North by Northwest

Prague | Stockholm | Arctic Circle (Copenhagen)| Oslo | Athens

December 2024 – January 2025

Farewell to Athens. Farewell to Europe.

Last night was suitably low key. Coming down from Mt Lycabettus, we went to a restaurant we’d been calling past for a few days, and then stopped at a wine bar I’d been similarly eyeing off for a last negroni.

After that, everyone retreated to their own space to pack and mentally prepare to go home. As always there is the dysphasia of wishing it wasn’t over and wanting to just be home with our own beds and different clothes.

The final morning transfer was crazily easy. For the lasts couple of trips Justine has taken to pre-booking / pre-paying for known taxis. To start with I was sceptical – but no more. They have been fantastic, and this morning maybe the best of them all. The driver texted last night with a really sensible pick up spot, and arrived to the minute when and where he said.

The airport then proved to be like the Acropolis – empty. All told, it was 63 minutes from taxi pick up to having checked in, cleared passport control and got through security. As I write this, Aidan and I are upstairs in a lounge I can access, and J and L are in the main terminal feasting on waffles and orangutans and sloths and chai lattes. Gate is due to be announced in an hour and flight in two, so I suspect no one will speak a word to each other in that time!

Final excursion

I think this is a Friday, but I don’t know the date. Whatever day it is, it is the last day of this family holiday. It’s been years in the planning, albeit that a surprising amount was made up at the last minute. Everyone agrees though, that it has been a raging success, and that we should do it again sometime.

The last excursion was to climb Mount Lycabettus, the most prominent hill about 1.5km from the Acropolis. It’s nearly 300m high, but rises very steeply on all sides to a sharp peak. It’s a 20-30 minute climb from base to pinnacle, and every single one of us vetoed that, so we took the 3 minute underground funicular railway up there. The view from the train was nonexistent, but so too was the effort required, and it took almost no negotiation at all to decide to not walk down either.

Athens is an interesting city. It seems to stretch forever, yet is just a fraction the size of Melbourne or Sydney. Watching the sun set over Aigina, and the lights coming on across the glacial white city, it was hard not to feel some odd combination of history and modernity.

As a place to spend the sunset of our last evening, it was pretty hard to beat. Not that there was any need to try to beat it. For now anyway. Give us a few months…

Marble

Side note: whenever you read about ancient Athens, they always talk about marble. I didn’t really quite realise just how prevalent marble is here. It’s used for door steps:

Paving of roads:

Olympic stadiums:

Kerbing:

Some of it is polished and can be quite slippery, some of it is quite rough, like sandpaper. It has been quite a surprise to see that many of the ancient ruins are indeed made from recognisable marble when you see them up close – but also just how much of the modern infrastructure is made of marble. As much as the term “modern infrastructure “ means anything around here.

Glimpses

Last day in Athens. The Parthenon really does just show up at the end of just about every street. Uncanny.

Actually, there is another temple, in the Ancient Agora (literally the centre of town, the markets, the public spaces of an accent city) called the Temple of Hephaestus, which is like a quarter-scale model of the Parthenon, and which is almost more impressive. It has the same design, but is more complete (and less under renovation / preservation), and you can just walk around it. It is still monumental in scaled and somehow I found it actually more impactful and memorable than the big one.

1896 Olympics

One of the things not far from here is the Panathinako Stadium, built for the first modern Olympics in 1896, and also host for the intermediary 1906 Games held after the 1900 and 1904 Games we’re so uninspiring there was concern the whole idea would fizzle out. We thought we would pop in on our last afternoon, and glad we did, as it turned out to be an unexpected highlight.

Unlike most things here, it isn’t a ruin, and it isn’t covered in graffiti. The dimensions of the track are vastly different to a modern track – much longer and with tighter turns – but with a good rubber surface it is obviously still used now. With 70,000 people on the steeply terraced marble tiers, it must have been a truly awesome sight in 1896. Or any time it is used now.

To walk around this amazing marble structure this afternoon, more or less to ourselves other than an odd couple or two, and one school group, was quite remarkable. Much more entrancing than any of us expected.

And then perhaps most amazing of all, there is just a white gate, that opens into a tunnel that the athletes must have used to enter the arena, that leads to a hidden Olympic museum with information and photos about the stadium and the first Olympics from a distinctly proud Greek perspective, along with a display of all the official Olympic posters and torches from every modern Olympics. Such a great, quirky, unexpected find.

Drunky Goat

That’s right – the post is called “Drunky Goat”. It’s a wine bar very near here, which I’d had my eye on for a while. We had a few minutes to kill before going and re-meeting up with the family we did the secret food tour with the night before, so we dropped in.

It was 7.03, and they could only fit us in until they were booked out at 9pm. We said fine, and rather than wasting our precious few minutes with a menu, I just asked the wait-person to bring us three random local wines. I gather this was an unusual request, but as they only had 6-7 in the part of the menu I asked her to pick from, I feel like it shouldn’t have been tooooo stressful.

They also had some quirky branded merch, so not only did we buy three random wines, we also got two steak knives, two tote bags and a cap. Very funny and good memories, for a 20 minute stop!

Dinner was a fun affair. We went with the other family back to the picturesque restaurants on the steps near the Acropolis we’d stumbled into the first night. Almost certainly not all that authentic, but very cute and decent enough food (except for the carbonara – which was rated as 12/10 both nights). We then all wandered into the main square for ice cream and the kids watched some good street music, before we tried and failed to get into a rooftop bar. TBH the 5 seconds of view we had was probably enough to get the idea anyway, and tired and happy we stumbled off in our respective directions for home.

