Author Archives: Bob

Florence’s way or the highway

Here we are at the top of the tower, above the fray.

There are lots of kinds of buildings in Florence. Some are orange, and some have stripes. One has a great big half-egg dome on top. Another is a great big block with a tower sticking out of the top that we were able to climb on today.

All of them would be walking around Florence if they had legs. Instead, they’re relatively safe in the Galleria dell’ Academia.

There are lots of kinds of people in Florence. Sure, a lot of them are young college students who look astonishingly similar to Nadia and Lanie, but there are other kinds of people here, too. Tonight at dinner, I heard our watier speak Italian, English and Spanish. He was a good waiter. He had a lot of different people to take care of.

As far as I can tell, there are three kinds of streets in Florence. One kind is big and wide and has lots of lanes for cars to zoom around on. We saw some of these when Nadia took us for a walk along the river to a park on the other side of town from where our apartment is. We needed a nice park to eat our cinnamon roll brunch desserts in. Ironically, to get to a shady park we had to cross several lanes of traffic.

Not likely to block traffic here

Another kind of road we saw today when we were one our way to meet up with Nadia after her cooking class. The class is in this glass-walled classroom right in the middle of the Florence Central Market, which is a fresh food market on the first floor and a food court on the second floor, where Nadia’s class is. We even got to meet her professor. (We were forbidden to take pictures of either class or professor.)

in order to get there though we had to walk on a road choked with vending stalls, most of them selling leather goods. I checked behind the booths and there was usually a leather store right behind the booth. There were many, many booths on both sides of the street. Occasionally, the leather was interrupted by jewelry or soccer jerseys. It was very much a bazaar-like experience, and as Lanie looked at jewelry,

The Gallileo Museum showed his many inventions for detecting approaching traffic.

I could hear other people haggling with, or simply trying to avoid the advances of the leather sellers. I am pretty sure this kind of street is just for walkers. I don’t remember seeing any cars on these roads — and they seem to completely surround the Central Market — but really had my hands full trying to avoid the gaze of the leather salesmen, so if a car came by I probably would have been hit by it.

The third kind of road represents about 90 percent of the streets in Florence, as far as I can tell, and is combination of the other two. That is to say, they seem like they are pedestrian streets, but then all of a sudden a car comes roaming down the middle. It’s not exactly like in Cinque Terre, where it was almost always people except when a special taxi, a garbage truck, or an ambulance went by. Here, it can be any kind of vehicle, even a bus. And it can be on any kind of street, even ones that don’t seem like they can possibly fit a bus.

This is a Florentine car-accessible road. Note the skimpy sidewalks.

Many of these streets are narrow to begin with, and then they have half-hearted sidewalks on eather side that are maybe the width of someone’s body if they kept their arms straight down at their sides. In such a situation, it’s nearly impossible to walk on the sidewalk because there is almost always someone coming your way.

There are lots of people walking around Florence. And yet, they don’t seem to want to commit to having any pedestrian streets. For two days now, I have been lulled into a false sense of safety by crowded, cobblestone streets, only to have a Land Rover sneak up behind me. In fact, now I can’t be comfortable walking anywhere here. I barely looked up at David in the Galleria dell’ Accademia, because I was looking over my shoulder for a delivery truck to come driving down the main hall.

Michealangelo made his David extra tall, so he could spot oncoming Florentine motorists.

White van, having ignored concrete traffic discourager

It may sound like I’m going a little overboard, but it really has gotten into my head. Today, I thought I had finally found an example of a true pedestrian street. There were large round concrete creations in the road that held plants and also offered a people a surface to sit on. I thought it might be a test trail for a car-free zone. Then a van slalomed in between the structures on its way to a quite congested piazza. If it’s a test, they’re going to need some more time for the idea to stick.

Now, Florence does not owe me anything. It’s a great place — if a little nerve wracking — to walk around in. There are many, many interesting things to look at. There are many happy people here. If they want their streets to be mixed-use, then they are entitled to it.

Ancient traffic maps in the Palazzio Veccio Museum

If you can see this, you’re probably blocking traffic.

And I am by no means worried for my life while I’m walking around here. The cars can’t go very fast with people milling all around, but I do feel bad then I turn around to find a carbinieri car coming down the street. Nobody wants to stand in the way of justice. Also, I feel bad for the drivers, having to dodge a bunch of slow moving tourists all the time.

One last note about driving in Florence: Avoid the bridges in the late afternoon. Jen discovered that a large portion of the pedestrian population heads to one of the four bridges to get a good view as the sun goes down. So even the type 1 roads turn into type 3 roads without much warning.

Good luck, Florence drivers.

Things to know about Cinque Terre

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Here are a few things to know about Cinque Terre, and perhaps about Italy as a whole, if you are thinking about going there.

Off-peak does not mean empty trails, at least in the early parts of the hike

1. Monday is a better time to do most things than Sunday. Yesterday when we buckled and bought the CinqueTerre cards so that we could walk on the Via di Amore, it cost a small fortune. The man in the booth apologized to us, saying it was “Peak Season.” I made a joke, saying I was doing it for love (because Via di Amore means “Lovers’ Lane” or something close to that). I even managed to say my joke in Italian, and the man in the booth was mightily impressed. Today, we found out it isn’t peak season anymore.

Mondays are apparently off-peak, and the admission to walk the paths was half of what it was

An early glimpse of Vernazza

yesterday. Friends, take it easy on Sunday in Cinque Terre. Go to the beach or walk on one of the free trails. Then go crazy on Monday.

2. I’m not going to say that this place is a haven for smokers, but it is smoker friendly. Maybe half of the people milling about, or maybe a third, seem to be smoking either an e-cigarette or an analog one. Not in restaurants, mind you. But in the streets. Today while I was waiting outside the apartment on a nice bench they put there, a couple came by and they looked like they were in search of something. I told them I had only been here a day, but I

Getting closer to town

might be able to help them. They were looking for a trash reciptical. I had to admit that the closest one I could think of was a few hundred meters away, near the beach. But there were several cigarette receptacles within sight of where I was. Jen even saw honest-to-goodness ash trays (remember those things?) in several souvenir stands. It is possible that you can smoke in hotel rooms here, too. Our apartment definitely had the scent of smokers. It was like being back in the 80s.

