Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world.  It is in the Patagonia region, and the Tierra Del Fuego province of Argentina.  Thats a lot of geographical trivia for you in one statement.  Another fun fact about Ushuaia is that the Pan American Highway comes to an end here.  You can see Jane and I standing by the sign marking the southern end of the highway.  It doesn’t look like much of a highway at this point since it is gravel, but nevertheless you could get on this road and start riding and 17,848 km later you would find yourself in Alaska.  Now that would be a bike ride.

Although Ushuaia is the southernmost city in the world we are not as far south as you might imagine our latitude is only as far south as Washington DC is north, so there are no issues with permafrost or any of the other problems that plague the far north cities.  Interestingly though, there are glaciers very near the city, and we cruised by them and hiked near them today.  Ushuaia is located on the Beagle channel.  This is the channel that the famous ship carrying Charles Darwin discovered.

Our day in Ushuaia was full of hiking with people we’ve met from Cruise Critic.  There were 11 of us that had joined in a private tour with Christine and Craig from Australia.  Our driver and guide, Edgar, was very pleasant, and knowledgeable.  He stayed awake the entire trip!  He hiked with us and pointed out interesting plants and things along the way.  Our main hiking was in the Tierra del Fuego National Park.  Here are a couple of photos to give you an idea of how pretty it was.  Jane and I are going to try to find an Internet Cafe in Punta Arenas so hopefully with some speedier connectivity I can get some larger versions uploaded to Flickr.

 

One of the interesting things I discovered on the hike was how similar this area is compared to northern minnesota.  Its striking how the effects of the glaciers leave exactly the same marks even though we are in completely different parts of the world.  In some places you would think you were on the shores of lake superior instead of standing next to the Beagle Channel.

After hiking in the national park all morning, we got in the van and drove to the ski area above the city.  Here we were able to take a ski lift up the mountain to another hiking area.  If we had more time we could have continued to hike up the mountain to the glacier.  Sadly, the hike was too long and we didn’t want to miss the ship!  While we were doing a short hike at the top of the lift we were lucky enough to see an Albatross soaring in the sky.  These birds are huge, with wingspans of up to 3.5 meters!  Sadly it was too far away to get a decent picture.

Here’s a shot of the view on the way down the ski lift.

And here you can see our ship on the pier with the city in the foreground.

So far I would say that Ushuaia is my favorite city of the cruise.

We have great table mates this cruise!  Kim and Rico from Houston, Shyla and Yogi from Ohio, and Rachel and Howard from New Jersey.  We look forward to sharing stories of our day with them each night at the late seating.  This is worth remarking on because we have seldom had good luck with our dinner companions.  From the guy from Hutchinson who kept asking me “you gonna eat that?” to Marge (not sure thats her real name) from Jersey (definitely sure she was from Jersey)  who complained every night.  Here’s a sample of one conversation:
Marge:  They never have any good soup on this cruise!
Brad: What kind of soup do you like?
Marge: Cream of Mushroom
Brad:  Well, we had that last night
Marge (exasperated): But I didn’t order it last night!
This sort of luck has continued for us cruise after cruise, until this one.   Except for the cruises we have taken with our great friends Brian and Holly!  Anyway since it is just the two of us on this trip, we are grateful for the companionship.  Now lest you think this post is going to be about dinner and our waiter, I’m going to shift gears and tell you about our day.  We were in Puerto Madryn, but the excursion we had planned was a trip to the Valdez Peninsula.  This was an excursion that we booked outside the ship through Forastero Tours.
We were among the first 20 people off the ship this morning, wanting to get ahead of all the big tour busses that were heading the same place we were.  We met our guide and driver on the pier and hopped in their car.  Our guide introduced himself – I’m not going to tell you his name, because I’m convinced he will be an excellent tour guide someday and I don’t want what I’m about to relate to you to harm him in any way – and proceeded to tell us that this was his first time leading a tour, and that he was still studying for his certification as a guide.  He also hoped his english was good – it was passable.  The next thing he should have said was, “so you’re in luck, your tour today will be half price!”  But that isn’t what he said.  In fact he didn’t say all that much, period.  He did tell us that there are four main economic industries in Puerto Madryn, The Aluminum factory is number one, something, something, and then tourism.
Now, its a long drive from the port to our destination on Peninsula Valdez, about 169km in fact.  The other interesting factoid about this part of the world is that the ecology around Peurto Madryn is steppe or steppe-like?  A large unforrested region of grassland.  This was a combination of small shrubs and sand.  In other words there is really nothing interesting to see on this drive, except for the occasional Guarananca or Piche – but I’m getting ahead of myself.  Well, not really, there were two destinations for todays trip.  First, the San Lorenzo Penguin Colony, and second Punta Norte Sea Lion and Elephant Seal colonies.  Oh yeah, the last 76km to the Punta Norte are on gravel road.
So after riding most of the way in silence, we are approaching the Penguin colony and our guide says.  “In a few moments we will be at the penguin colony, here is a penguin”  At which point he pulls out a picture of a penguin.  He continues:  “Penguins are black and white, with a white band up here (pointing to the white band on their head) and a black band here (pointing to the black band).  I think both Jane and I were struggling to keep a straight face at this point, but one of us managed to say “interesting.”  Of course what he didn’t know is that this was “interesting” in the Iowa/Minnesota sense of the word.  Here concludes the fascinating section of the commentary on penguins.  To summarize:  They are black and white and have two bands.
Let me add a bit more detail that I learned on my own, and from the lecture given by the naturalist on board the Infinity…  The penguins that we were about to see are called Magellanic Penguins, named for Magellan who sailed these parts back in the late 1500’s.  Maybe now you are getting a sense for the title of this post? Ferdinand?  Ferdinand?  anyone? anyone?  Yes, Ferdinand Magellan!  I’m so clever.
I know I’m sounding a little snarky about the tour today, but it really turned out just fine.  because we were just the two of us on our own tour, we got to the Penguin colony well ahead of the masses, in fact we had the place all to ourselves, and that made it worth it right there.  Would I have liked some more insightful commentary?  Sure.  But the kid was sincere and earnest so its hard to be too upset with him.  If I’m upset with anything its with Forastero tours for sending us a rookie.
Anyway, without further ado, here are some penguin pics for you!  yes, we were up close and personal with the penguins.

This little guy was not happy.  I think he was hungry and Mom was not coming through.


After the Penguins we continued further up the road to Punta Norte where we saw both Sea Lions and Elephant Seals.  Punta Norte is the only place in the world where you can see the Elephant seals.  At other times of the year, and at high tide, you also stand a chance of seeing an Orca coming into try and catch a baby Sea Lion, but no such luck today.  Anyway, here’s a shot of the beach, you can see the Sea Lions down below.  the Elephant seals are way on the far right end of the coast here and we could see them with the binoculars, but not so well with the camera lens.


After watching the Sea Lions we found a nice place to sit and enjoy some sandwiches for lunch.  While we were eating lunch the friendly neighborhood Armadillo (piche en espanol) came around hoping we would share with him, or her Im not sure how you tell with Armadillos.

The last and final episode with our young guide happened on the way back to the ship.  We had to take the exact same route back to the ship that we followed to get to Punta Norte, but lets just say the ride seemed shorter for some people than for others.  Yep, he actually fell asleep on the ride back!  I think the driver was ready to reach across, open the door and push him out.
Its funny how all of our excursions involve both a driver and a guide.  In each case we are led to believe that the driver does not speak english.  In this case I’m pretty sure the driver was much more experienced than the actual guide, as he seemed to know many of the other guides at Punta Norte.  Furthermore I think he understood and probably spoke english just fine.  He also did an excellent job of scanning the countryside and the road ahead for interesting animals.  We could tell that he was the one who would spot them and then tell our guide what was coming up.  His job today was to give junior some feedback on his first outing.  I’m pretty sure he got an earful!
The day ended on a very positive note.  Jane got on a roll at the craps table and ended the night over $400 ahead.  She made a lot of other people at the table very happy too.

The city of Punta Del Este has about 10,000 regular inhabitants, even though when you look at the picture of it you could easily imagine that it hosts ten times that number.  This is because Punta Del Este is a huge vacation getaway for much of South America.  All of the apartments in the high rise buildings are vacation homes.  Punta Del Este itself is mostly situated on a big peninsula with beaches on both sides.  The beaches on the west side are at the Platta river, the same one that starts in Brazil and flows through the Tigre Eelta north of Buenos Aires.  The beaches on the east are on the Atlantic ocean, and you can see the fresh and salt water mix together off the tip of the peninsula.

We didn’t have anything in particular planed for our day in Punta del Este, so we just took the tender ashore with the idea that we would walk around and check things out.  However when we got off the ship and started our walk through town, there it was, Bike Tours!  One lone woman holding a bike tour sign, of course we had to check it out.  Her name was Alice and she said she could take us on a two hour tour of the city, tell us about the history and highlights of the area, and of course we would do it all on bike.  Yay!  The price was very reasonable too, so here’s my digital shout-out to Bike Tours Uruguay Its a great way to see the town, and Alice even has other longer tours that will take you north into some of the other outlying areas.

After we got our bikes, helmets, and water our first stop was the most famous work of art in Punta del Este.  The “hand in the sand”  This was a sculpture that won a big art contest sponsored by the city back in the mid 1980’s.  It is literally a giant stone hand coming out of the sand on the beach.  Here’s Jane and I in front of the middle finger.

We continued our tour down the atlantic side enjoying the sites and sounds of the beaches.  The picture at the top is taken looking north back up the beach.  When you get to the point of the peninsula there is an observation deck to go out on, where you can enjoy the view looking back up the river as well as out to sea.  On the atlantic side there is an island where many hundreds of sea lions live, that is another tour for another day…  Some of our dinner table mates took that tour and said it was fun but pretty smelly when you get in amongst all of the sea lions.

When we got to the point our guide pointed out the island, and a small marker right off the point, and then another landmark off the the west.  According to the guide there is a large but rather narrow triangle  described by these three points.

