Our Honeymoon Schedule

Another long break between posts - I'm guessing that summer is not really a good time for blogging, especially when it's nice out. Anyway, Jill and I have mostly fleshed out the itinerary for our upcoming honeymoon trip to Scandinavia. We chose that because it sounds like an interesting, highly civilized part of the world that we've always been interested in, Jill's got Danish heritage, and Copenhagen is one of the top bicycling cities in the world. We leave in less than three weeks, and it's going to be awesome! We can hardly contain ourselves!

Here's what we've got planned:
8/26: Leave way too early in the morning, fly to Newark and then Copenhagen.

8/27: Arrive in Copenhagen, and take the train out to the B&B in Christianhavn that we'll be staying at for the first three days. We'll look for a bike rental shop and try to recover from jet lag.

8/27-9/2: Bike around Copenhagen and check out the sites, and try to become immersed in the culture. We'll switch B&Bs halfway through to the Norrebro neighborhood, just to experience another part of town. Some of the sites we plan to check out include:
- Stroget, supposedly the world's longest pedestrian mall
- Tivoli Gardens, a Danish amusement park with their own pyrotechnics staff
- Christiana, a former naval base taken over by hippies in the 1970s and converted into a radical community, and tolerated by the Danes for over 30 years now
- Danish Design Center, which should be interesting, especially for Jill
- day trip to Malmo, across the Oresund in Sweden, which has a lot of sustainability projects being developed
- and a few touristy things like the City Hall, a canal cruise, the Louisiana Museum, maybe the National Museum, and other things that are recommended to us

9/2-9/3: Take a train to Arhus, Denmark's second largest city, which is located on the main peninsula of Jutland. It's where a major university is located, so it's supposed to be vibrant with an interesting youth culture. We'll stay in a B&B for a couple of days, check out the town, and rent bikes. A few of the sites we hope to check out there:
- ARoS, supposedly the coolest museum in Denmark
- Den Gamle By, an old market square
- Forhistorisk Museum in Moesgard, where they have a 2,000-year old "bog man"
- maybe the Latin Quarter and Viking Museum

9/4: Take a train across Jutland to Ringkobing near the west coast (with our rental bikes). Ringkobing is the global headquarters for Vestas Wind Systems, one of the world's largest wind turbine manufacturers, so there should be a lot of cool wind farms in the area. We're not sure if we'll stay there that night, or take the ferry across Ringkobing Fjord to Hvide Sande, a small town on the coast. It's supposed to be very windy out there, famous for it's windsurfing conditions and such.

9/5-9/7: Regardless of where we stay, we'll start out at Hvide Sande, bike up one of the national bike routes on the west coast for a while, and then turn inland to bike back across Jutland. It should be a really nice area, hopefully like that in rural England. I spent a few years in England in my teens, and spent many great hours biking on my ten-speed through the countryside. We'll stay in inns along the way, and we're bringing saddle bags with our clothes and gear. Should only be 100-120 miles back to Arhus, not a big deal (especially with a strong west wind behind us!) We're also planning to stop in the Lake District, and maybe rent a canoe for a day. It's also where they have the highest point in the country, only 147 meters. That's smaller than the little extinct volcano a few miles away from my house inside Portland's city limits.

9/8: Travel day. Ride the last 20-30 miles into Arhus and return the rental bikes. Then hop on a train to Frederikshavn on the northern part of the peninsula. We'll stay in a hotel for the night (the amusingly named "Hotel Herman Bang"). Might be a few interesting things to see, but we'll have to see what it's like when we get there.

9/9: Ferry day. We'll get up early and take the ferry to Oslo, Norway. It's about eight hours or so. We've reserved a small outside cabin, so that we can kick back and relax, or look at the scenery through our window, or head up on deck to see the scenery. Should be spectacular, especially as we enter the huge fjord where Oslo is located.

9/10: Our only full day in Oslo. We're planning to stay at a nice, relatively cheap hotel on the opposite side of the Royal Palace grounds. The main attraction for me is Bygdoy island, with a variety of ship museums and the Norwegian Folk Museum. If there's time, we'll also check out Frogner Park, a vast open air sculptural museum by Gustav Vigeland, and the Norwegian Resistance Museum. And, the City Hall - Scandinavian capital city halls appear to be extremely interesting and have towers with excellent views.

9/11: We'll take the train from Oslo to Stockholm, Sweden. Haven't decided when we're leaving yet, but it's a 6.5 hour train ride. Hopefully nice scenery, but I'm not sure what's out there. We still haven't decided where we're going to stay yet. The hotels in Stockholm all seem to be either way too expensive or way too crappy, no happy middle there.

9/12-9/13: Two days wandering around Stockholm. Not sure whether we'll rent bikes or not, lots of ground to cover. We'll check out the touristy things like a walk through Gamla Stan, the old city, and various museums and parks. And, of course, the City Hall. We're also hoping to make it out to a part of town called Hammarby Sjostad, which was a brownfield redeveloped into a sustainable community. They've got a center called the GlashusEtt that goes into more detail on all of the sustainable elements of the community. Should be really cool. We can ride the subway most of the way out there.

9/14: We'll take the train back to Copenhagen. I forget how long that trip is going to be. Probably get a hotel near the airport since we've got an early flight. We'll probably spend the evening enjoying some of the favorite things we found earlier in the trip.

9/15: Alas, the return trip. Which is going to be looooooooooong (21 hours). We're flying back against the wind, so that adds a few hours to the flight time. And, there's a six to eight hour layover in Newark. We might just use the time to take a quick bus trip into Manhattan and wander around for a couple of hours. It's been about a decade since I've been there. One of Jill's good friends lives there, so it could be fun to meet up with him. We finally get back to Portland in the late evening, and will still have the next day (Sunday) to recover a bit before jumping back into work.