3. It’s not actually super expensive here. This is especially true on Mondays (see #1 above). Our walk from Monterosso to Vernazza was absolutely worth the 7 euro per person we paid. It was my third favorite hiking experience ever (after the Bright Angel Trail at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim and the Franconia Notch loop). It was a strenuous two miles of absolute pleasure. Honestly, it was worth the whole extravagance of getting here. After a few hundred meters of climbing stairs with dozens of other tourists, things spread out and we were able to climb stairs pretty much in our group of four.

Eventually we started getting glimpses of the pink buildings or Vernazza. We began imagining ourselves under one of the multicolored umbrellas in the harbor-side piazza. Soon enough we were there, eating lunch under one of those umbrellas. From time to time we would look up into the hills above us and see the people we had passed on our way over, still making their way along the path. It’s not totally that we’re fine specims of health — I mean, we’re not bad, but there were a lot of people much older than us on the trail, and it was not an easy trail. Lots of stairs to climb along the way, and lots of twists and turns in the trail. It was not as tricky as yesterday’s hike, where there were not dedicated steps and a lot of the rocks were covered in moss, making them slippery. But it was not a total walk in the park, either.

There’s our village of Monterosso in the background.

In terms of expense, we ate lunch in a seaside resort, on the main piazza of what most people think is the most scenic of all the town in the Cinque Terre, and we paid about 85 euro for the four of us. I think we would have paid a lot more in the US, and the food was better than it had to be, given the prime real estate. We have found some nice value here. A liter of sangria at a cafe right above the main Monterosso beach — 20 euro. And they gave us snacks. We ordered another round because we still had an hour before our train left. That’s right, we were in a cafe five minutes from the train station, staring our at the Mediterranian Sea, and they didn’t really gouge us for booze. That price includes the tip. Did I mention that?

4. When you see the pictures of the sesaside villages here, you might notice that the buildings

Cheap sangria on the promenade

are pretty close together, and as a consequence they tend to stretch upward for lack of being able to expand sideways. This creates some interesting elements of interior design.

Our apartment is a prime example of maximizing vertical space — from the ship’s staircase you had to climb to get up to the main floor (our friend Eliza the mountain climber would have had a good time with that), to the loft where Nadia slept, it was not for the weak-kneed, but it was a very interesting space to inhabit for a few nights. Perhaps the most treacherous part was getting to the bathroom, which required walking across the ship’s ladder at a space where the stairway’s risers did not match the floor level. It was a potential cliff dive for someone waking up in the middle of the night needing to use the facilities. The proprietors have installed a gate to block off this section to prevent sleepwalking injuries, and fortunately we did not have any injuries.

Need the bathroom? Just step over my head.

5. There are benefits to renting an apartment. While our Air b’nb hostess apologized for not being able to help us with the lost luggage situation -(she had never dealt with a situation requiring a courrier to drive to the apartment, which is unaccessible to car traffic, arriving potentially at a moment’s notice — luckily, we figured it out), she was very gracious in letting us leave our luggage in her entryway after we checked out of the apartment and started our trek to Vernazza. Later in the day, that entry way served as a changing room for Lanie and Jen as they got their bathing suits on. That’s right! They went swimming in the Mediterranian Sea. It was right between our lunch on the piazza and our seaside sangrias.

The loft over the kitchen

6. It is not difficult to get around. We hopped on a train in Monterosso (You do have to be careful that you don’t get on the wrong train. A lot of people who just wanted to go to the next town tried to get onto our train, which was going all the way to another part of Italy) and that bought us to Pisa. There we changed trains, and fairly quickly (about three hours after we left Monterossa) we were in Florence. Nadia walked us confidently out of the train station and to our new apartment, and then we found a great (and inexpensive) restaurant a block away from our front door.

7. We have not really needed cash for anything here, except the “Tourist Tax,” which our hostess requested we leave in a basket on the kitchen table when we left. It was meant to be three euro per person per day we were in the CInque Terre — that’s 24 euro, if you are as good at math as we are. This out of pocket expense was reduced to 23 euro when I found a euro coin on the path up to the convent on the first evening we were in town. Of course, because we had extra euros on hand, I wanted to give some of it away to the man who drove our suitcase all the way from Milan out to Monterosso over what must be a very twisty and dark road through the hills. I gave him a 10 euro note as a tip, and he seemed very confused by it. He said, “You are very…” but he couldn’t think of the word to explain a person who would randomly give him money, at least not a complimentary one and not in English. Tiips are not standard here (see number 3 on this list); though most establishments have had tip jars near the register — they are hopeful, but usually empty. I finished the sentence for him, “We are very happy to have our luggage,” I said. He took the money and hopefully bought himself a drink with it, though not until after he made it back over the hills.

Traveling for a day or so

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There was a lot of traveling necessary for our trip to Florence to see Nadia. I guess, when you get down to it, it’s all traveling when we’re on these trips, but we’ve pretty much spent the last day and a half in constant motion. Also, we’re not actually going to be in Florence for a couple of days. So the traveling will continue.

It all started early Friday afternoon when I skipped out of school during lunch time, leaving the first graders with a substitute for the last 45 minutes of the day. We were facing Boston traffic on the first major leg of our trip, and we wanted to make sure we got an early start. Who knows what might be waiting on Route 1A in Roxbury?

Actually, we know because it was yesterday and it already happened. The answer is not much was waiting for us. We got to our parking lot and then the shuttle without any fuss. Security check was smooth. We arrived at our gate in plenty of time. We didn’t even have to find food in the the terminal because SAS airlines was giving us dinner and also a little breakfast on our way to our Copenhagen, where an hour-long layover waited for us.

Still, we had plenty to do with our time. Task 1 was to check out one of the travel lounges that our new credit card promises us access to. It costs us extra money in the form of an annual fee, but there is supposed be free food and drinks, and we’re travelling sorts of people, so we thought it would be worth it. This travel lounge was sponsored by Air France (I will not mention the name of the credit card company unless they offer to sponsor us or at least give us the travel lounges for free). It was very close to our gate. We took a special elevator to get there. There was a sign out front that said it was being rennovated and would be closed until this summer. We were disappointed, but not despondent. There was another lounge in Copenhagen that would surely have coffee and stuff for us during our hour-long layover tomorrow morning.