Hamam

Second last day in Athens, and the second last of the trip. Energy levels are starting to run low. Souvenir shopping takes on an additional urgency of being deep into time on, and you need to push yourself beyond the mentality of “you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all” and appreciate that is might be the second last day you ever spend in this historic, chaotic, paradoxical city.

In the morning we went and visited some of the secondary historic sights. In truth, if you’ve seen one of them you really have kind of seen them all. Each is magnificent and many are other-worldly when you think about them being made 2,000 years ago. Nonetheless, each time you visit one, there is at least one moment when you just think “wow”.

And with those big philosophical thoughts bouncing around our minds, we grabbed some lunch at a cute rooftop cafe, and headed out for a massage.

Justine was looking for something a bit different, and found a Hamam spa not far away. I had no idea what a Hamam spa is, so I just agreed to it. Turns out that a Hamam is a bit like an underwater massage in a sauna. That doesn’t really do justice to what is a long-standing traditional spa treatment, but comes closest to describing the experience.

After changing into the obligatory disposable undergarments, we were taken into the waiting area of the spa. This is a marble bench inside the door, where you acclimatise to the heat by being drenched in warm water, and sitting for 10-15 minutes (while around the corner the previous customer is doing their massage). We were then moved to the majestic marble treatment benches.

The massage was an hour of full body massage, exfoliation, face masks, hair washing, hair masks, etc; all while being intermittently doused with warm and cool water, before it finishes with a huge silver bowl of cold water being thrown over you. It wasn’t quite as cold as jumping in the Baltic like we did a few weeks ago, but there was a similtude! At the end they wrap you in gowns and towels and send you on your way, some combination of exhilerated and bemused.

Overall, I’d rate it as my favourite ever massage, and I’ll definitely be trying to do that again sometime. Lauren loved her Swedish massage too, and so there was only one way to celebrate:

Homemade ouzo.

What could possibly go wrong?

While you’ve been asleep (hopefully), we were wandering the back streets of Athens on a food tour. TBH the food was not amazing – diverse and we really did drink (and seemingly survive) “homemade ouzo” from a hand labelled bottle – but we did it with a really fun Australian / Cypriot family, and the tour guide unashamedly just took us to places run by his mates, so there was an air or authenticity that more than makes up for the food itself. There is NO way we would have walked these streets, or gone into these places otherwise – and so it’s been a big win.

Also, I got to take a set of photos of Athens that we just wouldn’t have had the courage to go out and get without the tour.

And just for fun: a) they were literally taking the Christmas decorations off restaurant windows as we sat in them; and b) we saw the world’s most overdone cafe Christmas lights!

Not all who wander are lost

I mean, probably quite a few of them are, but in these days of mobile GPS, it’s actually nearly as hard to get lost as it is to get killed by an animal in Australia. You can do it, but you have to make a concerted effort.

So this morning and some of the afternoon we wandered around the Plaka region, not really lost, but also unlikely to be able to find our way home without the maps app. Without meaning to be overly-serious, that’s actually a pretty good example of something we’ve talked about a lot on this trip – just how different travel is in this age of permanent connection, instant knowledge, near-universal English, and digital currency. It is undoubtedly easier – who knows how we would have handled being dropped at a hotel that had no booking for us when we first flew in here? I’m certain we would have, but it’s hard to imagine. It makes it easier, but I would say on balance it neither detracts nor improves the overall experience, it just changes the balance of what you choose to do, and the sense of ease against the sense of challenge. You always need a bit of both, and so you always try to push out to your own boundaries.

Anyway, enough of the mushy philosophical musings. This morning the kids did a ceramics workshop, making artefacts that will theoretically be fired and mailed to us in Australia. Talk about living life on the edge.

Justine and I walked back from dropping them off via streets and historical parklands, this seeing a distractingly amazing combination of streetscapes, impossible parking situations, monuments, and facades.

Shortly we embark on a 4-hour food tour. Having learned my lessons in Prague and Budapest, today I’ve starved myself and hope to be hungry enough to take full advantage of the culinary learnings on offer.

Hopefully there will be gyros!

Another “most important” day

I feel like I’ve already written three or four times this trip that today is the most important day of the trip. I was correct on all those occasions, and today was also the most important day of the trip. In this case, it was the day Aidan was most driven by – coming to Athens and going to the Acropolis.

If the little mermaid statue in Copenhagen is known for being underwhelming, personally I was not really looking forward to the Acropolis, but instead it turned out to be amazing. It lived up to Aidan’s expectations, and smashed mine out of the park. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested in the Acropolis and its revered buildings, I just really hate crowds, and so the thought of going to fight the masses and mill amongst the milieu of (other) tourists left me feeling very unenthusiastic.

Arriving at the entrance though, things took on an unexpectedly optimistic vibe:

There was no one in the queue. Not a single person. The only person who even looked like they were a queue turned out to be the lady checking tickets. Suddenly I was as enthusiastic as everyone else was. And with good cause.

I knew the place was going to be impressive. The architecture and the engineering and the history meant it couldn’t be anything else. What I (we) didn’t expect was the silence. In the middle of Athens, and perhaps the biggest historical tourist site on the planet – we had Dionysuses Theatre to ourselves. Not mostly to ourselves, entirely to ourselves. It was surreal.

Around us, the city of Athens stretched of into the distance in some directions, ended startlingly close by in others (Sydney is 12,000+ square km; Athens has more than half as many people in just 400 square km). Despite that though, there was nary a hint of breeze, and few things have ever surprised me about a place as much as just how quiet it was up there. Entering the main precinct, it is hard not to make eye contact with the Parthenon, just because, well because it’s the Parthenon.

