Oslo, day 1

We finally made it Oslo late last night. Izzy says the Airports in Iceland and Oslo look like Ikea's. They are efficient and well layed out. We could learn a thing or two from these Norsky's.
We are rested again, but at this time of year the sun comes up at 3:30 AM and goes down around 10ish, so my circadian rhythm is still off by half a beat.

The city ignores the sun for a few hours, so I lay awake for two hours with only the squawk of ravens and the sunshine. The kids were even slower to get moving, which was expected. They have trouble keeping up with their elders. We brunched at Kaffebrenniet, which is hip and tasty. There are a lot of young people in rolled up shorts or skinny jeans and tee-shirts, riding bikes or strolling. The men are pushing strollers as often as the women and nobody seems to be in a hurry. We walked West to the Royal palace and then on to Frogner park, busy with families relaxing and full of sculptures depicting people in all stages of life and relationship with each other. We took our pictures with them, adding ourselves to their commentaries.

We made the mistake of hitting the most touristy part of town for Lupper and after giving up waiting to be seated at the first place we tried, wound up having American style pizza. The waitress assumed we were Norwegian and said something very strange. When we looked at her uncomprehendingly, she tried English; "What would you like to drink?" Wow, that was not what I would have guessed. For all I knew she had asked something about our level of skill playing a game involving a cat, a beanbag chair and waffles.

After eating we hit the Nobel Peace Museum by the water front and learned about Malala and I managed not to weep in public. Then we climbed to the top of the city's fortress and watched a cruise ship set out from the harbor as the sun sat low, setting the boats and buildings off in brilliant colors and high contrast. We hiked home and played volleyball on a nearby soccer pitch until 10:00 PM. Phew!

We made it to Reykjavik for our Blue Lagoon Stopover!

Quick flight to Iceland and here we are...arriving on July 26th after a smooth 6 hour journey, we deplaned to a surreal moonscape shaped by volcanic mountains in the distance and enveloped in an overcast and rainy blanket of a new country. Adventure awaits at the Blue Lagoon, a geothermal pool and spa favorite of tourists who find themselves hovering in the middle of the northern Atlantic en route to Europe. Iceland is beautiful and so are the people-we look forward to our two day stopover upon our return to Denver in August. For now, I can't imagine a better way to begin our adventure than to SIT STILL and enjoy a warm thermal pool...after all, it's only 50 degrees here.) 

The pool is a cozy 100 degrees and offers the benefits of a mineral dip accompanied by freely accessed vats of  pasty white silica gel (like yogurt) to spread all over your body. In fact, swimmers (American, Icelandic, German and Canadian as we observed) applied it with wreckless abandon assured by other visitors of its miracle skin-softening qualities but nobody was really sure it did anything other than test your own ability to spread the stuff evenly-or-not onto your pasty white body. One guy even dipped his whole beautiful bald head in it and proudly walked around the lagoon feeling he was among those of similar ilk.

The most enjoyable part was observing  this beautiful cultural soup of language and bodies and smiles sharing the pot for this moment. Now...on to Oslo-the heritage homeland of Ivan and the kids. 

WHAT????!!!!$$$&&@ You're leaving??

We love our fur babies. They are perpetual toddlers and offer unconditional love in good times and bad. They communicate easily and have very simple needs. This is the mentality I would like to impart on our own family of two-legged as we depart for a continent thousands of miles from here. Our ways should be as simple as that of our pets. I know, however, that the human agenda is far more complex and...well...we have teenagers. That said, it is a world quite known to us as far as communication challenges and we will be prepared for taking in the wonders of Europe together-even if our moods don't always match.

As for the dogs and the cat, Margo and Robert are now entrusted with their care and they will undoubtedly continue to fall in love with our fur babies...as long as we can exit our bathroom to get to the airport.:)

It's getting real...

22:10 and we are ALMOST packed...

PACKING...Finally!

From Deirdre...

The week has been long-longer than I could have imagined as I learned how to be a 'lady of leisure'-with 7 medical appointments, volunteer/work related meetings, violin performances, and some actual leisure time playing volleyball with Izzy and getting to know the kids between 9 and 5. Most of you will likely pass judgment quickly to say I have not yet learned how to be 'leisurely' so I will take any and all advice on how to SIT STILL...or maybe an endless flight to Iceland will help with that task:) 

The house sitters have arrived!

Margo and Robert arrived yesterday, a bit earlier than we expected, but that's for the better because they are lovely people so the extra time to get acquainted has been great.

True to our style, (cramming 10 pounds of stuff into a 5 pound sack), we also had the new neighbors over for cocktails. The dogs, the neighbors and the house-sitters all got familiar and everyone was very well behaved... even the dogs.

I'm afraid we went on about our city and our neighborhood, so much so that I started to wonder why we would ever want to leave it for vacation! Denver is a great city, but I know there's better gelato in Italy, and there's probably some other neat stuff. We went to dinner at the Rio on Blake and even though it was a bit on the late side, the place was lively and packed and the food was good.

I'm working today, struggling not to go into full vacation mode prematurely. It seems the universe has conspired to make me earn every minute of this vacation in the week leading up to it. There is still a lot of preparation to do, like packing, and I'm missing a few articles of clothing, like pants, shoes and socks. I hear they wear pants in Europe.

From Deirdre..

How do I feel right now? I am preparing in the next hour to leave a job after 9 wonderful years, planning to attend a weekend wedding in New York, then coming home for a week to pack for Europe. I feel like the world awaits and it's mine for the taking...and SOOO much to do before we actually leave - my biggest fear - NOT MAKING OUR FLIGHT!!! In typical hilarious Oss fashion -we push it until the last minute-we forget identification, underwear, tickets, etc.  Most of what we need is online, so as long as we get WIFI in the corners we visit, we feel like success is at our doorstep. :)
 So which parts of the world will we take advantage of first?

ICELAND! 

We'll start in Iceland, land of the midnight sun, to take in a day trip while awaiting our flight to Oslo, Norway. We will spend 3 wonderful days in Norway exploring city and country.

OSLO



We will jet set to Amsterdam for a five-day staycation and day travel around the City by bicycle, by train around Benelux visiting Belgium, Brussels and everything we can in between.

AMSTERDAM


Next Stop: The Rhine River Valley in Germany en route to Switzerland then Italy where we will spend our last of three weeks with my mom's family who will travel to Italy to celebrate multiple retirements, birthday milestones, and well...lots of good wining and dining!

Here's the castle in Germany that - if we can actually find it-will host us for two nights of R&R before our next leg south.

CASTLE LIEBENSTEIN


I'll save the next half for when we actually figure it out. We have a couple of unplanned days to head south, so each kid will get a day to plan, figure out the train system, and tell us where we are going. Nothing will go wrong with that plan, surely...

Stay Tuned!!!!