Instead of gorging ourselves on food we paid an unnamed credit card company to give us access to, we returned to our gate and played the game that we like to play that goes like this: We tell them we are carrying on our luggage; then, when they inevitably offer to gate check bags for free, we take them up on it. It costs a lot of money to check bags otherwise. We travel a lot and are very savvy.

Pleased with ourselves, we got onto our plane and started watching some movies while they fixed somthing that was preventing takeoff. It’s easy to distract us by putting screens in front of us, and we didn’t really catch what was going on. All three of us remember hearing it said that someone was fixing something and we would be leaving late, but we would not be arriving very late because of tail winds.

At some point during our movies, the plane took off. A lttle later we were fed — good stuff on SAS. We slept a little, watched stuff, read some things. They eventually brought us nice breakfast sandwiches and coffees. We got to Copenhagen to finish the second major leg of our travel day and a half, and wouldn’t you know it, the tail winds must not have been that great after all. We were 45 mintues later than we were supposed to be. We no longer had an hour-plus layover. We no longer planned to visit a travel lounge. We were worried we were going to miss our flight to Milan.

So began the shortest, but most exciting, leg of our travel day. We were in the E terminal and we had to get all the way to the A terminal. In between was passport control. We had about 20 mintues.

Don’t worry, everyone, we made our flight. Here’s what we had to do to make it: We had to wait patiently while every other row of the plane took their time getting their bags down and stretching and all else. When we finally got off the plane, we ran ran ran. This was made easier because we didn’t have our big bags. We gate checked them because we are clever.

All the running came to a stop when we crashed into the considerable passport control line. It did not look good, friends. Even after Jen informed a woman in an SAS uniform that we had an pressing need to get over to Gate A21, and even after the lady moved us 3/4 of the way up the line (as soon as she did that, EVERYONE started telling her about THEIR pressing connection concerns, and she stopped moving people up — she told us moving up in line wouldn’t make a difference, anyway, and she said they would not be holding flights for people arriving late), it still did not look good. The Copenhagen airport appeared to be expecting 40 people to need their passports checked, and there were 400 people who needed their passports checked. There were only two booths open! Eventually, they opened two more booths and we got through passport control.

Then we ran ran ran some more. It was about a mile of running, weaving in and out of people. I was clearly the weakest link, lagging behind Jen and Lanie. Then I saw the sign for Terminal A and I dodged around some people, cutting a corner close, and suddenly I was in front, leading the way. I was running and dodging and out of breath when everything fell out of my unzipped backpack. We were right about at Gate A14. Ugh.

Jen and a lady I had just dodged help me get my thing back in. We scurried the last seven gates fearing the worst.

And then, like I told you, we scanned our boarding passes and got on the plane, panting and coughing from our sprint.

After that we sat around on the plane for a while (panting and coughing) and the pilot came on to say we were waiting for people whose connecting flights were a little late.

At least we didn’t have to run across the airport with our big bags. Very wise of us to do the gate check.

Nadia gave us a lesson on wine tasting

Exhaustion helped us sleep a little on the hour long flight to Milan, though we got a cool view of the Alps as we started our descent. We had plenty of time to catch our train for leg…5, think. In this airport we just strolled leisurely to baggage check. We didn’t even have to have our passports checked because they did that in Copenhagen.

There was some concern as we walked that maybe our luggage didn’t manage to move across the Copenhagen airport as quickly as we had done, but that was followed by great relief when my bag and Jen’s bag were the practically the first ones we saw on the carousel. We refilled our water bottles — airport sprinting is dehydrating — and watched on as Lanie waited for her bag. We drank some water and watched and waited. We drank some more water and waited. Her bag didn’t come out. As we got less dehydrated, our hopes of finding Lanie’s suitcase sank.

It turns out, as Jen was able to ascertain, that Lanie’s luggage had not been left in Copenhagen like the bags of many people in line with Jen at the lost luggage desk. True, it did not get sent to Milan, but it wasn’t still in Copenhagen. What kind of fools gate-check their luggage?

SAS airlines knew where it went, though, and they told Jen they would drive it over to us at our temporary living accommodations when it comes in tomorrow.

This would have been a good time for there to be an airport lounge in the train station, but our credit card company does not offer such perks, even though we pay them extra money. We did manage to get onto our train to Milan Center — actaully, we got on a train that left 20 minutes earlier than the one Jen bought tickets for because the train manager said it was ok.

In Milan’s lovely train station, we admired the architecture, which combined classical and early 20th century elements with a special focus on hiding the bathrooms. I would call this leg 7 — finding the bathroooms in the Milan Center train station because we had to walk all over the place to find it.

We were not out of legs yet. Leg 8 was a three-hour train ride to the coast. Our stop was not the last one on the line, so someone would have to stay awake and pay attention to where we were. Jen set an alarm for 5 (our stop was scheduled for 5:10), just in case.

I wrote a lot of blog on that train, peeking out the window from time to time to take in the Italian scenery. Eventually, I could start to see the ocean between the buildings. The towns we traveled through startd to take on a seaside flavor — there were beaches and people swimming in the snippets I saw.

We finally made it to our stop in Monterosso, where Nadia and a nice apartment waited for us. We found Nadia right there at the station. Then we started Leg 9 of the trip, which was to walk to our accommodations. This is not a car-heavy place. There is a road that snakes along the cliffside and through a tunnel, but it was filled with pedestrian traffic. Eventually, we noticed a taxi or two beeping their way through the crowds, and at one point this evening an ambulance made its way through, but mostly it’s just people walking around.

After snaking our way along the hillside we turned a corner and village spread out on the far side of the beach. Most of the alleyways we walked through would be too small for a car, but we did pass a tiny pickup truck, which must be how they get things around here.

We were instantly charmed by the place. It is old and rustic and vibrant with beachgoers and hikers. From here, we will be able to walk to four other villages similarly tucked into crags along the coastline.