Within this triangle is one of the places on earth that has amazing energy.  Oops, now I’m thinking what kind of strange new age mumbo jumbo guide did we get ourselves mixed up with.  But stay with me for a minute.   This triangle also encompasses the Punta del Este lighthouse, seen below.

Now, right next to the lighthouse is a little park area with a compass rose made out of stone.  You can see Jane standing on the compass rose facing south.

Here’s the remarkable thing.  When you stand on the center of the compass rose and begin to speak you experience something really amazing.  Its like your voice echos inside your head in a really strong resonant way.  When our guide told us about this I was extremely skeptical.  I could just hear her telling me,  ”What you couldn’t feel it?  Its so strong I can’t believe you didn’t experience the power….”  But when I stood there and started talking it was amazing.  I’m not sure what causes it, but I did do some googling and apparently there are some strong magnetic forces that converge in the Punta del Este area that have been scientifically investigated.  When I get home I’m going to have to do some more research to see if I can figure out what might cause this internal acoustic effect.  (unless of course Mike has it figured out for me first)  If you have any theories of your own, please leave them in the comments!

We continued to bike around the peninsula, and up the river side.  We stopped at the fish market to see some sea lions, getting a late lunch, and from there we also had a great view of our ship as seen through many of the ships in the marina.

Sea Lions at the fish market

For a day where we had absolutely nothing planned this turned out to be a great adventure.  Seeing a city by bike is great, it gives you a good perspective and allows you to see the sites from outside, rather than being stuck inside a car or van.

Today we are at sea the whole day, on our way to Puerto Madryn.  There are lots of activities scheduled, and lots of time for reading and relaxing today.  We are looking forward to a nice quiet day – After we go to our first boot camp workout!  The ship is also hosting a get together for all of the people on the Cruise Critic message boards, so that will also be a chance to meet some people in person that we have only communicated with electronically.  So, goodbye for now, I’ll give you an update in a couple of days when we are through Puerto Madryn.

 

I’m sitting here watching the sun come up over the city of Punta del Este.   The water is perfectly calm except for the waves created by some of the tender ships taking the earliest of early passengers over to the pier.  There are plenty of clouds in the sky today, but there is still the occasional blue patch.  We are close enough to shore that we can see the beaches spread out in all directions.
We don’t have anything planned for today except to tender ashore and walk around for a bit.
Yesterday we were in Montevideo, we had arranged a tour with Marta along with a group of people from the cruise critic message boards.  It was a driving/walking tour of the city, along with a stop at the Bouza Winery just outside the city.  The winery is only about 10 years old, which is about the average age for wineries in Uruguay.  Since it is getting toward the end of summer here they were just starting the harvest, so we got to see some of the equipment they were using for squashing and processing the grapes.  There were also a lot of very ripe grapes on the vine.
Here is the aging room where they age some of their wines.  Some of the barrels are made of french oak, and some of american oak.  The winery is pretty scientific about how they keep track of which batch of wine comes from which section of the vineyard.  They also keep 20 bottles from every harvest for every different kind of wine they make.

After the tour, of course we had to do a tasting. We had a white blend, along with a rose, a merlot, and a red blend.  We asked to try their Chardonnay and their Malbec, unfortunately they only had the chardonnay left for tasting; it was good but I actually liked the white blend we tried originally better.
After the tasting, we were all tired… Big surprise right!  But we had a little more touring left to do.  We climbed montevideo’s only large hill where we were treated to a great view of the harbor and our ship.  Its right in the middle of the photo below.

Overall it was a nice tour.  Last night was the first formal night on the ship, and it was fun to get out the old tuxedo again and enjoy some good food and a nice show, iBroadway.  Jane and I can both check frog legs off the list of foods we have tried.  Guess what?  They taste like chicken.

It was a beautiful two days in Buenos Aires.  Lets start with moving in to our room on the ship.  Other than the taxi driver overcharging us dumb Americans for the ride from the airport to the Puerta de Crucera everything about the checkin process went very well.  Our room is great, we have this curved wall of windows that makes you feel like you are just suspended out over the water.  Our sitting area is really a great place to just hang out and watch the sea go by.  The luggage all arrived intact, and we were even able to smuggle a few bottles of wine we picked up at the airport onto the ship.

We had two nice surprises on checkin:  First, our room is close enough to the Internet Cafe that we actually get a wireless signal in the room, and because we are in a suite we get 180 minutes of free wireless.  That may not last the whole trip but its a good start.  The second surprise was that we had a complimentary meal at the SS United States for our first night on the ship.  This is the only specialty restaurant on board, and it is definitely a good one.

It was hard to choose from the menu there were so many good options.  I had Diver Scallops wellington with truffle emulsion, Lobster Bisque, Surf & Turf (more lobster tail for the surf part) and of course chocolate souffle for desert.  Jane had similar except she had a pear and goat cheese tart instead of the diver scallops, and a salad instead of the bisque. We washed it all down with a nice bottle of Far Niente Chardonnay.

When we were leaving the restaurant the cruise director happened to be outside the door taping a segment for the next days onboard news and information channel.  We waited until we though it was safe for us to sneak by him inconspicuously, but that was not to be.  He spotted us and pulled us over for a quick on camera interview about our dining experience.  So, now we are famous for a few days.

Our second day in BA was even better than the first.  The main activity for the day was a delta river cruise.  Just north of Buenos Aires is a huge river delta, formed by the Plata river as it finishes its journey from the mountains of brazil and empties into the Atlantic Ocean.  We met our tour guides out front of the cruise terminal and they drove us through the city, pointing out interesting sites along the way.  Actually our driver and the owner of the company, Gaston, didn’t say too much since he did not speak English, but our guide and interpreter did a great job.

We arrived at the Marina and got on board the boat.  It was a beautiful new 30 foot cabin cruiser, perfect for river cruising.  We took off up one of the main channels and just cruised along enjoying the sun and warm weather.  We laughed a bit at the fact that there are actually billboards along the side of the channel.  This gives you an idea of the amount of water traffic that uses this part of the river.  In fact the delta is home to a lot of people who commute by boat, and is the equivalent of going up to the lake for many other BA residents.  Everything in the delta uses water for transportation.  Everything from grocery delivery to garbage pickup is done by water.

Need some groceries?  You just put a bag over the end of a pole on your dock and the grocery boat will stop for you.  On garbage day you just hang your bags of garbage out on the end of the dock and the garbage boat takes them away.

After cruising through some residential areas we anchored in a very peaceful side channel to have some lunch… A nice local cerveza and some meat and cheese.  It was good, and light, which was perfect since we were still plenty full from our meal the night before.  Note to mike and Sarah, We signed up for six sessions of boot camp while we are on board, and although the first session was during our tour, we did work out before hand!

After the tour we got dropped off in downtown Buenos Aires where we walked through the busy city streets, and looked at the shops and bought a souvenir for Josh.  Josh:  check out the Buenos Aires football clubs.

Of course we had the obligatory lifeboat drill, but then we enjoyed our sail away from Beuenos Aires in our room:

 

At dinner we went to our regular table in the main dining room, its located right next to the windows on the very back of the ship next to the captains table.  There was a little mixup at first with 10 of us thinking we belonged at this table for 8.  The waiter got that sorted out by moving this english couple to their proper table.  It seems that they were seated at our table the night before when 6 of us were eating at other places.  We really seem to have a nice table:  One couple from Houston TX, another from Ohio, she is the dean of a small college,  and another couple from New Jersey.  We had very good conversation, and it looks like it will be fun to get together and compare notes with them each night.

 

Have you ever had an experience where afterwards you said, “it took my breath away!”?  Today was one of those experiences for me.  I was awake, with the sun, at about 6:30 this morning;  3AM back in Decorah, but we were so tired from the previous two days that we were in bed before 10, and slept soundly through the night.  After having some coffee and breakfast in the hotel, Jane and I took off on the “Inferior Falls” hike.  The inferior falls trail is the lower trail that takes you down to the base of the falls and the river.  We were literally the only ones on the trail, and it seemed that around each turn there was a view of the falls more beautiful than the last.  I posted a bunch of photos to my flickr account, its a lot of waterfall pictures, but you just can’t capture the beauty of it all with a camera.  I’ve been experimenting with the exposure bracketing feature of my camera, and so some of these are three images combined into one using the HDR editor on Aperture.

As we neared the bottom of the trail we spotted a pair Toucans up in the tree, along with several other interesting birds. You can see the Toucan in the picture below.   At this point we were also able to buy our tickets for the boat trip under the falls….  But first there was a walkway that went right up to the falls.

I am the person in the mist in the picture below.  This was one of those wild kingdom kind of moments..  In your best Marlin Perkins voice you can say:  ”While Jane stays safely dry at the beginning of the platform Brad will tame the raging river and get drenched.”  And this was the experience that literally took my breath away.  You just can’t believe the force of the falls until you get right up to it like I did.  The wind that is created by the crashing of the water is like being in a thunder storm, and before I even realized what was going on, I was completely soaked from head to toe.  Between the force of the wind, and the perceived force of the water my breath just went right out of my lungs.

 

As I think about my own experience standing at the end of the platform, I have to wonder about the people that built this thing!  Who in their right mind would go to work each morning,  to build something where you were thinking that if you slipped, (and I’m sure that during construction it was plenty slippery) you would get smashed against the rocks below you by water with thousands of pounds of force.

There is lots of wildlife in the park, we saw many species of birds, and a little hamster size rodent.  Others in our group saw a snake eating a frog – sorry I missed that one.  But the most prevalent creature were these little things that we though were ringtail lemurs, but the locals had a different name for them.  Here’s one of them begging lunch off another tourist.  Their snouts are quite long, and we were told that they are a member of the anteater family.

After our experience on the platform, our next goal was the boat ride.  On this ride you get some great views of the falls from the river, and assuming you have a waterproof camera, some good pictures.  Then after you have seen the beauty of the falls the captain of the boat plays a game called “lets see how close to the falls we can get without going under.”  In the picture below you can see the boat ahead of us headed into the falls.  I’ll admit that when I was standing on dry land and watching this I was thinking to myself, “who in their right mind would get into a boat and do that?”  But, when we were actually in the boat it seemed perfectly safe, and the boat was very stable.

