting and watching Brazil and the People’s Republic of Korea play some football.

Location:Bergen, Norway

Can you possibly imagine a better way to top off a trip to St. Andrews than with a hole in one? Well thats what I did!! Josh and I were playing this morning, and it was on the 16th hole. I hit my drive perfectly straight, just a little left of the pin, right where I had aimed it. It rolled, broke to the right and dropped straight into the cup. Here’s where the story gets really weird, two holes later, Josh also got a hole in one. Thats right, on number 18 at St. Andrews. He hit his drive past the hole, up the hill, and it rolled straight back down into the cup. A truly amazing shot. You may be wondering which course we were on. Well unfortunately it was not the old course. It was a course called the Himalayas and it is the official putting green of the old course. They have 18 holes laid out, and you can rent a putter and balls. No, silly clowns mouths or windmills allowed, this is just a very challenging, and highly rolling putting green. In fact we had to wait until 11:00 this morning to tee off because they have a ladies putting league that plays before that. It is complete with its own clubhouse and everything. Here I am in my fashionable St. Andrews argyle sweater, getting ready to tee it up!

We arrived in St. Andrews yesterday afternoon, after visiting Castle Edinburgh in the morning. The castle was very interesting, and we again learned some interesting Scottish history. We stayed in the hotel Rusacks' which looks right out over the 18th Fairway on the old course. We could sit in our room and look out at both number 1 and 18 fairways. They have already done a lot of work getting ready for the Open. This is the last week that the public can play on the course until afterwards. So there are lots of grandstands under construction. The great thing is that the course is closed on sunday so the public can walk the course. So we did.

We’ve talked a lot these last few days about walking where other famous people have walked. We’ve walked the same rooms and stairways as Mary Queen of Scots, King Henry the VIII, Oliver Cromwell, and many others. Now we can add to our list Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklas, Old Tom Murray, and even Tiger. The room that we stayed in at Rusacks is the same room used by Arnold Palmer, and other golfers. In addition Mick Jagger also stayed in our room. I don’t know that Mick cares about golf but he was on the list. I’m sure they will be adding the Miller family to the list any day now.

Back to walking the course, it was really fun to walk along and remember seeing some of our golfing hero’s and where they hit great shots and where they got in trouble. We found lots of deep bunkers to take our picture in too. Here is one of me on the Swilcan Bridge:


This blog entry would not be complete without a little culinary update. Last night we ate at Nahm-Jim a Thai restaurant right in the heart of St. Andrews. We had some delicious curry, and Josh claims he had the best Pad-Thai of his life there. Very good stuff. After dinner the tide had gone way out, so Josh and I hiked out on the beach, we got a great look back at St. Andrews. You can see the Golf museum lit up on the far right, and some of the temporary construction they have stared for the open, also on the far right.




After a very light lunch in St. Andrews today, we finally gave in to Josh’s urge to have a Subway Sandwich, we drove to Stonehaven. Stonehaven is a small town outside Aberdeen, its probably about the same size as Decorah, but its right on the North Sea. Our Bed and Breakfast overlooks the town harbor and is really beautiful. We took an Awesome hike out to Donnotter castle. This castle is all in ruins but it is such a great setting, its was really amazing. This is the site where they filmed Mel Gibson’s version of Hamlet. This picture gives you a sense for how isolated the castle is.


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Location:St. Andrews, Scotland

One week after watching our Decorah Vikings take third in the state soccer tournament we were back watching futbol again. This time we were in Edinburgh Scotland watching USA play England. Now before you get too worried about us cheering for our side on the home turf of our opponent let me just clarify that when England is playing the Scottish will cheer very loudly for the other team! As soon as we arrived in Edinburgh Josh. Changed into his USA jersey, and as we were waking around Edinburgh he got lots of comments from the locals. “nice top there son”

So it came to pass that we found ourselves in a hotel bar with lots of support for USA. On one side was a group of about 20 younger scottish men, and on the other were some additional tourists like ourselves. We had hoped to experience the game in a pub, but unfortunately they do not allow minors after 8pm. It was great fun to watch the game here, but I must say that I have grown used to the expert commentary of my friend Jim, who is leading a group of Luther alumni on a trip through Germany at the moment. I am sure Jim found a good place to watch the game there with some German support. You see all kinds of people when you watch the game in a hotel bar. At one point an Asian man came in, and stared at the screen for a couple of minutes before asking “what half is it?”. One of our scottish compatriots replied, well I don’t know where you’re from mate but when the clock says forty two minutes here you’re in the first half. It sounds even funnier when you hear it with the accent. Needless to say that particular fan did not stick around to watch much of the game.

When the Americans scored (yes it was an error on the English keeper) the whole bar erupted in cheers and then a chant of USA USA started up. The bar manager looked like he couldn’t decide what to do. He clearly wanted to calm everyone down and was obviously worried that a riot was going to break out in his bar. But he had no idea how what the right strategy was. In the end order was restored by some humor. After the cheers erupted and the chant had started one of the scottish fans came running back into the room to see what all of the commotion was about. As he had been in the toilet, he made a great show of zipping up his zipper which put everyone to laughing, including the manager. Although I was disappointed to settle for the draw, I think it is a good result for the American side.