They won’t technically be counted as legs of our travel because we’ll be staing in this apartment for a few nights.

So, walking around to find a restaurant was just for fun, and finding a gelato shop afterwards was, too, even though we decided to go the long way. Our path led us up a series of ramps and many stairways to a hilltop convent that was crowned with a graveyard that offered views of the ocean and terraced hills. Even though we’d been awake for about 34 hours at this point, we were in no rush to get back to our apartment.

It was well-earned sleep when we finally stopped moving around for the day.

Boulder — Day 3

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Travel days can be tough for planners and participants alike, but we are fortunate that Colorado has put something cool between today’s point A (Denver) and Point B (Estes Park — gateway to the Rocky Mountain National Park). That cool thing is Boulder, a place that deserves its own stayover, at least, and perhaps even a good chunk of a week to give it its full due.

We just had today, though, so we set out to do our best with the time we had.

First things first, a planned stopover at Dutch Bros. coffee, a chain that Nadia knows from her visits to Arizona. She secured a highly caffeinated creation, and we were all suddenly ready for the day.

We moved on and made our way to our first point in Boulder, a park high above the city. We wandered through a wide inclining grassy field (and past at least two more weddings — or at least wedding photo sessions), and we crawled among the ankles of the famous Flatiron rock formations. Zoe even started a brief climb up Flatiron 3, which is accessible only via a very vertical route up a tree-less rock face.

It was crowded with Saturday morning adventurers, many who thought it was a great idea to run up the hill and then scale the rockface barely breaking stride. Several climbers made their way out of our sight line, gaining 100 feet in altitude, in the 10 minutes we watched. Zoe only made it about 20 feet befored she decided to come back down. Her sneakers did not make good climbing shoes.

We finished our loop and then hopped on a shuttle bus that connected the park to the downtown area that held our next points of interest. Down the hill we went and across town, through the impressive Colorado State University campus,

The trolley dropped us on the edge of the city’s bi-weekly farmers’ market. At the center of the tents and stands we found our brunch destination, a tea house donated to Boulder by its sister city, Dushanbe, Tajikistan. This was another point of interest uncovered by Zoe’s research.

On a Saturday morning in early August, the wait time to get in (they don’t take brunch reservations) is about 45 minutes. That gave us time to wander through the farmer’s market.

We saw a very good side of Boulder this morning. The park and hike offered a connection to nature, with a scenery scale that was off the charts, and free public transportation always gets our attention. The community’s embrace of the farmer’s market — it was quite crowded and supported a fair-like atmosphere — was also on full display.

And if that didn’t win us over, the brunch at the tea house sealed the deal. Our orders spanned from Indonesian to Indian to Persian to Mexican, and every one of us walked away full and satisfied.

Boulder is compact enough that we did not even need to walk far to get to the highly popular Pearl Street outdoor mall. We wandered a little here — it is quite extensive well laid-out.

Our guess is that Denver is trying to recreate this with its 16th Street Mall. One standout feature on the Pearl Street Mall: the only retail outlet for the Liberty Puzzle Company, whose intricate wooden jigsaw puzzles have given Jen many hours of entertainment.

The last stop in Boulder required us to collect the truck and head to the outskirts of town for another singular retail experience. All of the Celestial Seasonings Teas in the store are mixed and packed in a plant just outside of town.

They offer a very nice tour and an extensive gift shop that is the only place in the world where you can purchase all 100+ blends they create. Even cooler, they have a tasting room where you can request a samply of any of their teas. It was simultaneously very cool and very laid back.

We stayed there tasting right up to the 5 pm closing time, but when they kicked us out we realized that we were already well on the way from Denver to Estes Park. We pulled into our apartment well before sunset, and if I were to tell you there was an elk waiting for us in the front yard I would obviously be lying. In truth, there were THREE elk there to greet us.

It might have been a family, and they seemed completely disinterested in us and completely interested in eating the grass — though the biggest elk did walk over to check out the pickup truck.

For dinner, we decided to hit up the Estes Park Brewery — and realized that it looked familiar. The adults in our family had been here before. Just like last time, the Olympics were playing on the TV. Luckily, this time, it being Saturday night rather than Friday afternoon, we were able to watch something other than rhythmic gymnastics.

Denver Day 2

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Having checked a few Denver menu items off on day 1, we still had some highly anticipated experiences set up for day 2. An early-morning planning session, taking into account the relative locations of each experience, plus the predicted weather, led us to a plan, but the first stop of the day was a site none of us even knew about on day 1.

Jen received a message from our landlord informing us about a pop-up bakery several blocks from our house that was worth visiting. In fact, even though it did not advertise, it was so popular that it regularly sold out its stock. So, we rumbled the Tacoma all the way down Steele Street to beat the crowds to the baked goods. The croissants and pesto sourdough loaf were worth the effort.

Thus fueled, we were able to hit the town for another round of adventure. The new schedule kept the original plan offering an optional trip the the Red Rocks Park and Amphitheater — yes, that magical place of dreams where John Denver debuted his soon-to-be hit “Rocky Mountain High,” and countless other musical acts have performed in the presence of a lot of people, and a whole bunch of red rocks.

Four of us made the trip, and three of us took the 1.4-mile Trading Post Trail loop (another recommendation from our hosts). Nadia slept in and Lanie opted to spend her Red Rocks time appreciating the amphitheater — which was pretty deserving of appreciation. Built in the 30’s as part of a Civilian Conservation Corps. project that took 12 years to complete, the amphitheater is nestled between two huge rock protrusions. The gracefully curved rows of bench seats cascade from a concourse down rather steeply to a stage enclosed by structures built from brick the same color as the natural rock. Its accoustics rival natural Greek amphitheaters (according to a writeup I read on a sign in the gift shop), and it has hosted events ranging from rock concerts, to graduations, to Easter Sunday sunrise services.

While Lanie appreciated all this, the remaing three of us wound around and through the natural rocks with one eye on the scenery and another on the local bird population. Jen’s pre-trip preparation included printing out a checklist of Birds of Colorado. On this hike, we were able to check off the Lazuli Bunting, Black Beaked Magpie, and several types of swallow.

From the observation deck. Unfortunately the person we asked to photograph us managed to not include the Denver skyline.