Jane had the Flip video camera inside a waterproof bag when we got on the boat but mostly the video is a wall of white, and sound.  Here’s a little bit of video from when we are near the falls, but not yet in the roiling water:

We were really glad we did the boat ride, as we got to see the even larger Brazilian falls that you can’t see from the hiking trails in Argentina.

After hiking back up to the hotel, we picked up my camera and got a new battery for the waterproof camera and set out for the train ride to El Diablo, this is another cool little hike where you go out to the top of the very large falls, and stand and watch the water spill over.  The water levels are quite high this year which makes everything even more spectacular.  Here’s a couple of shots from the top of the falls.  Again, there are more without me in them on flickr.

 

After all of this hiking in the Jungle heat and humidity, we were quite tired and hot, so we headed back to the pool at the hotel to relax and rest up for a while.  Our final stop of the day was back in the city of Puerto Iguazu where we had a dinner reservation at Aqva restaurant.

We booked a round trip cab ride (200 pesos) at the front desk, which turned out to be a great deal.  We had a very personable cab driver named Ronny, who took us for a little site seeing and shopping before dropping us off at the restaurant.  After dropping us off he waited for us to eat and then took us back to the hotel.  Before dinner we had a beautiful view of the river from the city, where you can see Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay at the three corners of where the river splits.

The restaurant is decorated in Pacific Northwest style, and the food is a great blend of Argentinian and Italian cuisine.  We had a fantastic meal of Argentine steak and a lovely bottle of Malbec.  My steak came with a leak tart which was surprisingly delicious, and Jane had potatoes that were stuffed with cheese and ham.  The service was top notch, and we had the opportunity to chat with the owner, Jorge Antonio, who was very nice…. We topped off our dinner with a tiny bit of Limoncello.  The Limoncello was quite possibly the best we have ever tasted, so we asked the owner if he made it himself or imported it from Italy.  He said he made it himself and promised to share his top secret recipe with us if we sent him an email.  Just when we thought we were ready to leave the owner brought us a complimentary glass of Argentinian champagne to keep us happy for the ride back to the hotel.  If you get to Iguazu you should definitely check out Aqva.

 

 

And so it begins.  Another travel adventure.  This one just Jane and I.  The itinerary is a South American Cruise from Buenos Aires, Argentina around Cape Horn and up to Valparaiso, Chile; with many stops along the way.  Here’s a summary of Days one and two.

We left Decorah with our friends John and Llew at 8:00AM to drive to the airport, we have several plans for getting back from the airport – the nice thing is that we didn’t need to park our car at $20 per day for 16 days.  While we are away Josh and our God daughter Liz are in charge of the house.  Decorah friends take note of that last sentence!  We are flying American all day, and of course the first face I see when we get to the American Counter is the infamous Cat – see my first post from JTerm travels.  Luckily we got our luggage checked in just fine without her.  When we got to the gate we checked with the gate agent to see if we could change our seats on the Dallas to Buenos Aires portion of the flight.  I really wanted to find a seat with a power port.  Nine hours in the air could require a recharge of the iPad.  She was so nice that she moved us to a bulkhead/exit row seat – nine hours of legroom!!

The rest of the air travel was uneventful, and we arrived in BA right on time.  Jane and I both managed at couple of hours of napping during the night, but nothing particularly restful.  BA is 3 hours ahead of central time so jet lag is not going to be a big factor.  Once off the plane we had to go through immigration and passport control.  We have to pay $140 each to visit Argentina, this is listed as reciprocity for the Visas that we make the Argentinians pay.

The plan was to get through immigration as quickly as possible and get on our car to the other airport (Jorge Newberry) where we are taking a flight to Iguazu for two days before the cruise.   We had reserved the 3:05 flight but were really hoping to get to the airport in time for the 11:35 flight.  We knew it would be tight but were hoping to avoid spending valuable hours in the airport.  Here’s where the plan started to fray…  After paying our reciprocity fee we got shunted out of the line for people from the US into the line for Argentinians and other visitors.  This line ended up being much longer and slower.  As the minutes ticked away we resigned ourselves to an afternoon in the airport.  We did meet two very nice women who were traveling alone, one was going to antarctica as part of an academic expedition and the other was celebrating her birthday by going horseback riding.

We ended up sharing our car with Denise – the horseback rider – The drive from BA International to Jorge Newberry is supposed to take anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours depending on who you read and what time of day, our drive was a harrowing 45 minutes.  Drivers here make up their own lanes and rules as they go along.  We got to the airport just after 11:00 which we were sure was too late for the 11:35 flight.  But luck was with us and the flight was delayed by an hour, so we were able to change to the earlier flight  – with no change fee!

We cleared security and found our way to gate 3 where we met up with several people from the cruise critic message board, I’ll just call them the CC people until I get to know them better.  Jane has been conversing online with some of these people for almost a year, and it was fun to meet up with some fellow americans to pass the time.

We arrived at the Iguazu airport, and the plane parked at one of the two gates.  We waited forever for Jane’s bag, and then got a cab to the Sheraton, which is located in the Iguazu National Park.  To summarize, we left Decorah at 8:00AM on the 24th and we arrived in Iguazu at 3:00 on the 25th.  A long days of travel! Just as we left the airport it started to rain, hard!  But, by the time we got checked in to our room and started to think about what to do with the rest of the day the rain stopped again.

Iguazu is amazing!  The falls here are huge, you just can’t believe the volume of water that pours over these things every second.  For those of you as old as me who are into movies at all, these falls are the sight of the movie The Mission.  Here’s one picture to whet your appetite.

I took this one on what is called the upper falls hike.  Its probably the driest hike we are going to take.  Next up is the lower falls hike which I will do in my swimsuit, and a boat ride that goes right up to the falls.

To finish off the story of our first day, we met up with the CC group again to have a drink in the hotel bar and dinner together.  I think this is going to be very nice to know a few people going into the cruise.  The dinner was pretty good.  Jane had seafood risotto and I had a nice Argentine steak.  The funniest thing was that Jane got dripped on through a leak in the roof when the rain started up again.

 

 

4:00 PM Laguardia Airport

I have never wanted to be home so badly in all my life.  The group of 16 is sitting here in the American Eagle concourse of Laguardia.  We are at the airport very early for several reasons.  Number one, they are remodeling the lobby of the Seafarers and it sounded like the entire building was going to fall down.  Number two, the “seafarers” watching TV on the Mezzanine were on their second bottle of alcohol (gin for breakfast and whiskey for lunch) and were starting to creep everyone out.  Number three we though that this mornings snow might have traffic all backed up and we didn’t want to be fretting our way through security, but as it turned out we got over here in no time at all.  Number five, we feared that there would be long lines at checkin and security due to flight changes and cancellations, which also proved to be a non-issue.  So, here we sit, two hours before boarding, the flight is on time so far…

The morning started out early, I was wide awake at 4AM, my mind on the trip home today.  We had to be out the door at 7AM to catch our train to Stamford Connecticut, where we visited NBC.  We had two great speakers today John Fritsche, and Bucky Gunt (Google him, he’s won a ton of Emmys).  Unfortunately as we were on the train to Stamford some lovely white flakes of snow began to come out of the sky.  Sadly in New York even a few white flakes raise havoc with the schedules at Laguardia, Newark, and JFK.  On top of that tomorrow there is a winter storm watch out for our area.

Backing up to this morning again.  We got to the Union Square station where we were going to take any of the uptown bound trains to grand central station.  We told everyone, if the cars are crowded meet up on the platform  The cars were indeed crowded but after our london experience you would not believe how proficient our students have become at jamming themselves onto a subway.  So we all made it onto the train.  But not 30 seconds after we got off both Craig and I came up one student short.  I knew that student was on the train because I saw him and talked to him on the way to grand central.  But just like that he was gone!  Where did he go?  Did he fail to “mind the gap?”  Was he abducted by a band of roving gypsies?  Did a crazed herd of subway rats drag him away?  We had to move to the platform to catch our train to Stamford and unfortunately this student did not have his cell phone along.  So one stayed behind until the last possible minute to see if he returned, and the rest of us went on to catch our Stamford train.  Sadly, we had lost him.  Well, I knew that other than missing the NBC presentations he would be fine.  He could always go back to the hotel and meet us there later.

As we were standing in the snow in Stamford he finally called.  He was at a pay-phone and was safe and sound.  He had gone up the stairs following someone in a coat that looked suspiciously like Craig’s.  After following not-craig for a while he finally realized that he was following the wrong guy.  By then he didn’t know how to get back to us and we were probably gone by then anyway.  We are all hopeful that this will be the final mass transit mishap of the trip!  – A short update craig just surmised that our inbound plane is 20 minutes ahead of schedule.  So, the good news is that we have an inbound plane, it is in the air, and it is ahead of schedule.  Yea!!

5:30  Well, scratch that… Our plane is actually now going to arrive about 16 minutes late.  It took off late from Charlotte, so is behind schedule.

9:23 CST:  Finally off the plane, after landing only about a minute late we were informed by the captain that an AA 737 landed just 10 seconds ahead of us.  Unfortunately they only have one ground crew so we wait on the tarmac unable to pull into our gate.  Finally we pull into the gate but we wait another 10 minutes before someone finally moves the jet bridge into place.  I’m pretty sure that was Cat having her final revenge on me for publicly calling her out in an earlier post.

But, all is well that ends well.  Even though we waited a long time (25 minutes) to get off the plane, our luggage was waiting for us at baggage claim, so there was no additional wait there.  By 10PM Craig and I were in my car, yes my car, freedom, no reliance on public transportation, no waiting for cranky gate agents, we could just get in my car and drive the last 2:20 minutes to get home to Decorah.  We arrived just after midnight.  Sweet.  It was a great trip, but there’s no place like home.

