Today was another day full of history and exploring. We hit the Tower of London fairly early and got in before a lot of crowd. The Tower is actually the collective name for a big medieval fortress.
This is the actual Tower. It is the oldest structure in the fortress and was completed in 1078 – 11 years after William the Conquer invaded to provide him a safe refuge in his newly conquered land.

Within the fortress-

that used to have a moat and everything. It was really cool to walk around a fortress built in 1200 (even if most of it was reconstructed).

Of course, we had to go see the Crown Jewels. Pictures weren’t allowed, but I can tell you that those are quite the sparkly collection of massive jewels. Tour group after tour group kept coming through by the time we got to the jewels themselves (the building they’re in is set up to shuffle thousands of people past in a day and has quite the winding lead-up) so we got pushed through some of the collections of oversized gold plates and ceremonial pieces.

The rest of the Tower was a lot of walking around looking at old buildings, weapons, and armor. The Tower itself is actually the longest running visitor attraction in the world!
My favorite part was the dragon.

After snapping a picture of a the iconic guard (who was about my age), we hopped on the bus one last time and rode around the city again. We blasted past Piccadilly on our way around too.

But once again didn’t make it to Buckingham Palace.

By that point we were wiped out so we struggled through rush hour on the Tube and headed for home.

Sidenote: Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) isn’t going to work out. The whole day would cost upwards of 200 pounds, you’re not allowed to take pictures, and it isn’t open on Fridays and Saturdays. So Mom and I toured via the website gallery. It’s pretty.

After three weeks in countries where the only English came after confused pauses, hearing everyone speaking (accented) English is both strange and a relief.
London is amazing. We got in last night and settled into our little apartment. It’s in northeastern London, near what the apartment owner (in a very strong London accent) called “the funky area”.
This morning we hit the streets and turned all our vouchers in for tickets. And then, as is tradition, we got on the hop on hop off bus. It was amazing. Mostly empty with amazing views of all the biggest sights. The only major thing we didn’t get to today was Buckingham Palace.
Unlike Paris, the architecture here is a mash of old and new. Glass skyscrapers are surrounded by brick and marble buildings.

We caught the bus at Trafalagar Square-

And rode around past the London Eye and a bunch of other pretty things before getting genuine fish and chips.

Afterwards we caught another bus out to the Tower Bridge and Tower of London, which we’ll go into tomorrow. But those two are absolutely stunning. The Tower Bridge is a beautiful baby blue and the Tower of London is a medieval fortress dropped in the middle of a city.

London feels much more serious than Paris (the city we’ve visited of comparable size). There’s also a lack of mopeds/motorcycles, but hundreds of those distinctive red double deckers.

Our final activity of the day was riding the London Eye: a dream come true. It was beautiful.

The first day in London was amazing and I can’t wait to see more.

We’ve been in Sweden for almost two weeks now, and I like it better every day. Dad told you about our mountain biking adventures, but the next day we all piled into the rental car and went out to explore Sweden.

True to form, mom pointed out a gravel road not half an hour into our trip and off the freeway we went. It was an old logging road that ended in a round about that was suprisingly clean. An area like this at home would be full of beer cans.

The Swedish forest is really cool. All the trees are very young and thinned out because of all the logging. They also are stripped of their bark halfway up!

We were also surprised to see that the ground cover reminded us of Scotland, even though we’re farther north.

A lot of the roads are reddish, but we couldn’t figure out why until we saw the rocks out in the ‘wilderness’- they all have some mineral in them that makes them red!

Combined with the lichen, it makes for very pretty rocks.

But despite looking our hardest and even honking our horn to try and startle them, we didn’t see any moose. A fox ran across the road at one point, but the only wildlife we got close to were the bugs (Sweden has horseflies too, it turns out. Ouch).

A couple hours drive brought us to the tiny town of Nusnäs (population 729) where they make those colorful wooden horses.

We spent a couple hours there watching the carving and painting process before raiding the souvenir shops. I stupidly bought a blanket that I’ll probably regret buying until the second we get home. Speaking of souvenirs, we’re at the point where we’ll probably have to get a little suitcase just to get them home. Our carry-ons are too small. Whoops.

On our way home, we stopped beside a gorgeous lake to stretch our legs. Mom and I waded a little bit. It was suprisingly warm!

