This is our third and final night in St. Petersburg. Our days have been chockfull of activities, our tour trying to cram as much in our three days here as possible. Monday night I slept for four hours straight, and that turned out to be it, my third night in a row without adequate sleep. So on Tuesday I lasted until mid-afternoon, and then had the very unusual (for me) experience of feeling tired. This is a relatively unique occurrence for me, but without enough sleep for several nights even exciting days in a foreign country can feel heavy at times. And on Tuesday we had hardly any down time at all to catch our breath, which is actually the way I prefer to travel. Tuesday morning we visited the Hermitage, Peter the Great's (and other ... read more

Stockholm is lovely. An archipelago of fourteen islands, it is a gorgeous city full of wonderful things to do. We had only one day to explore Sweden's capital city, our last day of this trip. Yesterday afternoon as soon as we arrived at our outlier hotel, Bill and I along with two of our adventurous friends spent time at the front desk figuring out the best way to get into the city. The four of us had wanted to take one of the free walking tours of the Old Town part of Stockholm, Gamla Stan, the original city center, and this tour met at 5:30PM so we hoped we could get there in time. From our hotel it was not a clear run into the city; we had to walk several minutes, then take a bus ... read more

All in all we spent five nights in Norway, travelling from one side of the country to the other and then back again further north. Our first stop was in Oslo, and then we had part of a morning's respite north of the Telemark area where we had a much too short visit to the Vemork Museum, learning about heavy water and the history of the plant that was blown up in WWII. This is an amazing museum; our young guide, Simon, was an exceptional teacher. Most of our group wanted to spend more time here as those who knew about this plant were fascinated by the information offered, and those of us who hadn't known about heavy water wanted to learn more. But on this tour there was never enough time; we always had to ... read more

Since I was nine years old I have wanted to travel to Norway and other foreign countries. In my 4th grade geography book I got lost in several captivating photos of Norway, and dearly wanted to go and live there myself. Mountains, and snow, fiords and lakes everywhere, smiling tall people with long white-blond hair wearing beautiful knitted wool sweaters, it all captured my imagination and wouldn't let go. I also wanted to see the tulips in Amsterdam, and bike along the canals there, flying by ancient windmills and seeing Dutch families living in windmills and wearing their white cornered hats and wooden shoes. It was such an exciting and exotic world to see, but I was stuck in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with only my feet and streetcars to take me anywhere, if I was even allowed ... read more

The shuttle from our B&B in Montego Bay met us at the airport (where our bus from Kingston had let us off), deposited us at our hotel, and promptly disappeared. Once we were ensconced we wanted to go exploring, and we needed food and water. Learning that the beach/town shuttle only ran twice each day, and that we had missed the last run, we wondered how we were to get into town, given that everyone said it was too far to walk. The lovely woman at the front desk spoke with another employee who was finishing her work for the day, and asked her if she would show us where to catch a taxi into town. Andrea was willing, and the three of us walked down the hill and waited until the right taxi came by. ... read more