Sunday 2 March 2008 The flight into Copenhagen was very bumpy due to strong winds. The offshore wind turbines (photo) hinted to us that strong winds were quite common there but it would be until we’d actually visited in Copenhagen that we would learn that the Danish winds are not only strong, they are constant and they are icy arctic winds... brrr! Our plane bumped along, swayed from side to side in the gusts and finally - and unexpectedly - had a perfectly smooth landing at Copenhagen airport. Three cheers to the pilot... and the autopilot! From the airport we caught [View Full Entry]

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Sunday 24 February 2008 Back in Oslo we were all exhausted after the long drive so we opted for an easy yet delicious dinner of smuggled Swedish salmon and an early night. Monday 25 February 2008 We woke late in the morning to find that while we were away for the weekend, Spring had arrived in Oslo (photo). The snow had melted, the trees were budding, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. Despite the lovely weather, it unfortunately wasn’t a day to be basking in it. James was moving house so we needed to move out too. We [View Full Entry]

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Friday 22 February 2008 With James’ car filled to the brim with ski gear and beer that had been chilled in the ‘fridge’ (photo), meaning that it had been put on the balcony to be snowed on overnight, we drove off into the mountains on our way to Hemsedal. The road was icy and increasingly snowy as we left Oslo and drove to higher altitudes. Light snow was falling and the landscape was just stunning (photos). As night fell we continued driving and the snow became increasingly heavier. With the headlights on, it looked like driving through the opening scene for [View Full Entry]

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Monday 18 February 2008 As if it wasn’t bad enough that Flight Centre had issued our tickets later than promised, that their travel route advice was ridiculously uninformed, nor that the overcharged us a significant amount for taxes which took us a month to get refunded - only when we stepped onto our plane to Norway (photo), squeezed into our tiny seats and read the purchasable menu did we realise that our travel agent had booked us un a budget fight on ‘SAS Norge’ instead of ‘SAS’ - GGGGRRRR! At later examination we found that most of the remaining flights in [View Full Entry]

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Friday 15 February 2008 Eight ours later, including a scheduled 45 minute stop in Zaragoza which we didn’t know about, we arrived in Barcelona. Despite being after 6pm the main post office was still open so Michael collected his international driving licence from the Poste Restante while Barbara minded the luggage at the metro station. We then caught the train to Sant Cugat to visit Barbara’s cousin Laura and her family once again. We arrived to find Paul, Marti and Josep happily playing with their friends Gabriel and Marian (photo). We ate a delicious pasta dinner and chatted for hours over [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday 12 February 2008 We arrived in Madrid in the evening and navigated easily from the bus station to the city centre on the metro. We wound our way around the very busy Puerta del Sol and found our hostel nearby. We arrived to find Sant Jordi Hostel very newly refurbished and very clean and tidy. The staff were quite friendly and advised us where we could find food nearby to cook. We ducked out to the supermarket to hunt for some dinner, didn’t buy the strange bread that was available (photo), grabbed some simple pasta and vegetables and went back [View Full Entry]

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Spain - San Sebastian & Bilbao Sunday 10 February 2008 Between the train changes, a suspicious-looking character hanging around outside our compartment all night and a loud character down the hall who figured himself a train conductor constantly yelling at us for locking the door to our compartment due to the previously mentioned suspicious character, we didn’t get much sleep during the night. So when the train rocked into San Sebastian in the wee hours of the morning we were exhausted! We stumbled through the town for about 20 minutes until we found the hostel located only metres from the beach [View Full Entry]

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Friday 8 February 2008 Our bus arrived at Porto bus station early afternoon. The ‘bus station’ was basically a big shed which was half way through being renovated. There being no signs in sight to direct us anywhere, probably because of the renovation, so we enquired at the information desk. The instructions from our hostel advised catching a Metro to it. In Barbara’s best attempt at Portuguese she asked “Metro? Por favour”. To attempt Portuguese probably wasn’t a good idea because then the man proceeded to rattle off Portuguese instructions to us at 1000 words per minute. Our best interpretation of [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday 5 February 2008 Over the rolling hills of Portugal we drove, around the southern coastline, past the popular seaside town of Faro, and up the western coastline towards Lisbon. We stopped at a service station along the way for the driver’s rest break. We weren’t excited by buying dinner from a diner with such a name (photo). It was quite late when we arrived in Lisbon so we caught a train from the bus station to the city and went straight to our hostel. Gladly, our hostel was very well located in the city so we only had to walk [View Full Entry]

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Saturday 2 February 2008 Our bus arrived in Seville after 8pm and it was almost 8:30pm by the time we found our way to Seville Samay Hostel and checked in. Reception warned us that the next day most of the shops would be closed and would close at 9pm that night so we should hurry to get groceries before they shut. Accordingly we darted over to the supermarket to have them shut the door in our face at 8:45pm - GRUNT! We resorted to scavenging dinner from the minimart next door to the hostel and then off to bed. Samay Hostel [View Full Entry]

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