 

 

 

 

 

So today Craig and I had an afternoon to do some site seeing.  Despite the cold cold temperatures here in new york we decided to start with some Dim Sum.  So, we headed to Chinatown.  I took out the trusty Urbanspoon app on my phone and we were soon headed to Ping’s.  Good Dim Sum at a great price.  Great shrimp and pork dumplings, Great potstickers and fried spring rolls.  The beef short ribs were OK, but not my favorite.  We finished up with some fried bacon wrapped shrimp.  A great way to close out the meal.  We were stuffed and only a few bucks poorer.

After lunch we headed up to 30 rock to do the studio tour and visit Top of Rock.  The studio tour was fun.  We saw Dr. Oz’s studio (who??) and the Jimmy Fallon set, also home to Johnny Carson’s show when he was in New York.  Finally we saw the SNL set.  Lots of great memorabilia and great memories in looking at that set.  Unfortunately there is a no picture policy on the tour so nothing to share there.

What I can share is this video clip. Partway through the tour, our guides asked for a couple of volunteers to ‘do some reading’ Craig and I both volunteered, and it turned out they were going to show us how a mini news broadcast goes together. So, Craig is the anchorman, and I am the weather guy. Its not as easy as it looks standing in front of the green screen, reading the teleprompter, and moving pointing at something nonexistent behind you.

Sadly Flickr uses flash to do these embedded videos, Here’s a link to the mov non flash file I uploaded… http://www.flickr.com/photos/bonelake/5402162164/

After the tour we went up to the Top of Rock experience.  This is a great view of the city on a nice mostly clear day.  Here’s a few photos for you to enjoy the view from up there as well.  We had hoped to close out the afternoon with a happy hour cocktail at the Rainbow Room, but it was closed.

 

I’m sitting in Starbucks off Union Square, its 6:30 here in Manhattan and I’m wide awake.  I made it until about 9:30 last night but then fell soundly asleep until 2:30AM, 8:30AM London time of course.  The relative quiet of my room at Seafarers International house was awesome.

The flight home was a Godsend as well.  I went up to the desk to ask if I could change from a center to an aisle seat.  The lady said no problem, she moved me to row 31 and said that it was likely nobody else would be beside me.  So yes, I had a whole row to myself for the flight home.  As it turned out we all could have had our own rows as the back third of the plane was pretty much empty.

Following all instructions we arrived at Heathrow three hours in advance of our flight, the Picadilly line was much more crowded that we expected it to be for 7:30 on a sunday morning.  But when we got to heathrow, there was no waiting at the continental desk to check in for our flight, and there was virtually no waiting in the security line either.  So, we had plenty of time to sit around the gate area and wait for our flight.  I think we all spent more time waiting to get through passport control at Newark than we did in the security line at Heathrow.

We just missed the 3:15 train to New York Penn Station, so we ended up having to wait there for the 4:04.  Every other hour of the day has an xx:28 train to Penn station except for 3pm.  Once we got into the city we had to get subway passes for everyone.  Unlike London, it is impossible in New York to use a credit card to by 26 unlimited passes.  So, we had to trudge to the Herald Square station and have everyone line up to use their own cards to get their subway passes for the two days here in New York.

Finally, about 4 hours after landing we made it to Seafarers.  It is midnight London time, but everyone was excited to eat some american food, and catch the end of the Packers, Bears game.  More american football was to come with the Steelers and the Jets.  Craig and I went to watch the end of the Packers game at TGI Fridays, and then headed out to Pete’s Tavern.  It was great to have an American hamburger, with blue cheese!  I loved the fish and chips at all of the london pubs, but it was really nice to be back home.  Although we are still a 3 hour flight from Minneapolis I feel like we are close enough to home to reach out and touch it.

Today we have a group  meeting at 9, then a speaker from NBC Olympics at 10.  Everyone is on their own for the day after our speaker, until we have our final group dinner tonight.  Tomorrow will be a busy day as we have a meeting in Connecticut, and then by mid afternoon the group will begin to disperse for the various flights back home.

I can’t think of a better way to end a trip to London that with a Premier League Football match.  We were very fortunate to get group tickets to the Fulham versus Stoke City match this afternoon.  Fulham plays in a venue known as Craven Cottage.  Its a smaller, more intimate stadium, but we ended up with great seats.  We were in about the 24th row behind and to the keepers left of the goal.  A high hard kick over the crossbar would land right in my lap.

Fulham won the game handily 2 nil with Clint Dempsey scoring both goals for Fulham.  We thought, briefly, about a USA USA chant for Dempsey, but decided that might not be appreciated by all of the other football fans around us, so we just cheered loudly.

Going to an English Premier League match is a fun experience. We sat in the neutral zone of the stadium so we were not right in with the Fulham or the Stokes City fans.  So our section was a bit quieter than all the others.  We were the closest to the Stokes City visitors section and it was really a riot to listen to them sing, and chant, and carry on throughout the game.  They only quieted down about midway through the second half when it became very clear that there was no way they were going to win the game.

There were a couple of Dads right behind me that had brought their two young boys to the game, so it was interesting to listen to them explain football to the boys, who already knew as much about the game as many of us.  It was a great experience and one that I will remember fondly for a long time.

The last few days are really a blur.  We have had more great meetings and class discussions, and finally some time to explore the city on our own.  Quite honestly I’m ‘museumed out’ at the moment.  I’ve been to The British Museum, The London Transportation Museum, the Tate Modern, The London Docklands, The Imperial War Museum, and the British Library.  All were interesting in their own way, but you get museum, and information overload at some point.

A couple of the highlights for me were the Transportation Museum, seeing the development of the London Underground, beginning in the 1830s and moving forward is a pretty interesting study in engineering, and city planning.   The development of tunneling technologies, and the escalator were really interesting.

Another highlight was seeing a letter from Ada Lovelace to Charles Babbage at the British Library.  The library has labelled this letter as the first computer program, as she is explaining how to program the difference engine to solve a mathematical problem that had never been solved by hand before.  Also at the Library was Handel’s original score for the Messiah!  You could see his notes as well as the names of the soloists that were performing the different parts.  They also have one of four copies of the Magna Carta on display.  This is a document written in 1215 or so, and is widely considered to be a model for our own constitution.

Last night we had our final group dinner in London, and the Imperial China restaurant.  We had our own room, with a Karaoke machine and a special menu.  Tons of food, and great fun was had singing karaoke by all.    Here you can see Paul, Joe, and Carl treating us to a country song.  We also had Rap, Glen Campbell, and even a couple of Disco numbers.  It is really strange to think that all of these students know the lyrics to every Backstreet boys song ever written.

Tomorrow is an early morning as we have to be on the Tube going to heathrow by 7:30.  We leave London at around 11:15am and arrive in New York at about 3:00pm.  We’ve all enjoyed our time in Europe, but we are also ready to be back in the states again.  I know that even after a proper football game this afternoon, a number of the students are hoping to make it

 

After the rain and dreary weather of the past many days it was delightful to get up this morning and head outside to see the sun.  The early part of the morning is free, so my plan was to go pick up our tickets to We Will Rock You, but the box office did not open until noon.  It was a productive walk anyway as I found a free WiFi connection that was 10 times faster than the Royal National and that allowed me to finish downloading the London2Go app for my iTouch.  Its a nice app that works off line and has all of the london highlights, plus tube information, and a map.  All of this works great even without WiFi so its very handy to have in your pocket when you are walking around or on the train.

At 10:30 we gathered for a trip down to Wimbledon.  First on the agenda for the day was a walking tour of the stadium.  It was fantastic.  Everything you would expect from Wimbledon.  Of course at this time of year the place is pretty quiet except for the workers who are already at work preparing the stadium for the Championship at the end of June.  Much of this enormous complex is only used for a couple of weeks during the year.  There are courts that the members are allowed to use, but not the competition courts.

Our guide told us the story of how the week after the tournament, the process begins to prepare the courts for the next year.

1. Dig up the current turf.
2. Put weed killer on the remaining bits of grass.
3. Remove the top six inches of dirt to get rid of the weed killer and any remaining grass or (gasp) weeds.
4. Replace with fresh dirt.
5. Seed with rye grass
6. The grass is then watered, mowed, and generally allowed to grow naturally until about April. Mostly naturally anyway, we saw that the had little heat lamps that moved slowly back and forth over the grass during the course of a week. You can see the lamps in the picture below.  In April the grounds keepers begin mowing the grass shorter and shorter.  By competition time the grass is down to just 6 millimeters in length.  The cutting must be done very gradually or the grass will go into shock, and you know thats not good.

 

Finally, testing begins.  A person comes in and literally counts the blades of grass per square meter to make sure the turf is the right density, and that the tennis ball will bounce to the correct height. when dropped from a test machine.

We also got to go in the press room, and sit in the chairs where the players come every day to give their interviews.  It was fun to sit in the same chair as Nadal, Federer, and MacEnroe.

We were allowed to sit in the stands on court 1 as well as Centre Court, so we got a good idea of how intimate the Wimbledon stadiums are and what it would be like to actually attend a match.  After the stadium tour we had a marketing presentation and learned a little about the way they market the stadium and the museum during the other 50 weeks of the year.  All in all it was an impressive experience.

 

The first stop on our tour of London was a walking tour around the Olympic venues.  To get there was easy.  Take the Picadilly line from Russel Square up to Kings Cross St. Pancras and transfer to the Hammersmith and City line which would take us East directly to Bromley by Bow where we would meet our guide.  Nothing could be easier right?  Except that when we got to Kings Cross, the train to Bromley by Bow was pretty full.  But we jammed ourselves on like true Londoners.  At the last second I noticed that some of our students had not jammed themselves on the train and a voice in the back of my head said ‘jump off.’  I ignored the little voice because we had given them clear instructions that if they didn’t make it on this train just jump on the next on and we would meet up on the platform at our destination.