It’s hard not to show it the respect it deserves, but not impossible.

On the upper plateau, the Parthenon is just one of several monumental structures, and while the biggest, in some ways the others are almost more emotive. Maybe they come as more of a surprise, or perhaps they are more varied and a little more approachable than the immense repeating facade of the Parthenon itself; and there is always the view of the modern city completely surrounding the complex to drag your attention in other directions.

To cap off the day, we could see that at some point late in the day, the sun was going to pop out from the clouds, and the prospect of a glorious few minutes of golden hour beckoned. Against the encroaching chill, we hung around to see what happened. Well, what happened was something magical. The Acropolis was bathed in the purest golden light for maybe 20 minutes, and there was hardly anyone there to see it aside from us.

I never ever expected that my memories of this place would be of golden light, silence, and being able to take these photos with no one in them. I know from talking to Aidan that the place lived up to what he hoped it would be, the feeling of time and history and mystery piled up on each other and sitting here in a bubble hidden in the middle of the modern world. I was the sceptic, and today all those layers took the opportunity to remind me that you just never know what you’re going to find.

A last morning on Aigina

The last morning on Aigina capped it off nicely. We were mostly packed last night, so the plan was simply breakfast, and then getting ourselves the 150m to the ferry.

We went back to a place we’d had breakfast a few times, but today they had no breakfast menu, just thousands of options for pancakes and waffles (no, we don’t understand either). Some people were pretty pleased with their choices.

Some were less sure…

Aidan was defeated by the sheer size of his waffle and ice cream and regular cream and chocolate sauce and fruit that he gave up before even starting; while Lauren lamented the minute scale of her red velvet pancakes. #FirstWorldProblems.

Anyway, after that it was all pretty easy. Aigina turned out to be a fantastic way to do the Greek Islands in the off season, and we all left thoroughly pleased for something we really had no idea what to expect of.

Days pass

It’s a thing they tend to do, even at the best / worst of times. On an island, they kind of move pastwards in oddly unspecified ways. For example, the first six hours of our stay here felt like two days; and the subsequent two days have felt like six hours. It’s odd, but in the morning it is once again time to pack up and move on.

After the whole Arctic Circle fiasco, and the sorry-the-apartment-you-booked-4-months-ago-and-paid-for-last-week-but-it-stopped-being-a-rental-5-months-ago paradox, this is actually the third place we’ve stayed on this trip that we didn’t intend to. At least this one we could re-book a month out when we found out there were no ferries to Syros at this time of the year on the days we needed. We really weren’t sure what to expect of this place, but it has actually been fantastic.

The accommodation is a bit quirky, but in mostly good ways. And its location one block back from the waterfront is super convenient, picturesque, and fun.

Our first impression walking around the little back streets and alleys was that “we are going to buy a LOT of souvenirs”. In truth we may not have bought as many as we expected (perhaps this is one of those places where the combination of the ambiance and the massed souvenirs is better than any of them individually?). That said, we have a few, and Aidan’s purchase of an artwork from a local artist working in a park was probably the highlight.

Other highlights have included going to see a local soccer match, and the Epiphany ceremony. The soccer match we saw advertised on a poster, and seemed to be two high-level amateur teams, one local and one from Athens.

It was odd to go to a local amateur game and have a significant number of police officers keeping the away supporters in a fenced off section, and the home supporters as far away from them as possible (and that the fenced off away supporters area is a permanent structure required at even a suburban venue).

In the end the game and the spectator interactions were strangely unantagonsitc, given the home team got spanked 6-0. Fun to go and see, and unexpected and edgy all at the same time.

Today then turned out to be Epiphany, a fairly major religious holiday here. The main ceremony involves a priest throwing a wooden cross into the water, and a bunch you mostly young men having a swimming race to see who can get it first. It attracted quite a crowd!

We didn’t really understand much of what was happening, but it was colourful and unexpected in ways that were very different to the soccer, and as we were assured we were welcome to go along, it was a really interesting experience.

The last two days have been beautiful and sunny, with blue skies and temps in the mid-teens. It feels positively warm to us after the last few weeks, we’ve been in shorts and this afternoon went to the beach, while the locals are in puffer jackets and doing their best to survive the depths of winter.

Other than shopping and swimming and sightseeing, we have mostly been just eating and drinking. Terrible I know, but the food here has been generally great, especially the Parmesan truffle churros with pear marmalade… but the waffles were also a hit!

For a place we knew nothing about when coming here, it’s been a massive win. Now we just have the last few days in Athens before we head home again, to what promises to be a huge year, for all sorts of reasons.

Ordering fanta

Doesn’t always go how you expect…

Island time

We arrived at Aigina by ferry approximately 4 days ago, or so it feels. It’s actually been about 6 hours, but they have all been in daylight and we are in a single layer of clothes, sans gloves and scarves. Aidan is in shorts. Somehow, we’ve gone from a Nordic winter wonderland to the Greek islands, and done that in ways that are more figurative than literal.

There are currently no complaints. Not from me anyway.

It remains to be seen what we make of a few days here, but there are grand plans to do very little. Given tomorrow is a Sunday (apparently) and Monday is a major public holiday (Epiphany, apparen’t), doing very little might be the only option anyway.

Today largely consisted of getting off the ferry:

Admiring the setting:

Walking around the streets planning to buy most of the things we saw:

Hanging out on the waterfront:

And more recently enjoying the apartment and the views. We really don’t think we will suffer too much, and let’s hope it stays that way.

Which reminds me, I’d best go get the wine out of the freezer and fov

Oslo to Athens. A classic travel day.

