Røros, Day 1

We had a bit of drive today...4 hours from Östersund, Sweden to Røros, Norway. We got up a bit earlier than usual, availed ourselves of Hotell Emma's fabulous breakfast spread, and hit the road (after a brief stop for the groceries that needed to be kept cold).  Some of you may recognize Sheila's tasty seed-crackers...this is where she learned about them, and got the recipe!

It's kind of hard to get good pictures from a moving vehicle, but here are a few Sheila took along the way.  We drove past several well-known ski areas...Åsarna, Vemdalen, Tänndalen, and Funäsdalen, where we'll spend a week after our visit in Røros.  Lunch at a roadside cafe proved to be pizza--reindeer and cantarelle pizza, with cloudberry jam!

We found the "cozy flat on a farm" we booked with AirBnB quite easily....GPS is a wonderful invention when you're travelling!  It's near the village of Glåmos, about 10 minutes from Røros.

The necessities of life...

We didn't do much of anything that evening...settled in.  It's nice to be somewhere for a whole week!  The next day we drove on into Røros and had a look around, getting the lay of the land before the crowds arrive tomorrow.

Rørosmartnan has been an annual event by royal decree since 1854, though it has been happening much longer.  There are 250 sales booths, both indoors and out, no matter the weather.  There are also demonstrations of various historical skills, classes in woodworking and other crafts, folk music, and dancing.  More on this in the next post!

We walked along the icy, hilly streets (Røros was a copper-mining town, now a UNESCO Heritage Site), taking in the fairly uncluttered scenery.  Salespeople were busy setting up booths and laying out merchandise.

After that, we did a bit more grocery shopping and went home to fix dinner, after which Sheila braved the icy streets of Røros to go to the first dance of the week.  Sorry, no pics....she was dancing!

Östersund, Sweden

So.  Yesterday was a VERY tiring travel day.  We had to get up at 3:15, in order to be at the church by 4, to catch the small shuttle that took us to the bus station for the bus to the airport.  Edda had packed us some delicious sandwiches of smoked lamb and cheese on her fresh bread, which we ate on the bus (further confusing our bodies, which had just started to figure out what time zone we were in).

The waking-up-at-3:15 part was somewhat complicated by us using our phones as alarm clocks, which meant we had to leave them on, so the text dump that came in at midnight was more than normally annoying. Lars' phone has some sort of glitch where if you don't at least look at certain texts, it buzzes every 30 seconds until you do.  It's always some unknown and unwanted number.

We were the first stop for the shuttle, so at least we got seats.  Not everyone did, and the driver eventually had to call for another shuttle to finish his rounds.  We got to Keflavik by 5:30 and were all checked in within 15 minutes.  Security was quick and efficient, though this seems to be our year to be pulled over for random checks.  Sheila got the full treatment at DIA, Lars at Keflavik AND Arlanda.

We had a short time to spend in the IcelandAir lounge, where we had a bit of "second breakfast".  We got to our gate in good time, and are happy to report that they have added a LOT of seating on the concourse.

Then there was a very long wait to board the plane.  From where we were, we couldn't see if there was a plane or not.  All we could see was that staffers were coming and going with concerned looks on their faces.  Then several blinking vehicles drove up and parked.  More concerned faces.  No announcement at all. Lars finally went up and asked what was going on. "We have to complete boarding our priority passengers."  Since we had upgraded to Business Class, we had thought WE were priority passengers...they had tagged our suitcases "Priority baggage".  Finally we saw that one of the blinking vehicles was an ambulance, and realized that they had been loading someone with a major medical issue, plus 2 aides.  If they had only SAID as much....??

Despite leaving half an hour late, we arrived at Stockholm/Arlanda just about on time, having been served our 3rd breakfast on the way. Sheila was surprised to find that her favorite thing was cold oatmeal.  It had been cooked with cream and fruit juice and had nuts and seeds in it.  It was good that we had made up the time, because we had another flight to Östersund in 3 hours, on a different airline.  Passport control, pick up bags, walk 20 minutes through Sky City (airport shopping mall), check the bags back in, go through security for the 2nd time that day....and wait.