When we arrived at Bromley by Bow, we did a quick count and realized we had a little more than half of our group.  When the next train pulled in we looked for the rest of the group, but not a single student got off the train.  Soon another train pulled in and I noticed that this was a district line train so I didn’t expect any students to get off.  Well, train after train came into the station but they were all district line trains.  That voice in the back of my head told me ‘somethings not right’  so I went up to the ticket office to inquire when the next Hammersmith and City train was expected.  ”Service is suspended.” he told me.

“Till when?”  I asked.

“indefinitely.” I was told.

Crap!  Why didn’t I listen to that voice that told me to jump off the train?  Time to regroup.  Craig and I decided that he would take the students that were here on the tour and I would wait at the station.  We knew that within the group there was the intelligence to figure out a way to get down to the district line and out here eventually.  I would meet them and call craig and we would figure out how to catch up.

So, Craig and the guide and the group took off in the rain on the tour and I hung out in the station.  Pretty soon I noticed that there were not any district line trains coming in any more.  So, back to the information desk.  Yep, District line service is also suspended due to signaling problems at Bow Road station.  Well, that does it, I had already waited around the station for 40 minutes so there was no way they were going to make it now and even if they did the tour would be finishing up.  So I hopped on the next train heading back in.  As I passed each station, I scanned the faces on the platform on the other side.  If I saw the group I could hop off and catch up with them.  But they were no where to be seen.

It took me about an hour to get back to Russell square and our hotel and when I walked in a group of the cheerfully greeted me in the lobby.  ”We tried to catch up with you but all the lines were suspended.”  They had their own odyssey of planes and busses and walking in the rain that you can read about on the class blog.  (olympicsjterm11.blogspot.com).  They had tried their best using all of their ingenuity to catch up with us, but it just was not to be.  They were all safe, and sound and much the better for having to learn how to navigate the London Tube system on their own.

Now, if you have been following this blog you may be wondering how on earth I came to be allowed to lead students abroad.  Torn ligaments, separated shoulders, leaving students behind on busses and trains.  Is there any defense for all that?  Nope, these are ingenious  Luther students, in every case they knew where they had to be and how to get there.  In my mind this is part of the experience of learning how to navigate your way around a foreign country.  We’re having a blast and we’ll make sure we get everyone home in one piece.

Today we are off to Wimbledon, and looking forward to our meetings and tour there.  But, if I do hear that voice telling me to jump off the train to stay with the group, I think I’ll listen to it today.

A few years ago, I finished a round of Golf at Oneota Country Club and came up to the patio area.  A  bunch of guys I knew were sitting around a table with some other men I did not know.  It turned out that the strangers were visiting Decorah on a Rotary International exchange program from Torino Italy.  One of the men I met that night was Stefano.  Little did I know that he would play and integral role in the course on the olympic games I’m teaching right now.

When craig proposed the course, and we talked about Torino, we  both thought of Stefano.  I contacted him via email, and he immediately responded that he would be happy to help.  Stefano organized a very nice morning for us.  He stopped at our hotel to walk with us to the Foundacion Alberto Collonetti, where some of his friends were gathered.  The friends had all been involved in the Olympics in some way as volunteers, and they told told us a bit about what they had done, and what the Olympics had meant to Torino.  Although some of the venues have very quickly decayed and are going unused, everyone agreed that the Olympics had a big economic and cultural impact on the city.  Before the olympics Torino was probably only known as the home of the shroud, and was not really a tourist destination, but since the olympics Torino has become a tourist destination for people from throughout the world.  In addition the olympics had a big impact on the character of the people, according to many that we spoke with, prior to the olympics people in Torino were not very welcoming of strangers, but since then the city has learned to be more friendly and open.  We saw this to some degree, but in general we found it was difficult to find someone that could speak english.  This was such a different experience than I have had traveling in other cities in Italy.  After the presentations were over they answered the students questions for quite a while.  We were happy to use some of our honoraria money to make a small donation to the Foundacion.

Stefano and his friend Fabrizio helped us the rest of the day by accompanying us to the Olympic Village, to lunch, and even to our second meeting of the day with Delatre.  For lunch we walked through the abandoned village and over to a rehabilitated Fiat factory.  The factory has been turned into a mall, and office building.  Across the street from the end of the mall is a place called Eataly, which is a very nice high end grocery store (more on this later) that also has a cafeteria.  We bought Stefano and Fabrizio lunch, and it was nice to have Stefano translate the menu for us. We had a very nice glass of Prosecco naturale, not the champagne version but the still version.  Craig and I each had a plate of pasta with meat sauce (veal) while the others had pasta and mussels.

A couple of bus rides later and we were at Delatre.  This is a technology company that does a lot of web work for NBC, the BBC, and CTV.  Their big thing is tying together the video stream with all the meta data about the players and the scores.  For broadcasters they basically provide everything you would need to know to do color commentary on a game.  They license some cool technology that tracks each football player on the pitch, as well as the ball and the referees.  The software can detect when one player passes to another, and provides real time statistics.  You can access this on the website, like nbcolympics.com,  or they have a special product just for broadcasters to use.  It was a very interesting presentation, especially for the 3 computer scientists in the group.

After the presentation they allowed craig to stay behind to print out our boarding passes.  I took the rest of the group down the road to the grocery store.  The original idea was to wait for craig, but we soon gave up on that and began walking back to the hotel on our own.

We knew that to get back to the hotel we just had to walk east until we found Corso Re Umberto.  At that point we would go north to our hotel.  I knew it was a long way, so once we reached Re Umberto I said I would run across the road and see if the bus went all the way up to our hotel.  Unfortunately as I was asking the bus driver this question, he just started driving away.  I tried to wave to the confused looking students on the other side of the road, who were staring at the place the bus used to be as if I had somehow vanished into thin air.  I did manage to make eye contact with one or two so they knew I was on the bus and they soon followed.  Meanwhile back at the hotel we waited and waited for craig.  Finally I decided not to wait any longer and just go ahead with our group discussion.  When craig finally returned we had our first glimpse of what flying Ryanair was going to be like.  To print out our online boarding passes he had to enter, name, birthday, passport number, expiration date, flight information for every member of our group before he could print out the passes!  Of course this took forever, especially since on the first try he entered all of the information only to be told that the session had time out.  This meant he had to enter it all over again, but in smaller batches.

After the group discussion we walked down the block to ottoe tre quarte (8 ¾) where we had a glass of wine and some Calzone.  After dinner we were both exhausted so we just went back to the hotel to get some sleep.  Lest you think I was in bed by 7, you should know that supper time in this part of italy doesn’t start until 8:00pm.

 

 

Sometimes a Swiss Army Knife can make you the most popular guy in your hotel corridor!  Some of the students have discovered that when you are in italy, and close to France, wine is much cheaper than beer.  What do you do if you are not a wine drinker?  Choose an inexpensive wine at random from a store and bring it back to the hotel.  Step 2, after realizing that wine bottles have these things called corks, and corks require a special tool to remove them from your bottle, you wander around the corridor wondering how you are going to find a cork screw.  This is where I came in.

“Do you know where we can find a corkscrew?”  I was asked.  Being a leader makes me the font of all knowledge of course, so I must know.  ”Well…” I said, “I have a corkscrew on my swiss army knife.”  ”Great!  can you open this for me?”  Why not, I thought… Somehow the idea of me opening a bottle of wine for a student wasn’t anywhere on my list of duties as a faculty member, and I’m not sure its one that the administration would want to cultivate, but here we are in Italy, I might as well be helpful.  So, I cut the foil and pop one cork.  Its as if the sound of that cork sliding out of the bottle was like some kind of whistle.  The next thing I know I’m surrounded by students holding bottles of wine.  One or two of them decided it would be a great idea to take a picture of me opening wine bottles.  I think the picture below really captures the moment.  You can see Craig laughing in the background as if to say,  ”ha ha, there goes Brad’s career.”

Thus began our first night in Torino.  It was another long train trip from Lausanne to Torino, made a bit more exciting by the fact that just after we crossed the border into Italy the train got behind schedule.  What had been a 40 minute layover in Milano Centrale turned into a 10 minute dash from one train to the next.

Once we got to Torino, we had lunch, our first at McDonalds since the trip began, because we knew we were too early to check into our hotel.  I had a McBacon and fries.  It tasted quite good.  The Hotel Artua Solferino is a nice old European hotel.  Each room is very different.  My room is up the stairs at the end of the hall, and has the smallest bathroom in Italy.  Right over my shower is a skylight that leaks cold air like crazy.  This morning as I tried to take a shower, I could not get hot water and so the combination of the cool breeze and the luke warm shower water (with approximately zero pressure) was pretty pathetic.

After orienting the students to the area, we turned them loose to see what they could find for dinner.  Craig and I waited a while and then took off for the city centro.  We walked around and investigated a lot of restaurants.  We looked for some that might be able to accommodate our entire group, and some that looked like they might be nice for us.  We ended up finding a great little neighborhood restaurante.  Not a tourist place at all, and not pretentious.  They had a three course chefs menu that looked great.  I had awesome risotto, a green salad, and delicious veal arrosto.  The meal came with 3 dl of wine which was perfecto.

With dinner done, we made our way back to the hotel.  Its amazing how tired I get each day, worrying about the 24 welfare of 24 students traveling in a foreign country where none of us really speak the language well is very tiring.  This seems to be especially true here in Torino.  Although we have heard that the city has made great strides in welcoming tourists, we find that there are not all that many people that really speak English.  Despite that , it is a good beginning to Torino.

 

Its that depressing, cloudy, cool kind of weather here in Lausanne.  Low clouds and mist that block any hope you have of seeing across the lake, much less Mont Blanc.  The result is that the city does not seem warm or friendly.  When we walked by the lake area on our way to the tourist museum it was deserted and quiet.  Of course this is their off season but it was still strange, and it makes me wish I was home where even when things are cloudy and bleak you have the warmth of loved one’s around you.

