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September 10th 2008

Published: October 14th 2008

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Kelly and Kati

London

First day in London with Jess, Kayln, Kate, Stef, and Tricia

I started my Europe trip by flying from Boston to London on Friday September 5th, so my trip started 5 days later than Kelly's. I flew all day and arrived in London at night which made jet lag much easier to handle. I met up with Kate Stangl and went to where she is staying for her semester abroad in South Kensington. The area is beautiful! There were 4 other Thayer Academy grads in London that weekend and it was nice to see familiar faces in a new country. Three friends from Vanderbilt are also living in London this semester for internships so I got to see London with them as well. The first night we went to what I think was considered an Irish Pub in Picadilly Sqaure. It was pretty crowded and touristy. The second night we somehow managed to get into an exclusive club in Kensington where we sat at an absurdly expensive table- NBD. I saw a few of the sites during the day but plan on going back to visit everyone in London.

September 7-12 I visited Steve in Frederikshavn, Denmark where he is playing hockey. The closest city to fly into is Aalborg and

Frederikshavn

Steve and Jon's house

Frederikshavn is about 30 minutes away from there. It is a very small town with a walking street that has all the shops, bars, and restaurants. It's also right on the water with huge ferries that go to Sweden and Norway. Steve lives right in front of the hockey rink in a house with his friend Jon who he knows from home. They have a very small, purple car that doesn't have great brakes and apparently doesn't always turn on. Also, at the time the lights didn't work, so getting around town in it was interesting. We only really needed the car to drive into town a few times and to go out to dinner, but the center of town is less than a couple miles from their house, so it is easy to walk. Or as everyone in Denmark seems to do, bike. While Steve was at practice I ran on the bike paths and did a little exploring on my own which was nice. We went out to eat a few times but the food is pretty expensive and most of the time Steve and Jon cook. One thing thing Steve told me that I found pretty strange

frederikshavn4

colorful houses

was that no one uses their hands to eat; they cut their sandwiches with a fork and knife. I tried and it makes eating sandwiches MUCH less enjoyable, so I don't recommend it. Also, I was really craving my daily coffee but whenever I tried to get "take-away" coffee it was very expensive, extremely small, and always black. I miss my regular from Dunkin Donuts. I didn't meet a lot of Steve's other teammates but the few that I did meet were very nice and it seems like he likes his team a lot. In general the people there seemed very nice. They are all tall, skinny, and blonde. And even if the parents aren't blonde, the children are ALWAYS blonde, I didn't see a dark haired child once. As for the weather in Frederikshavn, when I visited it was cool and it seemed to rain at least once a day but it was light rain and we ended up still getting a lot of sunny weather. I don't know if that's the norm though. Overall I really liked the town and hopefully I will get to visit again soon.

I left on September 12th to fly to Paris

Stroget in Copenhagen

the beginning of the walking street, where I started out

but had a 9 hour layover in Copenhagen, so I put on my trail shoes (aka hybrids) and spent most of the time walking around. I got to explore a lot of the city for just being on foot. I started out on the Stroget, the big walking street with lots of shops and after 3 hours found myself in what looked like the ghetto. I realized I was exhausted and lost in a bad area, and eventually made my way back to the airport on the train to fly to Paris.

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