The flight to Östersund was PACKED!  There's some sort of major ski event in Åre this weekend, and it's technically the Östersund/Åre airport so....lots of fit young folks with ski bags, plus the usual (we assume) batch of businessmen headed home for the weekend.  (I now find that calling this "some sort of major ski event" is like calling the Super Bowl "something to do with sportsball".  It is, in fact, the FIS Alpine World Ski Chamionships, aka World Cup Finals.  So....pretty major.)

Picked up our rental car for the next 2 weeks...they upgraded us to a brand-new BMW 330i xDrive station wagon, with ALL the bells and whistles.  We might actually know how to drive it by the time we get back..  A kind of cool feature is that it projects your speed AND the current speed limit on the windshield, so you never have to take your eyes off the road.  And also you know if you're speeding...

Got the car parked in the garage a couple of blocks from Hotell Emma, where we have the same room as a couple of years ago.  Staggered out to find dinner and ended up at the Greek Grill a few blocks away.  Moussaka for Sheila, lambchops for Lars, and home to collapse into bed.

After sleeping for something like 10 hours, we had breakfast here at Hotell Emma (sorry, no pics.  Check back tomorrow!) and set off to find the ski rental place....and get more accustomed to the car.  We had some kind of bad info as to where to rent skis....Intersport has 2 locations here, and the first one we tried pretty obviously only SELLS skis.  So we got more practice with the car, and drove to the one at the Biathlon stadium.  Being Saturday, we had to wait a bit, as there were other customers. Once it was our turn, the guy was very surprised when we said we wanted the skis and poles for two weeks.  Part of the problem is that this location will close for the season on the 27th, and we won't be back until either the 28th or the 1st (depending on which is the better day for driving).  But he decided we could turn them in at the other location...he'll probably be there when we get back.  After much discussion about the type of skis (they don't rent anything much  like our own), we ended up with everything we need, and he gave us a discount since it's such a long rental.

Then, since Sheila's everyday boots proved no match for the ice at Station, we went back to the shopping center to get some ice cleats....which only come in way too small or slightly too large.  So she has the larger ones, just in case we find more places where the ice is deeper than the gravel and cinders put down for traction.  On advice from friends, we also stopped at Systembolaget to get wine and beer for the trip to Norway....alcohol is much cheaper in Sweden, apparently.

Sheila got to practice a bit with the car on the way back.  The parking garage is a significant challenge, especially since the car hollers at you when it thinks you're too close to something.  Once well into the parking space, it thought we were too close to things in front and on both sides.  Yeah, well....it's a parking garage.  It's just....it's a NEW car, and not a cheap one.  Makes one a bit nervous.

We also did some basic grocery shopping, as the store in Glåmos, Norway, is most likely to be closed when we arrive, as they have limited hours on Sundays.  We'll stop at the larger store on the way out of town tomorrow, to pick up a couple of things that need to be colder than the mini-fridge might keep them.

And of course, it wouldn't be a trip to Sweden without fika!  A mid-morning or mid-afternoon coffee break, preferably with something good to eat.  There is an excellent konditori a short block from Hotell Emma.  Sheila had a chocolate/rasberry mousse cake, and Lars had a....frog.  White cake and custard filling with a green marzipan shell.  The green marzipan is most commonly associated with a Princesstårta (Princess torte), so he decided this must be the frog the princess kissed. This theory was confirmed by the waitress.

Not so many photos today, but tomorrow is a driving day, so we hope to get some nice pics of the fells between here and Norway.