The visit to the Olympic museum was good.  They have some cool interactive exhibits where you can test your reflexes, train at altitude, and have a look at all of the new technologies that athletes and their coaches are using.  My favorite was the basketball tracker.  A camera on each corner of the court records the movements of players, a computer is then able to use that information to triangulate the exact position of each player on the court at all times.  Coaches are now using this to do a statistical analysis of how players are likely to respond to different offensive or defensive strategies.  Very cool.

When we finished our tour, the mist had lifted a bit so we could actually see the mountains peeking up over the low clouds.  I think that is Mont Blanc on the right of the picture below.  It may be a little hard to tell, but there is actually a layer of low clouds right at the top of the flag poles in the picture.

 

After the museum tour, everyone was on their own for lunch.  Craig and I checked out the Manora, which is a nice, reasonably priced buffet near St. Francis.    After lunch I walked around a bit, and bought a new converter to replace the one I left in the outlet in Interlaken.  We had a hike planned to a tower on the highest point in town for 3:00 in the afternoon.

Unfortunately it was raining a bit at 3, and the clouds had returned but we decided to give it a try anyway.  After a very long walk up hill we found this spot.

which wasn’t a tower, but there was a flag pole we could climb.  As you can see there is not much scenery behind the students as we were up into the clouds. and it was hard to see the lake much less any of the mountains from where we were.  Nonetheless Craig was determined to find the tower that we set off for, and so while the rest of us were fooling around and looking at the small plastic bag with the odd botanical stencil on it he was trying to find the tower.  And, after another half mile of walking up hill here it was:

You could not even see the top of the tower when you were standing right in front of it.  However, we had come this far and were determined to reach the peak.  So we climbed the 151 stairs to the top of the tower.  And we were barely treated to a view of each other.

 

You can see we were definitely in the clouds!

The walk back to the hostel was all downhill and definitely an easier walk.  We found a nice french bistro to stop for a happy hour drink, and enjoyed the rest.  After we got back to the Hostel and caught up with the rest of the students, Craig and I found a very nice Asian restaurant (Asian Garden) for our supper.  Back to the room and to bed.

Its a great group of students and its fun to see them come together as they get to know each other better.  They rely less on us and more on each other with each passing day of the trip, and thats a good thing.

 

The morning started out like any other morning, up at 7:00, a light breakfast, then hop on the bus to the ski slopes.  OK, maybe not like every other morning, but a pretty desirable thing to aspire to anyway.

To get to the ski slopes from Interlaken requires a bus ride, to Winderwil, followed by a train ride to Lauterbrunn, followed by a different train ride to Wengen, followed by a trip up the Mannlichen Gondola.  Unfortunately after all that trouble the quality of the snow was pretty bad.  The weather here in Interlaken the past couple of days has been unseasonably warm, so the snow is really icy in the morning, turning to slush by mid-day.  Most of the students that followed me out the door of our Hostel (Backpackers Villa Sonnenhof) were beginners.  By the end of the day they were calling themselves the Blue Crew because they were only taking the blue runs.  Note to U.S. skiiers, in the Alps blue is easy, red is intermediate, while black is for experts.  Somehow I got separated from the group right away and ended up doing the first run by myself.  It turned out that they had all skiied a ways ahead of mebut had stopped to contemplate their options in terms of which run to take.  Even after that contemplation they ended up taking a red run, which was not what they wanted to do.  It was during this first run that Aaron took a spill, and tore the ACL, and MCL ligaments in his knee.

Even though I waited at the bottom and top of the lift hoping to find the group again I was unsuccessful for several runs.  Maybe an hours worth of skiing.  Finally I did see the group coming off the blue run and the first thing I heard was “have you seen Aaron?”

No I said, why?

He fell and hurt himself on the run.  He told us to go on to the bottom but now we’re too scared to ski back down to him.

So, I took my board down the run and found him sitting all by himself by the side of a snow making machine.  Only one person had stopped to see if he needed help, and due to the language barrier apparently determined he was fine.  Meanwhile, I had talked to a couple of ski instructors and managed to locate a ski patrol on a snowmobile.  He joined us on the slope and made the assessment that Aaron was going to need to go to Wengen for some X-Rays.  As we were waiting we decided that we needed a better cover story than falling during the first run of the day.  Hence the Lindsey Vonn reference.  Our story is that she was on the slopes practicing for the world cup race next week and decided to flirt with Aaron, this distracted him momentarily and caused him to crash.  Sadly she did not stop to help or he would probably feel just fine.

After wrapping Aaron up like a Papoose on the sled behind the snowmobile the patrol took off for the Gondola, and I was supposed to ski down and take the lift back up and meet them there.  By the time I arrived the Gondola had already taken Aaron down, so I had to wait for the next one.  Down in Wengen Aaron got a ride in a taxi to the doctor’s office and was awaiting an X-ray by the time I arrived.  It only took about an hour and a half at the doctors office to get the X-Ray with the preliminary diagnosis of a torn crucial ligament.  They scheduled a followup appointment the next day so the other doctor could read the X-ray and weigh in.  They outfitted Aaron with a pair of crutches that included flip down spikes for the bottom to aid in navigating through the snow, and we were off.  Aaron with one ski boot on and his crutches, me carrying the other ski boot, his poles, helmet, skiis, and my own board, it was kind of a sad sight to see us slowly trudging through the narrow streets of Wengen back to the Bahnhoff.  Remember all the train and bus stops it took to get to Wengen?  Well we had to do the whole process in reverse loading and offloading skis, boards, etc. at each change.

Aaron and I made it back to the Hostel, where we began the process of calling our travel insurance company, Luther Study Abroad folks, and Aaron’s parents.  As I write this we are in “insurance-limbo” waiting to hear from our company whether they will cover an MRI in Laussane.  The MRI is critical because it appears that in addition to the torn ligaments there is also a small bone chip.  If the chip is too large or in the wrong place then He’ll have to go home and get ready for surgery.

 

I can’t believe that I actually slept until 8:00AM.  After waking up at 3 AM I was afraid I was done for, but I dropped back to sleep and slept hard until 8.  After a quick breakfast at the Hostel it was time for some Munich touring on our own.   A few of us were going to go to the Deutches Museum, but most of the group was headed to Dachau.  I really enjoyed the museum, I went straight to the Math, Computer Science, and Astronomy exhibit, where I discovered that they had an actual Enigma machine, in the cryptography area.

There were many other great exhibits, the aeronautical area had a cross section of an Airbus A320 and several other interesting aircraft, there was a really amazing mining exhibit as well.  The nautical area was equally amazing with replicas of ships both large and small.  You could easily spend a whole day at the museum, but my mind was pretty overloaded by 11:30.  The plan was to head back to the Viktalien Markt for a street lunch of sausage and bread, unfortunately everything was closed, it turns out that Epiphany is a national holiday in Germany, so we really had to work to find a street vendor that was open.  I had to try the Currywurst, which was a sausage in a sweet sauce with curry powder sprinkled over the top.  It was a delicious German meets Indian fusion street food kind of thing.

With lunch behind us we met up with the rest of the group to head back to the airport to meet with Sebastian, a marketing guy, from Lufthansa.  He gave us a great presentation on Lufthansa and their support of the Munich 2018 bid.  The Lufthansa folks had very generously provided us all with Munich 2018 stocking hats and scarves.  After the meeting we took a group photo with everyone wearing their new gifts.

After the Lufthansa meeting we returned to the Hostel for some group discussion and to get ready for our dinner at the Hofbrauhaus!  We were not in the main hall, but were upstairs in their groupdining area.  I had a fantastic dinner of veal ragout with Spaetzel, and a good size dark beer.

Dinner was pretty calm until a huge group of Canadiens came it.  It was a group of ninth grade hockey players and their parents.  Things really started to heat up when the parents started singing Canadian drinking songs and chugging their beers.  This brought on a resounding L-U, L-U, L-U-T-H, T-H, T-H, T-H-E-R from the Luther crowd and soon we were all friends.

Back at my room, sleep was hard to come by in this second night.  I mostly drifted in and out of sleep until my alarm went off at 6AM, we needed to be out of the hostel and headed for the train station by 6:45.  As I write this I am on the train to Mannheim and then Interlaken.

 

Well, today is our last official day of vacation. Tomorrow is a day of travel back to Dublin and then we wake up and head to the airport to see Kaia off to France and the rest of us to Chicago.

After our rain soaked day yesterday we were thrilled to wake up to see the sun and big puffy white clouds today. What a difference the sun makes! Our departure this morning was slightly delayed as we were still drying shoes and clothing from yesterday, and (I suspect) because most of the group was in Roundstone partying at the pub until late last night. The Miller family stayed and had dinner at the castle last night as we are all showing the wear of nearly four weeks on the road.

I can’t imagine what the maid must have though when she came into our room this morning. I had been sitting on the floor drying 3 pairs of shoes with the blow drier; the shoes I’ve worn every day for the last 3 weeks, Josh’s tennis shoes, and Jane’s walking shoes. The smell was indescribable.

When we did take off we headed out toward Roundstone, a beautiful little seaside village which is becoming very popular among the well to do here in Ireland. When you come into town you go right past the house of the guy who wrote the original River Dance. From Roundstone we made our way along the coast toward Ballyconeely where we had our first ‘table stop’ of the day. Padraic was busy setting out a table with fruit and granola bars and juice for us.

We only had a little further to go to get to Clifden, so we decided to do the Sky Drive loop before lunch rather than after. That turned out to be a great decision as the weather cooperated perfectly and we were treated to magnificent views of the sea. Based on the color of the sea you would think that you were in the Caribbean not Ireland! As you might guess the Sky drive was a bit of a climb but it takes you right out to a point where you can see ocean in three different directions. Here’s the Miller family at our stop on the point.


Of course by this time our guides had already schemed to set up another table stop. They had gone to the store in Clifden and bought some more Bulmers cider, this was the new berry flavor that Padraic had not had before so he was even more excited than usual for us to give it a try. We toasted a great trip and all of our new found friends.

