Aaron and I went to Europe! My first time since 2003. Do you remember 2003? Smartphones did not exist, we brought relatively heavy paperback travel books every time we went on a trip, there were internet cafes, you could bring liquids on flights…

Anyway, we went to Copenhagen and Norway for 9 nights and 10 days without June (thanks to all our family for taking care of her!) and it was overall pretty great, though I did get sick at the end and realized at home it was Covid and I am trying NOT to bookend every story with that part (“trip was great! I got Covid!”) but there it is. Learn from me - if you’re in a situation where it feels like you should put on a mask, put on a mask! Being sick on vacation is really stupid!

WHY Copenhagen and Norway, you ask? To which I say, why not?? (If you want to know why not, it is because they are very expensive.) But truly the why is that we knew we’d be traveling in June, we wanted to leave the country, and Aaron is a delicate flower who cannot handle the heat so we landed on Copenhagen as a starting point and then decided Oslo is also good and also fjords?!?!

Notes:

• Biking in Copenhagen! So good! This is a whole other post, but it just FEELS different to be in a city where a lot of people actually drive BUT there’s also a ton of transit/bikers/pedestrians so drivers just have to get used to it. It was magnificent.

  

• We ate some good pastries but the problem with good pastries is that you get croissant crumbs all over your hotel room.

• You can buy a beer to go in Copenhagen, which was absolutely noted on Friday when there was a distinct vibe shift - the sun was out and along with it, everyone else. But it still didn’t feel like a crazy party town where we were.

• We ate dinner at a very fancy restaurant with one Michelin star and you know you’re in a place you don’t fully belong when they ask if you want a drink to start your evening, with no menu in sight, as if money is no object to you… Anyway the dinner was very good but I mostly remember the amazing bathrooms. I’m not cut out for Michelin starred places!

  

• When we got to Bergen, Norway I was like…can you drink in public here??? And basically NO, you cannot and also you cannot buy alcohol on Sundays (I guess MN learned from them…) and also if you want wine/liquor you have to buy it from the government wine store that is called WINE MONOPOLY. And yet, the people in Bergen that night were LIT, which I guess is what happens when you have a yacht in a historic wharf and the sun sets after 11PM.

  

• I was told to eat fish stew in Bergen and this makes sense but I could not in good conscience spend $25 on fish soup from a place with 2.5 stars on google reviews so instead we went to a place called The Daily Pot (hey, it’s a university town) where they have MULTIPLE KINDS OF SOUP and then you pick what size bowl and then you pick toppings and WHY IS THIS PLACE NOT IN MY LIFE EVERYWHERE???!

• If you go to Norway you should absolutely see fjords, they are magical and completely worth all the nonsense and money you have to invest to accomplish this.

  

• HOW TO SEE Nærøyfjord, the UNESCO HERITAGE FJORD: Take a train from Bergen to Myrdal (beautiful). There is nothing in Myrdal, except for a beautiful, slow, and historic train to Flam! Convene in Flam with a giant cruise ship carrying 12x the total population of this town. Store your luggage. Go on a hike. Get a beer that has to be walked out to the beer garden by the server because Norway. Get on an electric powered Catamaran for your Fjord cruise. DO NOT SIT in the extremely comfortable leather seats, this is a trap! Go to the very top of the boat and stare at fjords and waterfalls with 360 degree views for two hours! Take hundreds of pictures! Marvel at the beauty! Arrive in Gudvangen and check in to your “budget” hotel ($200/night). Amazingly, you have the best room with a mountain facing patio so everything is fine. Look at dinner options - expensive seafood with bad reviews, Viking food (???), and the answer is pizza, and it is good. The next morning take a shuttle bus back to Flam. Wait for the bus to Voss. The bus is late! Also the bus goes past Gudvangen so what even happened here, seems like we could have cut out this step altogether. Anyway, you have now missed your train to Oslo so you get to hang out in VOSS for three hours with your luggage. Go shopping? Drink coffee and beer? Eat sad sandwiches and Norwegian candy including the gummy people that come in male and female forms (with breasts and hips).

• Oslo is a lovely city with excellent transit and some great museums - and we didn’t even see many of them! The first thing I did was look up where I could eat VEGETABLES and found a place 3 minutes from our AirBnB with already constructed DELICIOUS salads and this place also needs to be in my life!!!

  

• Some things every city could learn from Oslo and Copenhagen: invest in biking infrastructure, have more density, open containers are cool, create a sauna culture, have a beautiful park with hundreds of naked sculptures, have a beautiful public library that is open until 10PM nightly.

  

  

That’s all for now! This took forever!