5.40am: alarms start going off

6.13am: first carload of David and Aidan plus bags leaves Ragnhild’s

6.16am: arrive Lysaker Station

6.21am: tickets to Oslo Lifthavn acquired

6.22am: Aidan retreats to heated shop

6.26am: Justine and Lauren arrive Lysaker station

6.35am: board RX11 train

7.07am: disembark at the airport

7.15am: commence check in self-service process

7.25am: bag rejected by bag drop machine

7.28am: bag accepted by lady at manned counter who had no idea (that she would share with us) why it was rejected by the machine

7.45am: clear security

7.50am: finally by the Gumle lollies that taste exactly like the fantails you can’t get in Australia anymore

8.50am: board flight to Amsterdam

9.10am: start taxi to runway

9.38am: eventually finish driving to Amsterdam and take off for the last part

9.47am: fly over Oslo (exactly three hours after leaving Oslo…)

11.09am: touch down in Amsterdam, on time, in pelting rain

11.30am: gate change to C13

11.58am: board flight for Athens

12.30pm: start pushing back

12.37pm: finish pushing back, a new world record for just how far back we got pushed

1.59pm: flew over the Salzburg region of the Alps

4.22pm: first sight of Greece, through the persistent continental clouds

4.33pm: final approach into Athens international airport, across the islands and water

5.00pm: start to suspect there is an issue with the accommodation for tonight, as we have not received the check in code as we should have

5.30pm: in the pre-booked taxi, phoning the accommodation

5.45pm: confirm that in fact we do not have any accommodation for tonight, as the apartment was taken off the rental market 5 months ago, but no one told us; general dismay; taxi driver providing very useful advice

5.56pm: new hotel booked, 4 mins walk from where the ferry leaves tomorrow morning.

6.30pm: check into hotel

6.45pm: book third room, so the kids don’t have to share a bed and a rather “see into” bathroom

7.00pm: eating fantastic dinner at a Greek restaurant (aren’t they all!) with a Greek salad (aren’t they all!) around the corner

8.00pm: At a rooftop bar overlooking the port

8.45pm: back at the hotel; making a mess of the complimentary snacks near the lift; checking out the mini bar; using the showers; generally unwinding from the day

Oslo. January 2.

After the forecast snow event for the last 36 hours, today was supposed to be cold and sunny, and once again they were bang on. Aside from 3 minutes of golden hour at sunset the first day in Prague, we haven’t seen direct sunlight since just as we flew out of Canberra on 17 December. Today fixed that, to the extent that Ragnhild didn’t even make us take vitamin D tablets with dinner!

We started with Justine, Aidan and I strolling down to the nearby shopping centre for coffee and a few other things. As we left about 9.30, the sun popped its head over the horizon, bathing the -10 degree snowscape in a gorgeous pinky golden light.

The main event of the day was taking the metro (note: not the train; that is something completely different!) up to Holmenkollen, the Olympic ski jump facility. It’s pretty amazing, and the photos don’t even come close to giving you a sense of how narrow and steep the whole thing is.

The view from the top takes in all of Oslo and the fjord as well as the ski jump, making it doubly spectacular, albeit that you can’t spend too long up on the top observation deck, even on a pretty calm day like today. The back section allows you to look down onto the top of the forest, which almost makes it triply worthwhile!

From there, the metro took us directly into the city for some late lunch and a wander around, including an appropriately dramatic sunset over the harbour just before 4pm, the water so still it was like a liquid mirror, only broken up by lilypads of ice.

Since getting back, it has been another one of those bittersweet times, wanting to still enjoy our last hours in Oslo, but of necessity having to turn our thoughts to the practical logistics of needing to be packed up and on a train (not the metro!) to the airport at 6.41am. We interspersed packing with a last dinner and wander around the local shops, before two last boxes were ticked.

Aidan took a bunch of bottles and cans up to the local shop to redeem the container deposit scheme credits (called ‘pants’, pronounced ‘punts’), mostly so he could get some NOK coins as souvenirs.

More substantively, Lauren put on all her snow gear and we went “sledding” on an old plastic bag Ragnhild had in the boot of her car. She slipped and fell down small hills, did many snow angels, climbed a massive mound of snow that had been plowed up, and generally had a great time. Her giggling and cackling was something to hear, and made the whole trip worthwhile just in itself really. We are all so glad it finally snowed these last few days, and in the end it has just been perfect!

As the sun sets on this Oslo leg, it is easy to see why we wanted to come back here. Can’t wait for the next time. For now though, Greece awaits tomorrow!

2025 – it’s a walk in the park

Literally.

Winter wonderland indeed…

NYE (part 3)

And so years always do, good or bad, momentous or liminal, 2024 came to its end and we marked it with a momentary enthusiasm that belies time’s infinite progress.

This particular year, we were in Oslo, with dear friends, freshly fallen snow, and an immersive 360 degree fireworks display. While the feeling of snow falling earlier today seemed completely novel to me, being on a snow-covered roof with beers and friends and music, surrounded by fireworks is not novel. It reminded me exactly of why that memory from NYE 1999-2000 is so special. It’s hard to overstate just how invigorating and exciting it is, and we hope that that is a memory that inspires the kids to travel and know people and seek out those types of experiences again and again – as indeed it inspires us to keep doing that thing too!

Snow angels

One of fun things Lauren has had on her “to do” list was to make a snow angel, one of those things you see in pop culture and never get to do in Australia. The gag has always been that with the arm she broke in year 5 never fully healing straight, that she might end up with a distorted 1-armed snow angel! As it turned out, they were hilarious for all sort of reasons, mostly to do with getting down without hurting yourself and getting up again without ruining them!