The ride back into Clifden was mostly downhill, but by this time we really were ready for some food. We ate at E.J. Kings pub, Jane and I had the chicken curry, Kaia had ravioli, and Josh had a club sandwich. I think Padraic was a little disappointed that we had strayed from traditional irish fare but by this time our palate’s were ready for something a little more spicy. We all had to laugh at Josh during lunch because we were talking about the weather and how lucky we were that it wasn’t raining like it was yesterday. I said yes, it only rains in Ireland on days that contain a ‘y.’ Jane and Kaia laughed and the conversation moved on. Suddenly, from out of the blue, Josh says, “wait every day has a ‘y’ in it.” We still love him.

By the time we finished lunch it was almost 3:00 and it was time to head back to the Castle. The Miller family took off a little ahead of the pack, and then Josh and I separated from Jane and Kaia, we made it back in record time. It was our flattest ride yet. The interesting thing about riding through the bog is how similar it looks to the prairies of Southern Minnesota, except where the glaciers flattened all the granite in Minnesota there were no glaciers here so the granite still stands in small hills and big chunks of rock sticking up out of the landscape.

Josh and I were so fast that I missed the last table stop. A little bit of Jameson Irish Whiskey to toast our final ride. Not being a whiskey fan, that did not hurt my feelings except that Padraic insisted on pouring me a glass in the parking lot of the Castle when he caught up to us.



Tonight we have our final group meal in the main dining room here at the castle. Based on the look I had at the menu last night it will be a feast. This has really been a great way to finish up our vacation. The people in our group have been a lot of fun, and DuVine really lives up to their motto, Bike, Eat, Drink, Sleep. In the photo above we have in the front row, Dan, Craig, Kaia, Laurie, and Joanna. In the back row we have Patty (Dan’s wife) Bobby and Brian, Brad and Jane, Josh, and James (Joanna’s fiance)

Not in the picture are our two amazing guides for the week Padraic and Kirk. These guys are amazing and made for a really fun week. Its easy to forget that every time we were having fun and sitting around enjoying ourselves they were tending to every minute detail to make sure that our trip was a success.

Location:Ballynahinch Castle

We are staying in a castle! Ashford castle to be precise. It’s about an hour outside of Galway and it’s absolutely beautiful. We arrived yesterday afternoon with our DuVine Adventures guides Kirk and Padraic. Yesterday was mostly about checking to the room, getting our bikes fit, and getting to know our fellow cyclists. There are a total of 12 of us on the trip and everyone is really nice. There are no other young adults on the trip but so far everyone has been very welcoming of Josh and Kaia.

This morning we woke up to what the irish call a soft rain, we might call it a mist but I like the irish term better. It really is so soft that you forget about the precipitation until you are totally soaked by it. We had a nice breakfast here at the castle and then Josh and I went golfing at the nine hole course, and Jane went along with some of our fellow cyclists to a falconry class. It was amazing, they got to wear the leather glove, and the falcon would take off and land from their arm. Meanwhile Josh and I were sharing a set of clubs and getting soaked while playing some golf in Ireland. The course was not too hard, and on the par three I almost got a legitimate hole in one, see my previous post on St. Andrews!

At noon we took off on our first true ride of the tour. We cycled up the road a bit to stop for lunch in a small pub. The only problem was that the soft rain had not abated, and according to our head waiter at the castle, “If its still raining at 11, its probably going to keep raining all day.” It really was a soft rain and although we were all quite wet at our lunch stop we dried out rather quickly as well. Our destination for the afternoon was Joyce Country Sheepdogs. Here we Met Joe Joyce who is a sheep farmer and breeder of working dogs. If you have seen Marley and Me, you have seen Joe’s sheep and one of his dogs (not Marley – Its the scene where the sheep are blocking the road)

Joe showed us how the dogs herd the sheep and how they respond to his verbal or whistled commands. He lives in a beautiful stone house, and his sheep roam the mountains across the lake from his home. When he needs to bring the sheep in for something, which happens five times a year, he brings his dogs across the lake and he commands them using his whistle from a boat where he has a better view. These dogs are amazing, they WANT to work so hard for him they go crazy when its not their turn to herd the sheep. I should say it rained on us the last couple of miles to Joe’s house so we were all like drowned rats when we got their. Thankfully while we were there the rain let up and the sun started to break through.




The ride back was even more beautiful than the ride out, thanks in large part to the lack of rain. Its amazing how green and beautiful the Irish countryside is. The mountains go directly down to the lake shore and the lakes themselves are incredibly beautiful. Tonight we had our second amazing dinner at the castle, this dinner was much less formal than last night’s sport coat and tie affair, but my seafood chowder was to die for, the fish and chips were good, and then the desert, a white chocolate rhubarb tart was amazing.


Tomorrow we have about 40 miles to bike to our next destination and another delicious dinner, I’m already looking forward to it, and I hope we will have sun all day tomorrow.

The other night on our pub crawl, Eugene told us a story about the Irish people and how they would conquer the world. He started with the excuse that Ireland has been invaded by just about everyone else on the planet, and how Ireland has a hopeless military; but went on to describe their master plan. According to Eugene when you go into a bar in Ireland you are likely to be ignored for a while, but if you stick around eventually someone will come up and start talking to you. This is not because they are especially friendly, but because the are especially nosey. “Within 15 minutes they will have your name, your parents names, your grandparents names, and your home address.” This information is useful he says because sometime in the future, when you least expect it “this person will show up on your door with a sleeping bag in hand.” They’ll find a quite place to settle down and sometime later fifteen of them will emerge! And this is how Ireland will conquer the world. We all laughed.

Last night at Fagan’s pub we experienced part one of this scenario. We were watching the USA versus Ghana match having a nice time, enjoying a pint and some appetizers, and being cheerfully ignored by all the locals. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned around awkwardly to find a red-haired man in a gold and green striped jersey wishing the USA good luck. He wanted to know if we were on holiday here in Ireland? If we were football fans? How long we were staying? What we were doing in Galway? What was our surname? Where were we from? (city and state) As this very friendly irishman took a break of his inquisition to get another pint, Josh leaned over to me and said “Dad he’s going to show up on our door with his sleeping bag!” I just about fell on the floor laughing!

Partway through the second half the whole scenario repeated itself with two different guys. It was all great fun, especially when Donovan tied up the score on his PK and the whole pub was cheering. Sadly that all came to an end early on in the overtime period when our world cup hopes for USA were dashed. Now we are left to wonder who to cheer for and whether our enthusiasm for watching world cup will wane after this defeat. We have watched a lot of football on this trip, its been a fun constant for us in a sea of daily change. Its forced us to sit down and relax at 4:00 or 8:30 most days rather than continuing to tour and walk. Its revived my taste for a good pint of beer.

Location:Galway, Ireland

This morning we are on the train from Dublin to Galway. We woke up to a bright blue sky in Dublin, packed up our belongings, and left our little apartment for the tram to the train station. Although the apartment itself was a bit sketchy it was in a great neighborhood and we had wonderful restaurants up and down the block.

Last night we had a wonderful Thai meal at Koh. We shared three appetizers and three main course dishes. For the appetizers we had mixed satays, vietnamese beef balls, and ceviche. All were delicious. For the main course we shared green curry with chicken, cashew chicken, and panang curry with beef. I think we each had our own favorite it was all so good.

Yesterday was definitely a full day of touristing in Dublin. We started off our day on the hop-on-hop-off tour bus. Our first hop-off was at the Guinness storehouse. This is a building that Guinness has turned into a monument to all things Guinness. The building is designed so that your tour takes you around and around and on a spiral upward around the worlds largest Guinness pint glass. We learned about how Guinness is brewed, about the history of Guinness, and how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness. At the Gravity bar at the very top of the pint glass we were in an all glass circular room with great views of Dublin, there we could trade our ticket for….. A pint of Guinness! Here’s Josh and I in front of the waterfall…good pure water is key to making Guinness. Mr Guiness signed a 9000 year lease for the land on which the brewery sits in part because of it’s access to the pure water flowing in from the Dublin Mountains.

After the Guinness tour we hopped back on the bus and headed for the Gaol. By this time we were very hungry and so we decided to find a bit of lunch. There was not much to choose from in the area around the Gaol but Dolce Vita caught our attention almost right away. We had some very nice pizzas and Kaia had a steaming hot bowl of Spaghetti Carbonara.

The Kilmainham Gaol is a famous site in Dublin as it is the place where 14 of the 16 leaders of the Easter rebellion were executed. It is a very old gaol and the history goes back well before the time of the potato famine in Ireland. It was during the famine that the overcrowding at the gaol was at its worst. The gaol has been featured in several movies including Michael Connelly, and the original version of The Italian Job.






By the time we had finished our guided tour of the gaol our feet were tired so we hopped back on the bus and rode it all the way around to where we had started. Along the way we saw lots of other sites of Dublin. The hop-on-hop-off busses are all double decker busses with open tops so we sat up top and enjoyed the scenery.

We returned to our apartment for a little break and decided to head out to find a pub with internet access. We chose the Church bar, which is a bar/restaurant that has emerged from the remodeled Saint Mary’s church in Dublin. This is the first bar I’ve been in that has its own pipe organ! The pipe organ, built in the 18th century was used by G. F. Handel. In addition there are several famous people who are buried in the church/pub, and there have been some important weddings including Alfred Guinness. How appropriate to have a pint of Guinness in the place where he was married.

After happy hour and then dinner at Koh we were all ready to just kick back and watch the world cup match in our apartment while we finished up washing all of our clothes. The match between Chile and Spain was a yawner, as chile seemed to be willing to place their hopes on Switzerland playing to a draw. Its been very interesting traveling to all of the different companies during the world cup competition. We have seen lots of different kinds of coverage and commentators. Last night on Irish TV there were four very old guys who spent forever dissecting the match and making the case that Spain was really going to have to pick up their game if they had any hope of progressing during the elimination round.

Today is a pretty light day. We’ll get in to Galway just after noon, and we don’t have much planned other than some light walking around and scoping out somewhere to watch USA play tonight. Josh and I are both wearing our USA jerseys today. Good Luck team USA.