Because of our speedy hiking skills, and because Red Rocks is only 25 minutes from our place in Denver, we were able to collect Nadia and move on with the plan for the day before much of the morning has passed. The plan had us visiting the science and nature museum first, then making our way across the large city park to the botanical gardens that were on the other side. All this was in manageable walking distance from our home base.

That’s what our plan said. Reality said something a little different. The first disconnect here was that the Science and Nature Museum held our attention much longer than anyone expected. We could have stayed here for the whole day. The special exhibit on poisons was very densely packed with information and incredibly interesting. (Nadia likes to keep us guessing. Normally she’s the first one done at any museum, impatiently waiting to move on while Zoe reads every word on every sign. This time around, the rest of us were all done with the whole museum and waiting in the atrium before she even got through the Poison exhibit. As a neuroscience major/chemistry minor who hopes to go into research, she had a professional interest in all of it.)

We also got pulled into exhibits on space exploration and archaeology. The natural history dioramas were extensive and brightly rendered. We made it up to the fourth floor terrace for a great view of the park with the city’s skyscrapers in the distance. (Beyond them, we knew, were the Rocky Mountains, but the day’s cloud cover kept them from our view.)

The second hitch in the plan was geographic in nature. The Botanical Gardens were located on the edge of a completely different park. Thankfully, we realized this before we started searching the park to find it. Jen and I left the girls immersed in the Science and Nature Museum while we walked back to HQ to collect the pickup. Then we got the girls for a quick jaunt a few parks over to the Botanical Gardens.

Close followers of our travel will know that science museums and botanical gardens are mainstays of our adventures. It’s rare that we go for both of these family favorites in one day, but Denver was obliging. Even though they weren’t in the same park, the musem and gardens here are on the same side of town, admid grids of appealing residential neighborhoods. We’ve even been able to find suitable parking when we need it, which doesn’t always seem likely given the girth of our pick up truck.

The botanical gardens were buzzing with activity, too. Lots of cars in the parking lot, lots of people milling around. Maybe 40 percent of them were on hand to witness a matrimonial ceremony. We managed to spy two brides walking around, but there were enough tuxedos, matching dresses, high heels and sport coats in the crowd to accommodate at least a few more. It clearly is a wonderful place to get married — there is practically no possible camera angle that would not have flowers in the background.

We saw a fancy herb garden and an elegant and extensive Japanese garden. A specialy here seems to be water lillies. We saw several pools filled with different examples, almost all of them in bloom.

It was all very nice, but to some minds on our tour it was all only the build-up to day 2’s most exciting feature. We grabbed a quick dinner at a microbrewery located in the center of an eerily deserted college campus that was only blocks from the city center. Then we ambled over to the outskirts of town for … well none of us were exactly sure what we headed for this evening.

Ever since she started research activities for this trip, Zoe has been a strong advocate for “The Convergence Zone,” an entertainment venue that offered lots of lore, but very little definitive information about what it entailed. From what we could gather, it was somewhat similar to the St. Louis City Museum, perhaps the best-loved experience from our whole cross-country trip. Like that instiution, the Convergence Station seemed to be at least half-way designed as an art installation. The other half sounded like we would be able to explore, like we had in St. Louis, and maybe solve a mystery?

It required us to reserve a time for entry — and after getting into the main concourse were were meant to take a shuttle to a world called C Street (the shuttle reminded us of an elevator), and then when we got out of the shuttle we were meant to “boop” a smart card against any swirling light logo we saw. This we did, and Zoe particularly loved it. She would have stayed all night, booping and bopping all around among the colorul lights, otherworldly structures, and winding passageways through four distinct worlds and three floors of access.

Zoe was about 30 minutes from solving the whole puzzle when the momentum from the rest of the group gave out, and we pulled her back down to the main concourse. (Unfortunately Lanie tends to get headaches from too much light and sound, both of which this place had in abundance. We knew it it was time to go when we found her curled up inside the darkness of a hollow tree.) We had been in the Convergence Station for about three hours by then. I’m sure if Zoe ever gets back to Denver, a return visit will be the first thing on her agenda.

Day 8: A home base

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Checking out the Copenhagen waterfront from deck seven of our cruise.

We have roamed much of the way around Scandinavia, staying in hostels, an apartment, a sleeper cabin on an overnight train, and — last night — a cruise ship cabin. Mostly we’ve been sleeping five to a room, and every night we’ve been sleeping in a new bed.

Here in Copenhagen we are looking forward to spreading out in one place for a bit. We’re still sleeping six to a room, but we get this room, in probably the hippest hostel we’ve experienced so far, for three nights.

We are also excited because we have ponied up for three days of the Copenhagen Card, which gets us into all kinds of experiences and attractions, including a lot of museums, the famous Tivoli Gardens amusement park, and all public transportation.

With mystery packets in hand, we are now on the case.

In fact, we weren’t on the ground here for more than an hour when Jen and Zoe signed us up to solve a few mysteries. A company has put together packets that mix historical crime information with famous city landmarks to add a little fun to sidewalk travels. The packets were available for pickup right in the train station. It’s on the Copenhagen Card, so we went for it.

Therefore, after storing our luggage in a locker at the New House hotel — just a few blocks from the train station and not quite ready to check us in — we headed toward a place called the Round Tower, where clues apparently awaited us.

Actually, the clues waited a little while, because it started to sprinkle and we decided to duck into a coffee shop. Then, when the showers intensified, we headed into the nearest indoor activity covered by the Copenhagen Card. As luck would have it, we were very close to a double attraction: Copenhagen’s Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum and the Hans Christian Anderson Experience. They’re right next to each other, and they’re on the Card.

These kept us interested, and dry. And possibly they gave us appreciation for wonders of the world at large, and for Copenhagen’s greatest contribution to children’s literature. Remember, we just had coffee, so we were pretty much raring to go. The rain just had to stop. And it did!

A nook for resting on the way up the Round Tower

At the Round Tower, also on the Card, we wound our way up a spiraling cobbelstone ramp to a place designed to hold an observatory. The tower pokes out over the surrounding neighborhood of old buildings and narrow streets.