NYE (part 2)

If there was one thing that our trip had been missing, it was snow. This is, after all, the Bruce’s Cold Christmas trip, and the persistently mild weather has definitely made things easier in many ways – but it’s been missing that “winter wonderland” feel that comes with snow. With the days running out and the Arctic Circle leg kyboshed, our last chance was for Oslo to deliver. The forecast looked promising when we headed out for NYE, but we almost didn’t dare to hope. As it turned out, it could not have been more perfect!

We actually did go to the Winter Wonderland area in Oslo, a collection of stalls and rides and general merriment. We arrived as the last glow of dusk faded to royal blue skies. And it snowed. As soon as we arrived, it snowed.

The look on Lauren’s face when she realised made this entire trip worthwhile just by itself.

It then proceeded to snow steadily for most of the evening and only stopped in time for us to go outside just before midnight and watch the 360 degree informal fireworks show. In the meantime, we walked around downtown, went to a bar, had a fancy dinner, saw a spaceman – that sort of thing.

It really was perfect snow. It started so subtly that you had to look twice to be sure it was actually snow we were seeing, but then quite quickly gusted up into flurries that reminded me that they really are just another form of precipitation. I don’t think I’ve ever actually experienced falling snow before, certainly it didn’t feel at all familiar, and the delighted grin never left Lauren’s face the whole time. It fell clean and powdery, just 5-6cm, enough to deliver the perfect effect, without being in any way difficult or troublesome. It really was the perfect end to 2024, and the completion of our European Winter Bingo.

NYE (part 1)

Lovely low key start to NYE. We arrived into Oslo after dark yesterday evening, met by Ragnhild and Marie at the Lysaker station, a quick 35 min train trip from the airport. (We will be reversing that trip under more time pressure about 6.45am on Friday morning…)

Ragnhild’s house was gorgeously warm – both in temperature and ambience and welcome. We snugged in, reflecting on the meaning of the Norwegian / Danish word “hygge”, and how it perfectly reflected our mood.

Dinner, quizzes, chatting and music ensued, and then a lovely nights sleep in the various upstairs bedrooms generously made available to us.

This morning was a slow start, with first light starting to lighten the eastern sky around 8.45.

We’ve made a couple of exploratory visits to local shops to get various food and drink supplies for this evening, and for tomorrow. Now Lauren is cooking pasta, and I’m having a coffee in the brisk but enjoyable cold air on the balcony.

About 3pm we are heading to a Winter Wonderland place, followed by drinks, dinner and then hopefully coming back here and watching crazy people let off fireworks all around us. Last time I saw that was 1999/2000 in Vienna, and it remains a great memory. I hope to provide a more vibrant and colourful update later this evening!

Oh yes, we are also all hoping that this forecast is at least somewhat accurate…!

Oslo bound

The midpoint

I don’t know if today is the literal mid point of the trip, it’s probably pretty close, but not knowing is in part what this reflection is about. We’ve been away now for long enough that I’ve lost the mental connection to what has been a frantic last few months, and going home is far enough away that I’m not even starting to think about it – which means that I’m gloriously just here and now.

And for once, here and now doesn’t even come with any sense of need or obligation to seize it. We didn’t plan to come to Copenhagen, so I have zero expectations of what I should see or do here. And then we rented a crazy big apartment right in the centre of town, because there weren’t many options and we figured we may as well be well-located. We are – you go downstairs and we are smack in the old city, surrounded by shops and wine bars and cobbled streets. It’s perfect.

But also, it has this amazing warm huge third-storey living space with ambient lights and comfy couches.

For once, it’s nice to have a day in an exotic historic city, and to feel like I can just lie on the couch and soak up being on holiday, rather than running around trying to carpe diem the thing. I don’t know how long this feeling will last, but for now, I’m just enjoying the feeling of my heart beating slowly, and time drifting to its own pace.

Welcome Parade

You have to really appreciate a good Danish welcome! They only got notification two days ago that we were even coming – but they still managed to organise a welcome parade for us!

Feeling pretty chuffed. That was really nice of them.

Slothing

Slothing might be a bit harsh as a description for the day, I have done nearly 14,000 steps, but in context it feels that way. Perhaps it’s more been the lack on intention that has been more slothful than a lack of activity. As an unexpected place to be visiting, we didn’t really have any plans, and for the most part the day was really just following the path of least resistance.

To start with, that involved a late start and breakfast at a bookstore themed cafe (we originally thought it was a bookstore with a cafe when we saw it last night, but this morning it was clear that the books were not for touching!).

It was very ambient, and their comprehensively diverse brunch plate gave us a bit of everything. After a quick and effective stop at the Apotek for also diverse drug requirements, we picked up Aidan from the apartment and wandered to Nyhavn, the signature iconic canal front street that appears on every tote bag.

It was colourful and bustling, even on a dreary winter day, and while nothing is actually there other than shops selling mementos of being there and restaurants catering to the people buying mementos of being there, it was fun to see.

Once we were at Nyhavn, it was only a short walk to the worlds second most over-rated tourist attraction (depending on which website you read), the Little Mermaid statue. Personally I would definitely rate it “not as disappointing as the London Eye”, but it really is just a little thing near the harbour, and kind of dwarfed by the people looking at it.

For all that it is nothing much to look at, perhaps because I already knew it would be nothing much to look at, it kind of was worth walking down to. We also walked through the cool star-shaped island that I’ve often seen aerial photos of, and it was generally atmospheric and moody.