Location:On the train from Dublin to Galway

Well last night a bit of Dublin had a taste of some Jim Croce music. I’m not sure where it came from but we were enjoying the musical pub crawl that started in Tower Square. Our two guides for the night were Eugene, who played the Irish banjo, and Steve who was a guitar player. After a couple of pubs and a lot of good Irish Jigs and Reels, and some history of Irish music and instruments were were walking between pubs and I started up a conversation with Steve. Steve also plays a Taylor guitar and it is the same model I have at home. That was the kiss of death. “What is your name?” asks Eugene. Brad, I say. “Now we’ve got you” says Eugene, at this next stop you’ll have to play a little for us. Uh, I don’t think thats a very good idea I said. We talk a little more about what kind of music I like to play and where we are visiting in Ireland and where we have already been. Steve mentions that he is a fan of Prairie Home Companion and how some of the things that Keillor talks about on the show remind him of Ireland and I’m thinking I’m safe and the whole sing for us thing was simply a fun idle threat.

After we get to the next pub and the duo works through a couple more songs Eugene starts in on a long story about how its an Irish tradition to join in on a session and it doesn’t matter how good you are or if you even just sing one verse or whatever, its all in good fun. The next thing I know Steve is handing me the Taylor and a pick I’m I’m thinking what the heck am I going to play!? Roller Derby Queen is Jane’s suggestion and I think I can probably remember the chords and the words, so I start to strum a little bit to see if I can recall the right chords and pretty soon I’m singing. I make it through a couple of versus without too many mistakes and finish up to the applause of the rest of the pub crawlers. Thankfully they all had had a few pints of Guinness by now so they were not an overly discriminating audience. Anyway, it was great fun.

So now that its the next morning and I’m thinking about it, I realize that I really have quite an international performance background. I’ve played in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa. I’ve played with a group of Tahitians sitting in a plastic lawn chair in the South Seas. And now I’ve played on an Irish pub crawl in Dublin. It makes me wonder where I could go if I practiced some more!

After the pub crawl was over, we found a little Italian place that was still serving pasta at 10:30 at night and finished off our first day in Dublin. The day had started out very early, in Stockholm with a train ride to the Arlanda airport. We flew SAS from Stockholm to Dublin and then took a bus from the airport to the city center of Dublin. Here in Dublin we are staying in one of the StayDublin.com apartments. Its a bit sketchy and in need of paint and a good cleaning but the apartment has two bedrooms a living room a kitchen with one of those funky european washer/dryer units. If anyone can tell me out to operate one of those things properly please send me an email. We cannot get the dryer to work for anything.

After unloading our stuff at the apartment we started to explore the area a little. We found a restaurant called Boojum, right by our apartment that is operated by a man from Philadelphia. If you are looking for your fix of Chipotle right here in the heart of Dublin then Boojum is for you. It was a nice lunch, and I think Josh was really happy with the food. We took a tour of Trinity College and saw the Book of Kells. This is an amazingly old illuminated version of the four gospels that has been preserved by the Trinity library, its a really interesting exhibit, and we had a great guide who is a student at Trinity and works for Ark.com, Ark sells clothing and the idea is that every time you wear an article of Ark clothing you perform An Act of Random Kindness. Thats where the Ark name comes from. The library at Trinity was also extremely interesting to me for two reasons. First it is the largest single room library in Europe. Its just beautiful to see books and bookshelves stretched out for a city block. But the second reason is interesting to my twisted computer science mind because of how the books are organized in the library. The books are sorted by SIZE! In order to find a book in this library you must know the exact dimensions of the book to get you to the proper shelf!

After the tour of Trinity we just walked around and enjoyed the street performers and the shops of Dublin. Josh wanted to go to the Leprechaun museum but he was out voted 3 to 1. So we went back to the apartment to rest our feet and find an internet cafe to catch up on email and Facebook before the pub crawl. Today we are doing a hop-on-hop-off tour of the city and plan to take the tour of the Guiness Brewery and the Dublin Gaol.

Location:Dublin, Ireland

Today we heard the name Gustavus Adophus quite a lot. With apologies to my friends in St. Peter I must say he didn’t know much about ship building. In all truth it really wasn’t his fault from a technical point of view, but he did pay the bill. I am talking about the Vasa of course. It is the largest ship to be recovered and salvaged and conserved in a museum. This is definitely a must see sight if you go to Stockholm. The Vasa was built in 1628 and was the largest ship in the Swedish fleet. Unfortunately she sunk on her maiden voyage out of the harbor! The reason she sank was because there was not enough ballast in the ship to counterbalance the forces on the sails in the heavy breeze. This seems like an incredibly dumb mistake for a ship builder to make, but there you have it.

The ship lay submerged for 333 years until an amazing recovery operation in the 1960’s brought the ship to the surface. The Vasa is amazingly well preserved due to the water conditions in the Baltic. The museum is just as interesting for the story of how the ship was raised to the surface and preserved as it was to learn about the building of the ship in 1628.

The Vasa Museum was our first stop today in Stockholm. Our day started early as we had to debark from the vision of the seas by 7:40. The sailing in to Stockholm was once again beautiful and very reminiscent of Wisconsin and Northern Minnesota. We are all very lonely for our cabin at the sight of water, boats, rave trampolines and all the pine trees. The rest of the morning we wandered around stockholm enjoying the shops and the old town. We did a little shopping. I got an official USA soccer jersey to wear for the game today.



After walking around all morning we returned to our hotel to check in and rest up a bit. We are staying in the Rica Hotel on Gamla Stan in a wonderful part of stockholm. The streets around here are narrow and cobbled and there are restaurants and bars and little shops everywhere. We hunted around a little bit to decide where to have a late afternoon dinner and watch the USA versus Algeria match. We found O’Leary’s, a boston themed restaurant owned by a swede who spent time in Boston. They had the England match on upstairs and the USA match on down. The American fans were many and much louder than the brits. In a funny small world moment I recognized one of the other fans in the restaurant as the same person we had watched football with when we were in Balestrand! They were originally from Minnesota but had moved to Boston.

To catch up on our activities, yesterday we were in Tallin Estonia, and the day before was a day at sea. Tallin was a really nice city, it has the oldest medieval walled city in Europe. The city reminded us a little of Italy and of some of the walled cities we had visited in Tuscany. The city is an interesting mix of scandinavian and Russian influences.



Jane had a walking tour of the city that we got on the internet and we followed that plan around the city for several hours. After that we returned to the ship for our last night on board.

We are having a great time, but we are all very tired today. We just didn’t have a lot of energy for many touring activities. And the USA victory took a lot of energy as well. Early to bed tonight, but up again early tomorrow morning for our flight to Dublin.

Location:Stockholm, Sweden

After days and days of using our feet to get around european cities it was time for a change, and what better city to try two wheeled touring in than Copenhagen. Copenhagen has more bikes than anywhere else in the world. They make the people of Portland look like a bunch of slackers. There are literally bikes everywhere. At the train stations there are bike racks two stories high, there are bike racks everywhere and people riding their bikes everywhere.

Jane found Biking with Mike on the internet, he is a lifelong resident of Copenhagen who left his job as a director at a large company to do what he loves – bike and tell people about his city. There is no fancy signup procedure as each days tours are first come first served. If the weather is horrible there won’t be a tour.

We left the ship at 9:30 and headed straight for Mike’s bike shop. We knew the tour was not until 10:30 but we wanted to make sure we got a spot on the tour. We arrived by taxi 5 minutes later, but the shop did not even open until 10:00. So we walked around the area a little bit and decided to get a coffee at the cafe up the block from Mike’s. One minor problem was that we hadn’t taken the time to find a cash machine and get some Danish Kroners. After preparing our coffee we discovered that the credit card reader in the coffee shop was not working properly, and so we were unable to pay. In Decorah, this would not really be a problem, go find some money and pay me later. Who would have guessed that we would find the same attitude in a big city? This appears to be the Danish way. The proprietor of the coffee shop was perfectly happy to have us go on our bike tour, get some cash, and pay him later in the day.

Shortly after 10 Mike arrived. Bright green stocking hat, bright green shoes, a yellow and black livestrong vest and fashionable glasses. His bike matched his cycling outfit. Mike took us on a tour for a little over 3 hours. We saw the palace, the castle, the parliament buildings, the house where Hans Christian Anderson was born, the new opera house, a couple of parks, and a little lawless place called Christiana. We would bike for a while and then stop and mike would give us a short lecture on what were were looking at, Danish politics, Danish culture, local gossip, you name it and MIke knew about it. He is an excellent story teller. As we were riding there was no talking, the idea is to absorb the local feeling of the place as you are riding rather than chatting. It worked. It was fun, we saw a lot of the city.

Christiana was the most interesting stop on the tour. We had coffee in the moonshine cafe. It is the safest coffee house in Copenhagen. Why? The sign on the door tells the story. More than 6000 police inspections since 2004. Christiana is the counter culture area of Copenhagen, Mike discouraged us from taking any pictures in the area because you never know when you might accidentally capture a deal going down, and they don’t like that.

We learned one word of Danish that really sums up our Copenhagen experience. The word is Hygglite, it is difficult to describe exactly what it means, cozy is one possible translation while fantastic is another. Internet people might translate it as “A Good Thing.” Its a word they use in Denmark to describe when something is just right and good. Our bike tour of Copenhagen with mike was definitely Hygglite.



At the conclusion of our tour we paid mike and headed, on foot, back through the park on the way to the ship. When we emerged from the park, there was Mike on his bike. Hello he said, I wonder if you might have a few minute to talk to a reporter from the paper Politik? Its the largest Danish paper and they are doing a story about touring copenhagen on bike. It seems that the reporter for the paper was planning to go on Mike’s afternoon tour, but because of the oncoming rain Mike had cancelled the afternoon tour. So, we agreed to spend a few minutes talking to the reporter and then we got our picture taken by one of the photographers from the paper. So, if you speak Danish you can read about the Miller family and our bike fun in the city of Copenhagen!

Location:Copenhagen, Denmark