See any ducks or dogs? Us neither.

It gives a nice view view of the surroundings, but, being in the center of the city, it probably isn’t that effective as an observatory anymore. There is still a telescople up there, but we did not get to see it.

No clues were apparent from the top of the tower, so we eased our way back down to street level where…still no clues were apparent. We were meant to be looking for a carving with three ducks and a dog. It was supposed to be somewhere near the tower. There were lots of people milling around, but not a lot of livestock.

We looked and looked until the coffee boost ran out totally, and a sizeable portion of us were dead on our feet. By now our room was ready for us, so we walked back to the hostel and settled in.

It is a very cool place. There are multiple bars, a restaurant, a workout facility, a yoga room, and an indoor soccer field. It has people of all types staying there, but it is geared toward backpacking types. There is a special dinner each night for people looking to connect with other travelers. There are also special events and meet-up spots to allow solo travelers to connect with each other.

Our room had sixs beds, each mostly enclosed, with power hookups inside each little pod. There is a bathroom and a shower — separate from each other — in the room. It’s actually pretty good for a family if you rent the whole thing out. So, that’s kind of the vibe of the place: A lot of young single people and a bunch of families with young kids. It is also very close to a lot of the downtown action.

We lugged our bags up to our room and lay them down to stay for a while. Some of us snuggled into our bunk pods, and those of us with energy remaining headed out for more Copenhagen Card adventure.

This time, it was the nearby National Museum, which occupied us with extensive exhibits on pre-historic Denmark and a Viking experience where we got to see a part of the longest Viking ship ever recovered.

They eventually kicked us out of the National Museum because it was closing. Back at the hostel, we tried to sign up for the night’s special dinner, but it was already filled up. (It turns out that we would have been out of place; the tacos were really meant for young single types.) Instead, we dove into the slightly more expensive, but amply-stocked salad and pizza buffet that was on the other side of the restaurant.

After all that, some of us still had energy to go out looking for dessert. Here, as in most parts of Scandinavia, ice cream is easier to find than murder clues.

Day 7: Now we’re cruising

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The Oslo end of the night train from Bergen

Ok, Oslo, we did not get off on the right foot. We’ve taken some time in Bergen to cool off, and now we’re ready to give it another try.

Besides, we all have this half day to spend together, and the best thing to do is try to play nice. In the brief time between when the night train lets us off and our cruise to Copenhagen starts boarding, we promise to uncover and enjoy some of the pleasure we know must exist somewhere within your downtown area. And all you have to do is occupy our attention and not take up too much of our money.

The University of Oslo’s Natural History Museum curates a Botanical Garden. It opens at 8!

Deal?

You must have some kind of attraction that open early. Our train gets in at 6. Maybe something outdoors. How about a nice botanical garden that we can roam around and not bother anyone?

We can look at some flowers, take some pictures, and stretch our legs. It has to be close enough to the train station so we can walk there.

Can you do that? Thanks.

On the grounds of the Akershus Fortress

And while we’re outside, how about a castle or something from a long time ago that has some grounds we can explore. We are really getting into Norwegian history. Sprinkly it with some cannons and ancient-looking rock walls.

Maybe it can be on the water? We don’t really want to spend much money, so maybe keep it…free? Is that too much to ask?

I know we’re asking a lot, Norway, but that crummy hotel episode left a bad taste in our mouths. Oh, speaking of which, we would like a quick place for lunch.

Something we haven’t had on this trip yet. How about Middle Eastern food? Some nice felafel and pitas.

And when we get done with that — we know this is a lot to ask — but we’ve really been hoping to find the time for an escape room this trip. And, we’ve got some time.

Winter is probably still coming, but we did manage to defeat the ice army in the Game of Thrones-themed room at the Escape Games.

See if you can come up with something not too tricky, but tough enough to keep us occupied for an hour or so. And put it right on the street we’re walking down. And make sure there is a free timeslot when we need it.

And that should do it. We’ll collect our stuff from the lockers and head off for our cruise termnal, which should be within walking distance from the train station.

Given that we’re in Scandinavia during the summer, we know it’s going to rain a little, but can you keep the percipitation to a minium.

We’ll take care of the rest. Really.

Our cruise is booked. We have a cabin with a window that will let us watch the coastline pass by.

Not a bad way to travel

We’ll be sure wave to all the Norwegians on shore as we sail past, maybe sitting the hot tub, if we’re lucky.

And then, sometime overnight, the Norwegian coastline will turn into the Danish coastline, and we’ll be completely out of your hair, Oslo. We’ll even say some nice things about you, and maybe wish that we had few more hours to explore your streets.

Not that we’ll think of you as fondly or as often as we’ll think of Bergen or — and we know this will hurt you — Stockholm. But we can part as friends and get on with our busy agendas, each enriched, if only slighly, by our time together.

What do you say, Oslo? Let’s give it a try.

Day 6: Big on Bergen

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It is very difficult not to like Bergen. It’s neither too big, nor too small; neither too quiet, nor too noisy. Like all the Scandinavian cities we’ve visited, it is very easy to navigate on foot. It is exotic and foreign, but everyone switches to English quite cheerfully. There is deep history and rich culture. And most of us had not idea it existed until yesterday.

We stumbled upon an Asian food festival

Even Jen, who did know it existed because she planned our stop here, did not quite fathom what a gem it would turn out to be.

Excited about having a whole day to explore some more, we fueled up at our hotel’s breakfast buffet. A quick little background: We are staying in the apartment section of the Magic Hotel in the Kloverheuset building. There are a few other members of the Magic Hotel empire here in Bergen, and the hotel and its staff will factor pretty heavily in our enjoyment of the day, so we should slide a little publicity their way.

Scenes from the extensive Bryggen fish market

When we confirmed in the morning that, as apartment renters and not hotel room guests, we would have to pay for the breakfast buffet, the woman at the desk noted that the Magic Hotel on the other side of the waterfront also had a breakfast buffet. She said it was virtually the same buffet, but it was a bunch of kroner cheaper for some reason .

That’s pretty helpful information to know, we thought; and we headed over to the other Magic Hotel for breakfast. Then we shopped a bit along the Bryggen, which is the old section of the waterfront.