Reykjavik, Day 3--Perlan

We were feeling a lot better by this point, so wanted to do a bit more.  Even though it looked like this when we got up:

We had been hearing about a place called Perlan (The Pearl)--a museum built in some former water-storage tanks on a hill in Reykjavik.  We had seen it on other trips--it's hard to miss, being on top of a hill and crowned with a glass dome.  There's a restaurant in the dome, with a 360-degree view of Reykjavik and an observation deck around the outside. But the rest of it had sounded awfully "touristy"---an indoor ice-cave and bird-cliff and a few other things that we've seen in real life. So we weren't too sure.  But it turned out to be worth it on many levels.

One level was the walk from Eric the Red to Perlan, though the 4" of fresh, fluffy snow.  It took about 20 minutes, crossing under a couple of freeways, over city streets, and finally climbing the hill through a small forest!

The view was unparlleled, the exhibits were better than anticipated, and there were a couple of nice panoramic films about the aurora.  If there is one thing Iceland does very well, it's their museums.  the bird cliff had these "binoculars" that directed you to specific spots on the cliff, and then showed a short animated film of life on a bird cliff....like an auk's egg about to roll off the cliff, and nesting puffins, and a baby bird's first plummet into the ocean.

Lots of other interactive displays....I wish there was a way to show the one where you stand in a specific spot and direct the evolution of a fish down one of several pathways by waving your arms, so that it "eats" certain things, becoming an ocean fish or a lake-dweller or river fish, depending on your choices.  A full-body video game!  And after the ice cave, there was a table display of Iceland's main glacier Vatnajökull (Europe's largest glacier), and by turning a wheel around the edge of the table, you could take the glacier from 300 years ago up to the current projections for 2200, when it is predicted to be almost totally gone.  Sobering.

The interior is spectacular.  Here are a few random shots from various points, including a waterfall made up of the names of all the 200-some waterfalls around Iceland, and a curtain made of chainmail fabric that Sheila found fascinating.

Somewhere in the middle of the 4 hours we spent there, we ate lunch at the cafe in the dome.  This was described as Avocado Toast:

The views from the observation deck were as spectacular as could be, although I think if we'd gone outside before lunch, it wouldn't have been quite so cloudy.  You're supposed to be able to see Snaefellsjökull, but it wasn't happening this day.

The walk home was more of an adventure than anticipated, because Google Maps had a different path in mind than we could find, and for some reason we couldn't find the path we had walked up on.  But it's a huge advantage to staying at Eric the Red, that you can always find your way home by sighting towards Hallgrimskirkjan, which is visible from anywhere.

For our last meal, it was back to Cafe Loki--we had done plenty of walking for this day.  Sheila took Edda's advice and got the plokkfiskur again.  Edda thinks Loki's is the best there is, and it was certainly more as expected.  Lars got the meat soup again.  Both came with large slices of delicious dark rye bread.

Then it was home to bed for an EARLY start the next day.

Reykjavik Day 2

I have no idea why, but Blogspot just ate the post I was working on. So, starting over....it's harder with just a tablet and phone. Somehow, an attempt to move a photo erased the whole post. So I'm just using the basic format this time.

Pretty much a "do nothing much" day. We both slept great, almost missing breakfast! Dressed and downstairs in 5 minutes, just under the wire.

Gorgeous weather, so we walked down to Tjörnin (The Pond) to look at the usual winter collection of waterfowl. Graylag geese, trumpeter swans, mallards, and tufted ducks, with 3 or 4 wigeons for variety.

Having had a late breakfast, we weren't ready for lunch yet, so walked around the main part of the pond. Even though we understand that the sun doesn't get very high in the winter, it was still a surprise to see how long our shadows were at noon!

We had lovely sandwiches at the bakery Kornið, and got a cinnamon roll for later. The coffee is so good here in Iceland!

Back up the hill to Eric the Red for a quiet afternoon, where we were greeted by our host Raggi.

The point of the Iceland stopover is for us to recover from the jetlag, not to overdo things. Went out again for dinner at Salka Valka, one of our favorites. Lars loves their fish soup  and Sheila usually gets the plokkfisk. She was disappointed by the change to the recipe this time. It was still good, but not AS good as previously.