kkdonald
Keri Donald Joined: August 21st 2005
Logged in: July 4th 2010
Logged in: July 4th 2010
Travel Blog Posts
It’s... 10 countries, 31 trains, 4 planes, 6 boats, 9 hotels, 3 friends’ homes, 6 night trains, 12 friends visited, 56 postcards sent, 6 days with a bit of rain, 18 travel blog entries, 1 Java presentation, 1 doctor, 7 types of medicine, 4 packs of tissues, 9 books (3 read completely, 6 partially read), 6 loads of laundry, 2 pounds less, 1 celebrity, 7 languages, 4 currencies, and 31 days later. We’ve had the experience of our lives and are so glad that we were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to see so much of the world outside of our own country, form so many new friendships, and return back home safely to Melbourne, Florida and to a life that will soon be so totally different than anything we can possibly imagine! Thank you ... read more
We rubbed the sleep out of our eyes at the Bergen train station, and immediately headed to the fish market port to catch a Ferry Boat to the Sogenfjord (Norway’s steepest and longest fjord). We took a nice long cruise up the coast of Bergen and back inland toward Voss on the Sogenfjord. Keith and I both slept for a little while, but Jill and Ben enjoyed the view the whole time. In addition to the beautiful fjords, we saw sheep, small towns on the banks, glacier capped mountains, and amazingly tall waterfalls. At one point on the cruise, we were supposed to change ferrys and the other ferry had forgotten it’s gangplank so they were going to have us jump across from one ferry to the other. Just as Jill was timidly about to attempt ... read more
After a long train ride from Trondheim, we finally arrived in Oslo late Monday night. We managed to find a hotel for the night, but had to get up early the next morning to find another hotel for the rest of the week since so many of the local hotels didn’t have rooms available on Wednesday night. While Jill & I repacked our things, Keith and Ben scouted out the city for a way to make the American laptop plug work in Norway (the adapter we brought with us was only for 2 prong plugs). We got checked into our home for the next few days, Hotel Savoy, then headed out for a tour of Oslo while Keith worked on his presentation for the JavaZone conference on Thursday. Jill, Ben, and I walked along Karl Johans ... read more
Around noon we arrived in Norway's third largest city, Trondheim. We only had four hours there and we spent about 3 of the 4 hours in the cold rain under cloudy skies getting to Trondheim's Space Needle-like revolving restaurant tower! What we saw of the city was very industrial and seemed port-based (much like Seattle... according to Jill) and they even have an Ikea that we saw from the revolving restaurant, but never actually made it to. :( Oh yeah... and did I mention that it was VERY cold and raining pretty much the whole time that we were there? :) During our 4 hours Keith and Ben constantly talked about wanting to go further north to get the to Bodo to cross into the Arctic Circle, but there was no way we had time for ... read more
We FINALLY arrived in Stockholm after over 24 hours traveling by train to get there. We started out going from Linz back to Vienna, then took a night train from Vienna to Hamburg (which went back through Linz so we actually could've just stayed in Linz and cut nearly 3 hours off of our travel time by jumping on the train in Linz but we didn't realize it until the next morning in Hamburg!!!), missed the Hamburg stop (it was the train steward's fault... she told us the train was 30 minutes late, but it wasn't) and got off the train in a different part of Hamburg, took the subway back to the right Hamburg station, went to Copenhagen, changed trains to get to Malmo (which included the train riding on a ferry across the water), ... read more
Due to train scheduling issues, we had to write Prague out of our travel agenda, but on the upside we are spending an extra day in Austria so we got the chance to visit Salzburg! On the train over to Salzburg we read about "The Official Sound of Music Tour" and we happened to be arriving at about the time it started, so we decided to try it out (plus it meant we get to sit on a bus all day rather than following a map to find our way around!). The movie, "The Sound of Music", was filmed mainly in Salzburg so the tour went all around Salzburg and also visited some towns outside of Salzburg. We saw the house that was supposedly the Von Trapp family house (Leopoldskron Castle), took pictures with the pavillion ... read more
We were fortunate to have our own personal tour guides in Europe once again. This time it was Jürgen and Eva taking us around the Austrian Countryside! We began the day with a drive to the area where both Jürgen and Eva grew up, Salzkammergut. We went to the towns of Gmunden and Hallstatt. In Gmunden we saw the Alps (even the part with the "Sleeping Greek Lady", a place where the profile of the tops of the mountains looks like a sleeping Greek lady) from many different directions, and spent time by the lake in an old town that is known for its ceramics. We had lunch at Schloss Orth, which is a very old castle on an island in the middle of a lake. There Keith got pumpkin soup (which was VERY yummy) that ... read more
Vienna was the second of our 2 "we don´t have a hotel yet" stops... and we probably ended up with one of the nicest hotels we´ve had so far and it was also one of the cheapest. :) Score!!! Our time in Vienna was different from our other stops because we took the days to do "kid" stuff. We started with a trip to Stephansdom (St. Stephan's Cathedral) which is the center of town and saw the Staatsoper (State Opera House), Keith had a lunch of Weiner Schnitzel and Gosser beer (I tried to have Apple Strudel there, but they said they were out!), then we headed over to the famous Sacher Cafe for a Sacher Torte (chocolate). After that the real fun began... We started our tour with a trip to the House of Music, ... read more
It's been SOOO nice to return to Roma! Of all of the places I've ever been, I believe Rome is my favorite city! There's so much to see and do, the people are so nice, and the atmosphere is just awesome no matter where you are or what the time of day! And on top of all of that, both times that I've been here, something unexpected and memorable has happened. Last Spring, the Pope passed away while we were here so I was able to see the city's reaction to that. This time, we happened to be here for a "one time only" FREE Elton John concert in front of the Colosseum! That was really cool!!! We didn't find out about the concert until Friday when we were doing tourist stuff, so we showed up ... read more
Today was our only full day in Florence, but it's been nice. Last night we were able to enjoy the Florence nighttime atmosphere since we arrived in the late afternoon, so today we headed out for a full day of museums. We started with the Uffizi Gallery where many famous paintings by Michaelangelo, Leonardo, and the other Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are displayed, then after a short detour to the doctor for Keith's sinus infection, we went to the Galleria Dell'Accademia where THE "David" sculpture is on display. It was pretty beautiful! During the day we also sprinkled in trips to the Ponte Vecchio (the famous Gold Bridge... they sell gold there, it isn't made of gold) and the Duomo, and did some walking throughout the city. I was able to make a brief trip to ... read more