Soon enough, it was time for checkout (a noon checkout is another nice feature of this particular hotel chain), and the staff was all too happy to let us store our things in the locked luggage room. Moreover, they were kind enough to allow us back into the apartment building because last night we forgot to take advantage of another major benefit — a free laundry room.

Multiple times during the day we would return to the desk and the attendant would give us a key to let us back into the apartment building to check our laundry. It dried more slowly than we would have liked, perhaps because the washing machine seemed to have a rather unproductive spin cycle. Also, we found out that dryers in this part of the world collect extracted water in a special tank which needs to be emptied out like a dehumidifier. Super interesting stuff.

Because of this, we had to bum around town, spending an hour or so here, then return to the hotel to check the dryer. It took a little while for it to all work out, but, as stated before, it was free laundry access. We thank you, Magic Hotel chain of Bergen.

We were not suffering in the meantime, by the way. No one will complain about wating for laundry if they are passing the time eating ice cream waffle creations.

Eventually, though, the laundry felt dry. We got the luggage room key and stored the clean clothes with the rest of our stuff, and we were free for the big-ticket item of the day.

Going up the Floibanen

We climbed just a smidge up into the hills from the waterfront and boarded the Floibanen, a funicular railway that takes people up Mount Floyen to a little resort area of playgrounds, hiking trails, and fantastic views.

Bergen beneath us

Bergen is a touristy place in many ways, but the Floibanen does not seem to be a tourist-only activity. We met a local couple in the terminal who advised us that the best views would be from the lowest car, and then they gave us their spaces in that car because they’ve be on it so many times.

We are closer to the North Pole than to New York City.

This is really a nice place.

The top of Mount Floyen proved quite pleasurable, except that we arrive just a few minutes late for the free canoing on lake Skomakerdiket, but that had more to do with Norwegian laundry appliances than it did with the funicular or Mount Floyen.

The views of the city made up for any disappointment over canoes, and we ended up having plenty of time to walk several trails and then hike back down to the waterfront. The fairly steep three kilometers down made us appreciate the help we got getting up the mountain. `

Now quite hungry, we enjoyed a Chinese-food dinner.

Then, in a final stop in at the Magic Hotel, we grabbed our luggage and headed over to the station to catch the night train to Oslo. We already had tickets reserved, but Jen managed to purchase us a sleeping cabin, which we quickly settled into. We slept through most of what would be our last major train ride of the trip, and then faced the task of trying to make friends with Oslo after so recently leaving in a huff.

Sorting laundry in the luggage room

Ready to board the night train

Sleeping cabin secured!

Day 4: A mess of surprises

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Not all of today’s surprises were unwelcome. For instance, when Lanie disappeared down to the hip lobby of our hip hostel this morning while the rest of us were packing up, who could expect that she’d return with Ms. Louise! What!? Louise in Stockholm!? That was not expected. She was in town visiting friends and conspired with Lanie over the past day or so to pop in and say hi. We enjoyed a nice walk with her to the train station, where we would be storing most of our things in a locker while we toured another part of Stockholm this morning.

Another pleasant surprise: The old section of the city is very pretty and quite extensive, with narrow cobbled streets branching out to even more narrow cobbled alleyways.

We wandered here for some time, barely managing to avoid purchasing any number of souvenirs. We still have a fair bit of Scandinavia to lug things through.

Leaving Generator Stockholm hostel

The changing of the guard in front of the royal palace was an elaborate event witnessed by several hundred fellow onlookers. We were surprised the crowds gathered so quickly and wished we hadn’t lingered inside the palace for so long (you can just walk around in there for free — and there are more parts you can pay to visit, like the royal apartments, which seems a little invasive on King Carl Gustav, but he apparently obliges). The Royal Guards marching band was pretty tight, and what a surprise it was when

Outside the Pulitzer Prize Museum in the old town

they played a medley that included “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” and “It’s Raining Men.” These musical clues may give an idea of the weather for the morning. It was actually a not uncomfortable amount of showers.

That pretty much gets us through the pleasant surprises for the day. We left the old town for the train station, had a quick lunch in a taco bar, recovered our stored luggage, and made it to our train on time.

We have been very good at getting ourselves where we’re supposed to be in plenty

A narrow road in the old town

of time. The Swedish railway system was not as reliable. We watched in horror as a 50-minute delay blamed on “electrical issues” burned through our 30-minute layover in Gothenburg and made us 20 minutes late for our train to Oslo.

The horror mounted as officials from Swedish rail explained that they would not compensate for their mistake because we had booked our journey through the Eurail system and not the Swedish rail system.

The horror basically peaked when it dawned on us that lacking any further trains, bus seats, or available rental cars that could take us to Oslo, we would miss out on the night’s book accommodations in Oslo and basically the whole Norwegian leg of our trip. The next few days of travel relied on us getting on a train in Oslo the next morning at 8 a.m. This all dawned on us in a shower of unpleasant surprises.

The Pavlik family sprung into action to go through every option we could collectively think of. We begged the rail company for help, both on the train and via a phone call from the station. We tried to book the last bus of the day (sold out). We tried to rent a car (all agencies closed, even those that claimed to be open). Nadia scoped out a local bus path that would have taken seven legs overnight and gotten us to Oslo at 7 a.m., and also searched around for potential accommodations in Gothenburg (which is likely a very nice place, but its name will make our family shudder for years to come), but they were extremely pricey and hard to find. Zoe tried to get the European SIM card that we’d bought working, so we could make calls and use data.

The Royal Guards Marching Band rocks the palace

Lanie suggested booking an Uber for the four-hour drive from Gothenburg to Oslo. We originally dismissed that idea out of hand — and then we were surprised to find that this was our best, and possibly only, option to keep us on our scheduled plan.

It may seem like an Ugly American option to just throw a bunch of money at a problem — and hiring an Uber for five people to connect two cities that are four hours apart does involve a big bunch of money — but please judge us carefully. We had several days of hotel reservations riding on this decision, and losing them would have cost us a bunch of money, too.

So, Zoe helped us stick out our Uber thumb and try to hitch a ride into Norway. The first two drivers who accepted our call, quickly dropped, apparently once they realized the magnitude of the trip.