Earlier in the day we did spend some time walking around Edinburgh, we walked the Royal Mile, and checked out Holyrood House. We have now seen all the royal residences except for Balmoral. The big story of Holyrood is that this is where Mary Queen of Scots spent a lot of time, and it is also where her young son was killed right before her eyes by her husband. Nice guy, who wanted the throne bad enough to kill his stepson. Here is a picture of the Abbey.

Our hotel here is great, we are right in the middle of a bustling area, and have a awesome view of Edinburgh castle out our hotel window. Here is a night shot I took after the world cup game was over.





Today we are going to visit the castle, then pick up our rental car and head for St. Andrews, birthplace of golf!

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Location:Edinburgh, Scotland

I am writing this on the train from London to Edinburgh where they have just announced the breakfast options. I don’t get the concept of “English breakfast.” I would like to meet the chef who came up with the idea of serving baked beans and eggs together! My guess is that if I did meet him I would learn that he was also the inventor of the “Pudding Menu.” At every hotel the included breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, and baked beans. I don’t like baked beans under the best of conditions, and certainly not first thing in the morning. I guess it must be one of those things you need to grow up with in order to appreciate. In the meantime I will just stick to having tea.


Anyway, now that I have addressed the breakfast issue I will praise the train system. This is really a the way to travel. We have four seats facing each other in coach, tons of legroom, a table in between us, great scenery, free wifi, and a very quiet ride. No long hassles of getting to the station 90 minutes ahead of time, and no long security lines. Just walk to the platform, get on your train, stow your luggage and take a seat. As we reevaluate travel the US I really wonder what it would take to get this kind of convenience. I, for one would travel this way whenever possible.

I also want to say how much I love traveling with my iPad! This thing is great. It’s small, light, the battery life is awesome, I have a bunch of books to read on it, a couple of movies to watch, the current season of Merlin, and games to entertain me when I am tired of all of the above. Other than if I really needed to write a program I can not imagine why I would ever need to travel with a laptop. In fact I think this is really the start of something new. I don’t see myself needing a laptop. My setup would be a nice big desktop machine for programming and writing in LaTeX, and my iPad for the times I am not at my desk.

Finally, as long as I’m rambling on about products and travel I have to say that I love my ScotteVest. (www.scottevest.com). Its a vest designed for travel, that includes zip pockets for just about everything. I can carry camera lenses, glasses, iPod, phone, and all kinds of things. I think it has 20 pockets in total, so there is a pocket for just about everything. It keeps me warm at the temperatures we are traveling in at the moment, and with all the zippers and inner pockets I feel pretty secure.

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Today’s travel adventure involved the Tower of London. No, we were not arrested and tortured by the English royalty. We were on a tour of the tower of london. We had just finished the guided tour with one of the Yoman Warders (cool title eh?) and we decided to go in and check out the Armoury. (yep I’m converting to british spelling) Just after we got in the door an alarm started to go off, and a woman steward came hurrying buy and told us that we had to evacuate the tower. We were never able to to find out why we had to evacuate but Jane overheard a couple of them talking about a fire alarm. The tower of London is also the site where Henry VIII beheaded several of his wives, including Anne Boleyn.

We started our day by taking the tube to St. Paul’s Cathedral. After walking around the sanctuary we resumed our european stair climbing tradition. We first walked 257 stairs to the whispering gallery. This is a cool balcony where you can face the wall and whisper. The person standing directly opposite you across the circle, over 100 feet away, can hear you perfectly clearly. I’d like to explain the physics of this but I’m told that my readership will decline if I include any equations. I guess all three of you are safe and will remain loyal readers. After the whispering gallery we continued another 266 stairs up to the gold gallery. From here we had a very good, but slightly foggy view of all of London.

Next we walked across the Millennium bridge and toured Shakespeare’s Globe theater. This is a slightly modernized version of the original, but still true to the spirit of performing plays in daylight where the actors and audience are face to face. It would have been really fun to try to watch a show there, but Macbeth is being performed at the moment and it seemed a bit dark, and long given our schedule for the day.

Now we are chilling at our hotel, the Luna Simone, watching Mexico and South Africa play futbol. South Africa just scored and are up one nil. Very exciting for the South African side. We have been researching whether or not we dare show the american colors during the game tomorrow. Research has indicated that the scottish people will cheer for ANY opponent of England, so we feel pretty comfortable about watching the game in a pub in Ediburgh tomorrow. Maybe some nice scottish people will buy us a pint if we win! (darn, Mexico just scored)

Kaia is waiting patiently for her phone call from her Concordia advisor to do her registration! Then we’ll grab a quick dinner and head out to see Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace Theater. We had three shows that we wanted to see while we were in London and this one won out since we walked right by the box office last night. We also wanted to see Stomp, and We Will Rock You. Yes, a Queen musical, featuring Bohemian Rhapsody and of course We Will Rock You.