The afternoon consisted of not going to the Tivoli amusement park (now tomorrow’s plans), wandering fairly aimlessly around the city, and lying on the couch with wine and writing this. As I do that, I can sense Justine getting restless, so I think we are about to be off for some food! Yum. It’s expensive here, but pretty tasty. I’m not unhappy if that is about to be the plan…

First impressions

It would be easy to feel sorry for ourselves, missing out on the Arctic Circle leg of the trip. On the other hand, the weather up there appears pretty terrible – zero chance of seeing the northern lights this week, and there was even a catastrophic bus crash at Narvik today to emphasise that going up there is not a simple or risk-free proposition. The likelihood of being stranded with no accommodation or transport is actually very real, and perhaps better avoided.

Also, we are not unhappy with Copenhagen so far. The apartment is 6 bedrooms, giving us all a choice, and has a massive living space with various different places to hang out, overlooking a pedestrian mall and shops.

At this stage, it’s probably looking more like a win than a loss.

Taking stock of Stockholm

This morning has, somewhat against the odds, gone pretty well. Lauren was a bit unwell last night after the ice skating, and I’m still <100% with a cough that won’t leave me alone. Dragging ourselves downstairs to the lobby for 6.45am wasn’t anyone’s idea of fun (well, maybe Justine’s, but no one else).

However, our reconnaissance of the station more or less paid off, and when the train arrived and departed bang on time at 7.24am we were all on board, with sufficient snacks and coffees to at least get us on our way.

The first class cabin seems pretty nice, with chairs that slide forwards and back and generally are keeping some of the travelling party happy to play with.

45 minutes into our journey, we’ve been given breakfast boxes and coffee and the sky is just starting to lighten up. The train takes us to Malmö, from where we pick up a commuter style train across the channel to Denmark, and we are hoping it gets quite scenic through the daylight parts. Time will tell, and so too likely will the next update after this one!

(Or before this one, if you are reading the blog in strict page order!)

So what to make of Stockholm? We universally loved Prague, and gave it scores of 9+ out of 10 in terms of both overall impressions and for our holiday experience. We all brought some expectations of Prague with us, but on the other hand no one really had any preconceptions of what Stockholm was going to be.

Where we stayed was also very different. Most places we visit we try to stay in or close to the centre of interest – in Europe, this is usually the Old Town area. Here though, we were decidedly suburban, choosing a place to be conveniently nearby the friends we are visiting. This gave it a very different feel.

Our first impressions suggested there wasn’t a lot immediately around us, but then as the days went by and we explored the streets we found there was actually a lot, as well as easy access to the subway system at Midsommarkransen, which we became very familiar with in our few days here.

The city is oddly laid out, being spread across islands in a way that is quite defining in places. The Old Town area is quite small, but you get an unusual view of the facade, as it fronts onto water, and so you can see it in a way you never get a glimpse of in many cities.

Taking the trams around, the city felt an interesting blend of older and generally stately, classic buildings intermixed with complementary modernity, in a way that I thought worked very well. It’s not dramatic or magnificent, but it is elegant and classy, and a pleasure to spend time in.

Overall, we rated the city about an 8 from what we could see of it in our few days, and the trip / visit a 9+ – completely reinforcing our view that visiting cities where you know people gives a completely different, more immersive and ‘real’ sense of a place. Getting to visit Hedvigsdal on the island was one of those peak memorable experiences that you just couldn’t have without knowing someone, but also just using the subway, shopping at the coop, and having Christmas in an apartment with lighthearted local traditions and playing boardgames, all those things make it a part of the trip that we can’t have when just visiting a random city for a few days.

So now we are off to do that touristy thing in Copenhagen. Hopefully it can be a good substitute for the far north experience we’d planned.

South by southwest

Well, just about 10 minutes ago our train was due to pull out of Stockholm Central Station, bound through the darkness for the far north of Sweden, for a chance to maybe glimpse the northern lights.

Instead, it got cancelled due to bad weather (something Aidan cannot comprehend, surely in the Arctic Circle they should be allowing for just about any weather??), and so instead we are tucked up in bed at a hotel not far from Central Station, getting some ZZZs before a early train to Copenhagen in the morning. Not exactly how we planned to spend the day when we got up and packed, but after several hours cancelling existing travel and accommodation bookings and making new ones, we have a pretty decent revised itinerary – albeit one that won’t break any records for northernmost latitudes.

We then spent a few hours ticking off some last Stockholm boxes:

A museum or two – the kids did the Viking Museum, and we all did the Vasa Museum (a Royal flagship that sank on its maiden voyage in the 1600s because it was too top heavy to float). They have the whole ship in the museum, and it is seriously impressive. That thing was big, but knowing its fate, it’s hard not to see the problem looking at how much was out of the water (the main mast was more than 50m tall) for a 4.8m draft… Was well worth seeing.

Ice skating. This was Lauren’s number one “to doing in stockholm” thing, and the very last we managed to fit in. It was just a quick few laps on the public rink in one of the main squares, but very picturesque and also well worth the effort!

So tomorrow is an unexpected change of direction, but everyone is keen for Copenhagen, and we have booked a 6-bedroom apartment, so everyone should be able to find one they like, we hope!!

A cold Christmas

So, arguably today was the whole purpose of this trip. After getting back to Stockholm yesterday afternoon, we took it all pretty easy. Lauren was feeling a bit under the weather, so we had a pizza delivered for her and the rest of us had a casual dinner and games night across the park with the Pearce / Laanela household, and made plans for Christmas.

This morning allowed a slowish start, getting back to their house around 10ish for breakfast and presents. It’s cool here, but not actually cold, and if anything we’ve been a bit over-dressed much of the time. The walk across was grey and cool, but not unpleasant. Breakfast was a lovely affair of porridge and waffles and coffee, after which the party moved to the living room.