Before it all went horribly wrong

The third driver accepted our challenge, but 20 minutes into the drive he said we had a problem and handed his phone back to Jen so she could talk to his boss. It turns out this driver was running up against Sweden’s laws for how long a person could drive in one shift. Unbelievably, we had to turn around and try again at the Gothenburg train station.

At this point we had gone through out allotted amount of unpleasant surprises, which is to say that nothing unpleasant really surprised us anymore. Zoe caught us another Uber within five minutes, and this driver was up for the journey. For what it’s worth, driving from Gothenburg to Oslo is a lot like driving through the Berkshires

Poring over options in the Gothenburg station

or Catskills — given the distance, maybe you can say it’s like driving through the Bershires and the Castskills. It was not unpleasant. Though, every time the driver’s phone rang we silently willed him not to answer so he wouldn’t get called off the job.

He was a very efficient driver and got us to Oslo in very good time. But our day wasn’t quite over yet. As we staggered into our hotel at midnight and attempted to check in, we ran into another problem — we had somehow booked the hotel for the prior day, and had been marked as a no-show. So we had to book new rooms (thankfully they had a quad and a single available) at more expense. We had further problems attempting to use the pull-out couch in our room, and eventually the hotel had to bring us a cot (which they had earlier said was “not possible”). It was after 1am before we finally collasped into bed, hoping this all would turn out to be worth it.

Day 3: When in Sweden

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Navigating the Max menu

Perhaps Stockholm deserved better from us, but we really must have needed the sleep. We did not rouse ourselves until almost noon today. Hip Swedish hostels are surprisingly quiet in the mornings.

Somewhat refreshed, we met the bright sunlight of this bright city and started to check off things people do when they’re in this country.

Stockholm is a very walkable city

First, we went to Max. It’s Sweden’s answer to McDonalds — though they have McDonalds and even Burger King here, too. The selection at Max is quite broad and the food is good. Zoe wandered farthest off the beaten path by getting a getting a cheese burger that consisted completely of cheese, which had been grilled just like it was a burger. She reviewed it pretty highly.

Crossing from one of Stockholm’s islands to another

After that we walked around a lot. This is a very walkable city, with wide sidewalks and clearly marked bike lanes that we’ve mostly been able to avoid encroaching. Car traffic seems to be less than in other major cities we’ve visited. Between the busses, trolleys, metro stations, and ferries, there seems to be plenty of public transportation options. But with streets and architecture as appealing as Stockholm’s, walking seems to be the way to go.

Our feet brought us to a wide pedestrian walkway flanked by stately buildings on one side and the harbor on the other. There were plenty of cafes in full lunch mode by the time we made it over. Some of the cafes and bars stretched out onto docks in the water between fancy boat moorings and ferry landings.

The Vassa’s ample, well-decorated stern

The next thing to do in Sweden, and the main goal of the day’s walking, was to get us to a museum. There are lots of museums in Stockholm, and they come in many varieties. Our first choice focused on a 17th Century sailing ship called the Vassa. It was one of the largest ships of its time and it was very richly decorated and heavily armed. And it sank after sailing only 1,000 feet or so because it didn’t have enough ballast in the bottom to keep it upright.

It’s difficult to imagine people in the US setting up a top-notch museum based on a not-quite-so-proud moment in our engineering history, but that’s what they did here. The Vassa Museum is an amazing place centered around the ship, how it was built, and how it was resurrected from the bottom of the harbor in the 1950s.

The museum offers views of the Vassa from multiple levels.

The museum’s 20-minute movie about the Vassa’s saga ends with the idea that if the ship had been more seaworthy it would have been destroyed or dismantled by now. Becuase it sank so quickly and so close to the city it was preserved in the mud and relatively easy to access. They say that 95 percent of the ship, which is on full display in the museum’s main hall, is from its original construction.

From here, we had many choices of museums to browse. There was one based solely on other shipwrecks besides the Vassa. There was one on vikings and one on spirits (not the occult kind, but the distilled kind) and one on nordic life. As we decided which to visit next we chewed on long ropes of Swedish licorice and contemplated scrapping everything for a visit to the amusement park that towered over the section of town we were in.

Actually, most of us wanted nothing to do with the amusement park, and we all pretty much knew where we wanted to go. The licorice ropes were just to keep us occupied until our allotted time came for us to enter the ABBA museum. And so, once 16:30 came around on our clocks, we embarked on an adventure into a world which few people realize exists. It is a world where ABBA merits a whole museum that is crowded enough to make people wait for assigned times to enter.

Dancing at the Abba Museum

The course of the museum starts at the end of ABBA’s story, with Benny, Bjorn, Frida and Agnetha recording themselves with special cameras for the hologram ABBA experience currently running in London. This is the phenomenon where people pay to go to a concert to watch ABBA holograms perform with a live band.

More dancing at the ABBA museum

At least we got to see actual ABBA stuff, like their recording studio, which was moved to the museum, and the home made double base that was part of Benny’s (or perhaps Bjorn’s) first band. And the costumes! Oh, the costumes. Capes and jumpsuits for miles. We are all pretty knowledgeable about ABBA now. Ask us for some trvia; we’ll probably know it.

About now we had to start being careful. Our checkout time tomorrow is 10 a.m. No sleeping until noon for us. So we shouldn’t be staying out too late either. We passed on any further museum visits and continued walking through the gardens of the surrounding area until we were able to retrace our steps back toward the hostel.

Checking the cocktail menu at a harborside bar

Here we did something that most people do in Sweden, we avoided stopping in for a drink on one of the harborside bars we passed in the morning. We were sorely tempted to give it a try. We even stopped into one; but we were turned off by two things: 1.) They strangely didn’t have a non-alcoholic option besides mineral water; 2.) The alcoholic drinks were stunningly expensive. None of us needed to try a $29 mojito. We have to think that the average Swede would make the same choice.

It was time now to follow our standard vacation routine of wandering around until we stumble upon a dinner plan. Tonight we stumbled upton Italian food.

We managed to get back to our place at a reasonable enough hour for some of us to take on some blogging and other to get a little bar hopping in the hotel lounge.