Tomorrow we’re leisurely driving back to Stockholm before catching our plane to London the next day. It’s been a beautiful and relaxing week up here in the mountains. Time to plunge back into a massive city and start touring again!

The weather was fantastic today. Lower 70’s and perfectly blue skies. So what a better way to spend the day than in a museum?
We went to the Swedish History museum and it was amazing. They had a Viking exhibit full of artifacts from Birka and all over Scandinavia. They even had a skeleton of a young girl and a reconstructed model of her face!

After the museum, we split up. Dad and Michael hit up the local amusement park-

While me and mom tried to go shopping. I say tried because we got on a ferry that took us only halfway to where we wanted to go before turning around, so we had to take a tram, and then the subway to into the center of Stockholm. By the time we got there around 6:30, most of the little stores had closed up. So we headed for a relaxing evening at home. Tomorrow we’ll go back downtown. It’s our last day in Stockholm tomorrow too.

Happy Fourth of July!

There are so many blonde people here.
It’s funny that in the other cities, people looked at us and switched to English immediately. Here though, particularly if Michael or I are up front, they chat away in Swedish.
Stockholm isn’t nearly as grand as Paris or as quaint/Neo-Gothic as Amsterdam. There are hints of Paris in some of the doors and windows, but most everything is practical and fortress-like. Even the palace in the center of town is a flat face of stone with more windows than decorations. But that’s not to say that Stockholm is ugly. It’s very nice! It’s just not in the same classification as Amsterdam and Paris.
We spent the day seeing the main sights of Stockholm on the bus. The most impressive thing was the palace and the nearby opera house.

Looking back at everyone’s pictures, apparently we were all so unimpressed with the palace that we didn’t take pictures. Whoops.

After seeing a few of the sights, we got off at an open air museum that showed all the different architectural styles over the years, focusing on 1400-1800. There was a beautiful old church with obviously ancient tapestries draped along the walls and a belfry that was was at least 70 feet tall and painted bright red. It looked like something out of How to Train Your Dragon.

The city was surprisingly empty in comparison to Amsterdam and Paris. Apparently only about a million people live there, but it seemed like less than that.

Tomorrow we’re spending the day at a viking village from 750. That’s right, pre-four digit dates. I can’t wait.

First things first: your finger/toe crossing worked, because the apartment we’re staying in has fast, wonderful internet. I’ll be spending the evening adding pictures from Amsterdam to all the posts. So enjoy that!

But Stockholm. Driving into the city, it reminded us all very strongly of Washington. The rural look, trees everywhere, and most of all, the drizzling rain and heavy grey clouds. The taxi ride through surprisingly heavy traffic was silent except for our driver’s occasional sighs and yawns. Not the most pleasant guy ever.

The lady who’s apartment we’re apparently borrowing was exactly the opposite. She spoke perfect English and cheerfully showed us around the amazing place. It was built in 1901, but everything is in great shape and the kitchen has been remodeled recently. And it’s fully stocked, to our complete amazement. Small comforts, eh? And we have a washing machine. We’re all very happy, needless to say.

The area we’re in seems to be suburbs. Freshly painted apartment buildings over practical stores, clean sidewalks more than a foot wide… Trees. Lots of trees. The farther north we go, to more modern things get.

The grocery store was a little scary though. If I hadn’t felt so awkward, I would have taken a picture of the prices, so you’ll just have to trust me. The first thing we saw when we walked in were bananas for 14,90 and coffee for 49,90. It’s scary to look at, even though we know everything’s in kronors (6.75 kronors for one dollar).

Tonight we’re reveling in the wifi and the chance to actually cook. Tomorrow we’re on ye old hop on hop off bus to see a lot more of Stockholm. I haven’t taken any pictures today, but watch out for Amsterdam pictures going up.

Today was an exploring day. We walked, bus-ed, tram-ed (the Max) and shopped ourselves out. I actually bought stuff for myself for the first time too. Me and mom finally found a hair straightener (since mine would just break if we plugged it in over here) so now mom can dry her hair and I can wear mine down. Yay for little pleasantries! I also found jeans that are distinctly European and the only pair bigger than size 4 in all of Amsterdam. We also bought a few souvenirs and some fancy Dutch chocolate.