They have a lovely tradition of creating poetry to introduce many of the gifts, and this is something that we fully intend to adopt and adapt ourselves in future. It added a delightful element of humour and poignancy that added greatly to the shared experience.

The second part of the day was a Yule Board – a full on buffet feast. We took the train and boat into central Stockholm, and then a slow walk took us to Villa Godthem, where we proceeded to eat dozens of tasty meats, fishes, dishes and desserts.

Afterwards, we all agreed walking the long ways back along the waterfront was a good option, and as usual, the walk was punctuated with the stunning sights of these historic city centres. To Australian eyes, no matter their functional practicality, they are just eye-catchingly beautiful to look at.

Once we got back, the night again turned to boardgames, and I fully expect we will be buying Ticket to ride as soon as we get home…

So we come to the end of Christmas Day, and nearly to the end of this second stop on the trip. Tomorrow we check out of here, and late in the evening we board a train that will take us on an 18 hour journey deep into the Arctic Circle. Abisko awaits – hopefully with some snow, and not without the chance of perhaps seeing the Aurora. As we enter the arctic circle it will be the furthest north we’ve ever been – surpassing the northern tip of Iceland in 2016, and we will be beyond the point where the sun ever rises. No matter what happens when we get there, it promises to be memorable!

Hedvigsdal

It’s now 36 hours since I wrote about the diversity of our full normal day in Stockholm. We did so many different things that day. The last day and a bit has really been just one thing, but so far from “normal” that it will require just a much description and even more photos…

As I write this, we are sitting up the top of a big blue double decker bus, heading back to Stockholm from Waxholm, a gorgeous town from where the ferries run over to the island where Therese and Anthony own a massive old house called Hedvigsdal. Just telling the story of its current ownership involves multiple wars and family machinations, and the building itself is in this fluid state of it trying to quietly fall apart while the people steadily try to save and gently renovate it.

The end result is a place with this sense of timelessness, that Anthony said someone once described as sliten elegans, translating as something like “well won elegance”, a sense that is completely embodied in the stunning main pavilion-like dining room, with 180 degree panoramic windows looking over the Baltic and the private sauna on the shore.

It’s hard to do justice to the intense timeless presence of that room. It may well be the best room I’ve ever legitimately just been in (as opposed to looking at in a museum), and sitting in there last night (well, I think it was about 5pm actually!) doing some writing kind of gave me goosebumps.

Aside from the fantastic pre-Christmas lunch of various forms of herring followed by a venison stew, the other really memorable part was the sauna, complete with requisite plunge into the near freezing Baltic. Crazy as it sounds, the combination of intense heat and intense cold does actually balance out in a reasonably pleasant way, pleasant enough to do a second plunge by choice.

We spent the night in a variety of bedrooms scattered through the house and pre-warmed – with Aidan in a small separate cabin overlooking the main house, only slightly nervous about the supposed badger out there with him.

The other memorable part of the visit is that there is no running water, which involves the use of buckets in the kitchen and outdoor drop toilets, which are an interesting experience in the middle of the night, to say the least…

So yes, all in all it has been a big and memorable day. Now it’s Christmas Eve, and we are about to jump off the bus back in town, and think about what to do with our afternoon and evening.

Below – a few more views of the island

Packing things in

Despite the fact we are in Stockholm for five nights, in fact today was the only full “normal” day we had for checking out the city, and so we managed to pack quite a lot into it! First up, Lauren had a heap of fun playing in the snow from the previous day:

Once she had worked off her enthusiasm, we made our way across the park to Therese and Anthony’s apartment, for a traditional breakfast. They had made an assortment of very tasty foods for us to try, including a fantastic rice-based porridge that we all had to have seconds of. Very good start to the day, and as it turned out, we needed the sustenance… From there, we left the apartment complex and headed for the subway.

This took us into the city, where we walked over the structure / bridge that separates the Baltic Sea from the lake Stockholm was built around, and into the old town. This was reminiscent of Prague in some ways, but also different in various subtle ways. Our wandering took in some Christmas markets and a stop for ‘fika’ (formalised morning / afternoon tea) – both in the square in front of the Alfred Nobel museum.

As we passed the palace, Aidan noticed there was an opportunity to view a display of the Crown Jewels and other historic regalia, so we went down into the dungeon to do that.

Our ticket also gave us access to other parts of the palace, but when we tried to get to the entry we had to wait for the changing of the guard ceremony…

Once we got inside, it was predictably grandiose.

After getting out of there, we hopped a #7 tram to Skansen, a zoo / museum / cultural park, where we saw Lynx, a Moose and various other critters, as well as a first rate Christmas market, where a number of purchases were made…

Then, it was back on the #7 to zip back into the city…

Where we found a gorgeous French themed wine bar…

And did some shopping at a fancy department store, complete with amazing Christmas windows…

So yeah. I reckon we made the most of this one full “normal” day. Catching the subway back to Midsommerkansen, we popped up the road for great burgers, and then came back and crashed. Tomorrow promises to be another big day, but decidedly less “normal”. Details to follow…

Prague to Stockholm, for pizza

Today was one of those liminal days, mostly a means to an end. We started the day perky and early in Prague for breakfast, had something that passed for lunch to / at / leaving Amsterdam, and then dinner in Stockholm.

By far the highlight was the dinner. The hotel here was picked to be as close as possible to Therese and Anthony, so it’s more suburban than historic – but the pizza place on the corner smelled instantly like pizza places used to do, and the waitress who served us – who works there for fun, around her full time job – was one of those people who make a routine experience into a memorable one. They are special those people, who can bring splashes of colour into the ordinary.