Location:London, England

Do you remember Sir John Gielgud from the movie Arthur? Jeeves maybe? Imagine the most proper british gentleman you can, and you will have our guide for the tour of Blenheim Palace we had today. This guy was much shorter than Sir Gielgud but he was a pretty good guide. He told us about fine china and tapestries the architects of the Palace along with many of the priceless artifacts that have been collected by the Spencer Churchill family over the years. As we finished each room of the palace our guide would say very politely, well if there are no questions I think that just covers it.

After our tour with Jeeves, we decided to see the Untold Story of Blenheim. This is part Disney animatronics and part history lesson. All in all it did not work for us. The animated dummies they had playing the parts of members of the royal households were all placed in front of ‘mirrors’ which were really computer screens, so although we looked at the dummy’s back we saw a real person’s face projected on the screen as if it was a reflection. These characters tried to tell us the back story behind how the Palace was constructed. One can only take so much royal sex scandal before it gets old.

Blenheim Palace is the home of the family of the Duke of Marlborough, although once a year they have to send a flag to BUCKingham, yes you must say that with a British accent with all of the emphasis on the BUCK and you will have it just about right. The purpose of the flags is to avoid paying what must be an incredible amount of rent. As long as the flag is delivered on time the family gets another year rent free.

Blenheim was actually our second castle of the day today. We started the morning by visiting Sudeley castle in the Cotswolds. This is one of the castles where Henry VIII and his wives hung out. Much of the castle is in ruins now, but it really is interesting, especially after watching several episodes of The Tudors on HBO. Other highlights of Sudeley were the Gardens and the Peacocks that were running around and in captivity in the Pheasantry. Yes, how many of you have been to a Pheasantry??







Lunch today was at Noel Arms in Chipping Camden. Jane had a Ploughman’s lunch, Josh had ice cream, and Kaia and I tried a burger. It was a nice English pub and we had to try some of the local brews, also quite good.

We stayed in Woodstock at The Bear, It is a hotel in a building that was built in the late 1600’s! The rooms are everywhere with no two alike. While Kaia went for a run I had a real english G&T although I really did not appreciate the use of the slice of cucumber in place of the lime. Dinner was at a small family run italian restaurant (Branca) across the street from the hotel. I had a great bolognese, Jane had Arrabiata, and Josh and Kaia had Pizza. All in all this was a great birthday!

Location:Woodstock, England

Yesterday we flew from Chicago to London. We tried a day flight instead of an overnight flight and it worked very well. We left Chicago at 9:05AM and arrived at Heathrow at 10:30PM. The flight was very easy an non-eventful, it worked perfect for someone who cannot fall asleep on an airplane. We got into Heathrow and did the customs thing and by the time we got to our hotel it was after midnight. To our bodies it was still early evening but by 1:30 we all had lights out and were working on sleep.

We did sleep in until 8:45 this morning. From there we took off for Bath by way of Stonehenge. For those of you who don’t know, Stonehenge is a big circle of rocks. Merlin the magician moved them down from Ireland sometime in the distant past. This was well before King Uther died, because he is apparently buried in Stonehenge. Here’s Kaia and Josh at Stonehenge.

At lunchtime we at at a local establishment called Jacqueline’s Bistro. Jane and Kaia had fresh baked baguettes with goat cheese, Josh had a ham and cheese omelet with salad and I had fish and chips.

From there we moved on to our final destination for today, Bath. When you arrive in downtown Bath you are “in a twisty turny maze” Its hard to know where you are, and the gps was equally unenlightened at several points. When we finally did find the parking lot where we were supposed to leave our car, it was closed for re-surfacing! So we had to go back to find a different lot that we had passed along the way.

After parking the car it was a very short walk to our Bed & Breakfast at Three Abbey Green. We have a beautiful two room suite, so we have to room to spread out tonight. Josh and Kaia both have their own beds and Kaia gets a separate bedroom. Breakfast is included as part of the deal in the morning. Here’s a nice view of the courtyard and our place for the night. The entrance is to the left of the giant tree in this photo:






We went out to view the sites of Bath, its a great downtown area once you are on foot. We visited the Roman Baths - from whence Bath got its name - and looked at the Abbey. Went shopping to replace the shorts that I left hanging on the back of the bathroom door at the Super 8 in Chicago. On the recommendation of our hotelier we went to the Eye of India for some great Indian food for dinner. We had Tikki Takka Tak, (I’m not making that up) Garlic Chili Masala, and Chicken Khorma, along with rice and nan. Here’s Kaia and Jane at the Baths.





The highlight of the day was definitely the after dinner show, called Bazaar Bath. Its a comedy/magic show that roams around downtown. The host entertains by poking fun of the people on the tour and doing tricks. As advertised, you do not learn anything about the history or culture of Bath, but it is a lot of laughs and I highly recommend this show if you come to Bath.

Unfortunately our string of injuries continues as Jane seems to have slipped a disc as we were walking around for the show tonight. Hopefully ibuprofen and heat will have her back as good as new in the morning.

Location:Bath, England

In preparation for the big upcoming trip to Europe I wanted to try out a couple of blogging apps for my iPad. I will be on the road for almost a month without my laptop.

Since I am writing this from home here is a picture of the sunset from a couple days ago.

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