But we also saw some of the funnest architecture so far. In Paris everything was huge and imposing, but the architecture in Amsterdam is much more subtle. Graceful bridges, leaning buildings with beautiful roofs, understated patterns in the cobblestones… It’s very pretty. Everything curves along the roads and canals too, showing just how long the houses have been there. The big, important buildings have a definite Gothic look (Neo-Gothic? I think I heard that on the bus at one point).

 

Amsterdam is a fantastic city. I like it more than Paris, actually. Paris was gorgeous, don’t get me wrong, but Amsterdam… Maybe it’s just the presence of normal people and normal, functional city things. Grocery stores, public transportation, families, people not in suits and dresses. Casual dining. Beer available outside of corner drug stores (that double as the local grocery store).

It may just be the Portland-like weather we’ve had in Amsterdam that makes me feel more comfortable.
Everything just feels like the European version of Portland, I guess. Except that the bike culture here would put Portland’s to shame.

Either way, tonight is our last night in Amsterdam. We’re out of the houseboat at 7:30 tomorrow morning (uuuuuuggghhhhhh) to catch a plane to Stockholm. Cross your fingers, toes, and other appendages in hope that we’ll have internet there that can handle uploading a few pictures.

Goodnight!

We literally haven’t done anything today but sit around and read, but I wanted to say congratulations to the Netherlands for beating Mexico and being more enthusiastic about it than all of America after the Super Bowl.

Also as it took a good twenty minutes to write that much and will probably take even longer for this publish on the website, it’s safe to say that there will be no photos today.

The bus in Amsterdam was extremely disappointing. There weren’t many seats and the audio guide told you almost nothing. However, we still used them to travel around the city. Our first stop was the Anne Frank house. Except… The line wound for a couple blocks and was a couple hours long. Skip-the-line tickets have been sold out for three months. Needless to say, we won’t be visiting that museum. Also, toward the end of the day when we were all tired, we realized the Van Gogh was a very long way from anything else and most of the same artists will be at a museum in London. After a quick wander through the Heineken gift shop and many jokes about buying various souvenirs for my dorm room, we got on the bus again and got off at a botanical garden.

That was really where the day turned around. We ordered lunch in very airy, modern cafe in the garden and were served an amazing meal that you can read about in dad’s post (the title of which looks like he slammed his face into the keyboard). We spent a long time there just relaxing and enjoying the peace.

Then we raided the little garden itself. And gardens with my family are an interesting experience. Mom saunters around oohing and awing at all the flowers and proudly pointing out which ones we have in our backyard while dad looks for the strangest looking things to point out to us all. Bug hotels, cactuses with bubble-like flowers at the top…

And then of course there’s me, taking pictures of everything (I’m only at 400 so far) and muttering at the camera for not focusing on the little flowers (curse you autofocus).

I had a lot of fun there. Every kind of artist was around, and even though we didn’t walk past anyone else speaking English, everyone was smiling and kind enough not to walk through my photos. That’s something I’ve noticed a lot around Europe, actually. The bigger your black camera, the more people wait for you to finish. Everyone walks through cell phone pictures, duck under those little rectangle ones, walk around me with my mid-sized black one, and wait patiently beside the big black ones.

But back to the garden. Every corner had someone with a set of watercolors, oil paints, or charcoal pencils. Lots of people had cameras and with the classical music drifting over it all, I could have stayed for a long time. Or at least moved to Amsterdam and bought a membership or something.

After returning to the bikes and noise of the city, we waited for the bus again at an unmarked stop and went to the diamond factory. Lots and lots of sparkly things for very big price tags. We amused ourselves by looking for ones that cost the same as a year of college. You can get quite the pretty double-stranded, diamond studded necklace for a college education. Mom said no.

And then while me and Michael discussed just how an entire SWAT team would fit into the ceiling above the metal detectors of the diamond factory, we crossed the square to a little Delft Blue store (white pottery with blue paint). I enjoyed the free tea there and debated buying clog slippers, but we didn’t end up getting any pottery or slippers. Just some yummy carmel waffle cookie things.

And now we’re back at the houseboat, watching the boats and the blue herons and listening to a CD of the musicians who played in the garden this afternoon. Tomorrow we’re taking the day off, so maybe I’ll sit around and get a couple pictures uploaded. Dad put the wifi box on the roof so maybe it will work better now.

Goodnight!