After that, we strolled up to the Coop (co-op I presume?) to get milk (aiming not to get buttermilk this time), a few beers, yoghurt. That sort of stuff. Standing at the fridge trying to translate the milk, instead we sent a picture of it to Anthony, as they were just getting home. Just to be sure, we met them in store to get a live sense check. Perfect! Tomorrow we will go to theirs for breakfast, and from there commence part two of this winter holiday. Looking forward to finding out what that is going to be.

Czeching Out

(If anyone thought I was missing that opportunity, they were kidding themselves!)

It’s Saturday morning, and we got ourselves up and going early today, which was useful. We had a van booked for 9.15am to take us to the airport, but before that we hoped to get ourselves sorted in time to get breakfast, which we managed. Everyone is roughly on the right timezone, but waking a little early, which was ideal today.

A short walk out onto the main road led us to the Hotel Metropol for a swift and functional breakfast, before the taxi dropped us to the airport for a less swift and functional airport experience; and now we have a 20 min wait on the tarmac for the plane to get a pushback slot – so perfect for a Czech-out update.

It’s not a complicated update. Everyone loved Prague. Justine and I felt like it was the best of these European cities we’ve visited; and for the kids, as they are now young adults and seeing the city through those eyes, it was a fantastic first place to do that.

Old Prague is interesting, clean, beautiful, safe, intriguing, quite large, and authentic. Everywhere we went there was a sense of calm and welcomeness. There was the usual tourist-oriented areas and a bit of a price premium – but nothing like what we’ve seen in places like Lisbon and Rome and the like. As Aidan and I noted when we were having a beer in a little piazza only a block from the Old Square Christmas Markets, it felt more like we were having a Thursday evening beer with the locals, not being minced in a tourist trap. It was really nice.

There are all the little quirks you find. Like super-viscous and rich hot chocolates, and deliberately foamy beer pours.

But that is all part of the reason for travelling, understanding that what is “normal” is only normal for a particular time and place, and nothing especially privileged. Being reminded of that from time to time is no bad thing.

So, we are just about to push back, so time to go. Next time I’m back here, hopefully we are in Stockholm, where apparently it snowed overnight. Fun!

It’s culture, init?

Well, actually, given it is a classical concert in the basilica of Prague Castle, arguably it actually is culture.

Aside from that, the day has been largely spent wandering the streets, sampling the street food, and picking up souvenirs of various kinds. Not terrible, not terrible at all. Back in the apartment now, everyone quietly doing their own thing, as we get ready to pack up and head on to Stockholm in the morning.

There was a nice little moment towards the end of the concert this evening when they played a strings-driven version of Silent Night, reminiscent of our last cold Christmas back in 2008, when in St Gilgen (Austria) we went to a Christmas Eve concert in their local cemetery, which turned out to be a wheezy brass version of Silent Night played from the church bell tower. Tonight didn’t quite find the same soulful melancholy of that rendition, but it was nice to be reminded of that.

Walking home down the stairs and across the bridge to the markets, there were plenty of reminders of the ambience that old Prague has exuded since we arrived.

And just time for one last drink, to finish off our night.

Nailing the accom

One thing we have learned and re-learned and been reminded of time and time again the value of the accommodation being on point. That intangible combination of form and function, location and ambience, all those things. We’ve had many wins over the years, and the odd miss.

Well, this one might be the new benchmark for a win, right up there with the apartment in Paris in 2019. This place seemed almost too good to be true when we booked it, but it really is as good as it looked. It’s charmingly authentic and original, fully functional, and the location is unbelievable, just a few mins walk to the Charles Bridge, but surrounded in every direction by roads and cafes and shops that we will leave mostly wistfully unexplored. You can’t ask much more than that.

A big day

Big big day here! Mostly eating and drinking. The day was basically breakfast-food tour-Christmas markets. Not sure if the walking cancelled out the food. Let’s hope so…

One last day here tomorrow, but Prague has been fantastic, and I can already tell that when we leave on Saturday it will feel too soon. I guess that is no bad thing, or way to feel.

Prague

Well, it’s been a long day. In a descriptive sense, we boarded the plane in Melbourne around 11pm, flew to Doha, had tea at Harrods, flew to Prague, got driven from the airport by a taxi driver with one eye and fewer teeth (but she did a great job, five stars, would recommend), walked around the old city (multiple times – tired procrastination not helping), and then had dinner on a boat overlooking the castle.

In a more literal way, it’s been going for something like 31 hours so far, and is not done with quite yet. Nothing like heading mostly west to drag out a day, though seeing as how this particular day is Justine’s birthday, there have been less complaints than otherwise might be the case.

So, the upshot is, we are in Prague, and pretty happy about it.

It’s cool, but more like Canberra in the winter, so probably a good acclimatisation checkpoint I guess, before we dive deeper into the northern climes.

The city has made a good first impression on all of us. We’ve seen a few European cities in our time, but personally I don’t think I’ve found one quite as engaging on first impressions. Hoping that doesn’t change with more time here tomorrow.

Too tired to do more with photos tonight. Tomorrow we do a food tour, and then Christmas Markets at dusk, so there should be no shortage of new material by then!

Through security

Left home, 38 degrees. Hopefully next time we experience outdoor air, it will be a LOT colder…

Anyway, for now we are through security, and living it up at the bar. So far, Justine has bought all the drinks on the entire trip. Let’s see how long that will last…

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T-minus 2 days

As they say, “things” are starting to get real…

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Less sudden

…but only by a few minutes… sigh.

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Suddenly

And so here we are, once again on the cusp of a major trip, trapped in that no-man’s-land between normal life, and heading to the airport…