New blog for travel posts

If you’re interested in getting travel updates while I’m in Scandinavia, I’ve set up a new blog here: www.ishouldbetraveling.wordpress.com

Stupid blogger is no longer supporting their iPad app, which made it impossible to update from my iPad...so Wordpress it is! I’ll be back in this space when I return to the states.

Scandanivia Day 1 and 2

Quick note: I’m having problems uploading pictures to this, so for now you’ll just have to imagine how it all looks. Stupid technology...

The first 48 hours on our Scandinavian adventure have been a whirlwind! We flew from Minneapolis overnight into Amsterdam, and after a short layover into we arrived in Copenhagen. 

After retrieving our luggage and meeting our guide Ken, as well as a few others from our group who’d arrived earlier, we were off on a tour of the city. We made stops at the Royal Palace Amalienborg and along the harbor to see the little mermaid statue, looking out to the sea.

The weather was a balmy 79 degrees out, bright and sunny, and being outdoors and getting some fresh air helped with the jet lag. A big first impression was the huge numbers of bicyclists out on the streets. Our guide explained this was due to the high cost of gas (something like $10 a gallon), as well as cars (a 30k car costs more like 90k here). There are wide bike lanes everywhere, and cyclists have the right of way over pedestrians, which means us green tourists had to be on the constant lookout. So far none of us have been mown over, fingers crossed.

We got to our hotel at 5, a historic place right on a big main square in the middle of lots of action. I was dying for a shower, but we had just time for a quick catnap before meeting in the hotel restaurant for dinner. Our meal was divine! We started with a crab salad appetizer topped with pickled sea buckthorn, tiny little round cucumber balls along with a flat lacy disc of seaweed and small pansies for garnish. Our main dish was pork tenderloin served with pickled pumpkin slices, shaved root vegetables and tiny little buttery potatoes. Delicious!

I was running on fumes by then, so as soon as I was finished eating I headed back to our room for a quick shower. Put my earplugs in and face mask on, and I was out like a light.

We set our alarm for 6:45 this morning, and after a slow start (why is everything so hard to find in a suitcase?) we headed down for breakfast, which was an extravagant buffet with every possible breakfast food, and even some surprises like thin discs of chocolate, and a bowl of cucumbers. I especially enjoyed croissants with rich danish butter and cloudberry and the cappuccino machine. Something about European coffee is just the best.

We were on the bus by 8, and met our guide for the day, a local guy named Klaus. He took us to another royal palace, Christiansborg Palace, which is where royal reception rooms are, as well as parliament. We got a quick overview of how the danish government works, which I think is so interesting. Because they have a multi party system, no single party has power for long, which encourages consensus building among lawmakers - quite a difference over our completely partisan politics in the US today!

From there, we drove out into the suburbs, where we visited Klaus’ small municipality. Because he’s on the village council, he had the keys to the small village church, built in the 11th century. We popped in for a quick look, only our group had so many questions about how parishes work and who pays taxes for what and to who, and who joins the church and how, and how come not enough people go to church that we ended up staying for almost an hour. Our group is mostly made up of conservative fundamentalists, and minds were blown over the whole business.

Once we finally got everyone back on the bus, we drove another 10 miles or so to the city of Roskilde. Our first stop there was the Viking ship museum. In the 1960’s they discovered that five Viking ships had been buried in the harbor as a blockade to protect the town from attack. While escalating the shops they found a bunch more, and built a museum in order to preserve everything. It was a fascinating place, and really pretty too, right on the water. I could have stayed for a few hours easily, but time was short so we just got an hour there. 

We were ready for lunch by then, so our guide let us loose in the pretty downtown of Roskilde, where the main pedestrian street had plenty of shops and cafes. I didn’t want a whole meal, just a snack, so we were happy to find a grocery store and got thing like chips, chocolate, a banana, some tuna dip, and ate it picnic-style on a bench. 

After a stroll through town, we met for a tour of Roskilde cathedral, where all the kings and queens of Denmark have been buried since it was constructed in the 12 century. Our guide explained to us that different royal families were buried in various chapels, and you could tell how well the economy was doing at the time by how grand the chapel was. 

We drove back to our hotel, and I was definitely ready for a nap by then, but managed to stay awake while we just rested in our hotel for 45 minutes before heading across the street to Tivoli Gardens for dinner. I’d heard Ticoli described as an amusement park, which didn’t sound all the exciting to me, but I loved it! It’s quaint and pretty, with lots of gardens and whimsical shops and restaurants. We enjoyed another delicious dinner at a restaurant called Groften, and by the time we were through it was dark, and we had fun walking through it and enjoying seeing everything all lit up. 

We leave for Sweden tomorrow, and I’m ready for another good nights sleep (fingers crossed!)

Vacation Time!

I know I've been away a lot lately - it seems that all my travel for this year is being crammed into about a three month timeframe!

I'll be spending the next two weeks touring around Denmark, Sweden and Norway, all countries I've never been to before, so it's exciting.

As on previous big trips, I'll try and blog a little every day so people back home can keep tabs on what I'm up to, so stay tuned if you're into that sort of thing.

Friday Finish: Panache

Hiking at Hurricane Ridge

Well, hellooo! It's been a few weeks, hasn't it? My last post was before I spent a week in WA state out on the Olympic Peninsula, and it was a wonderful visit. We rented an wonderful little cottage on the shores of Lake Crescent, and between that and the amazing hiking, and the delecious seafood, I didn't want to come home.

Our cottage

View from the cottage

Every day I'd take a dip in the amazing baptismal waters of this lake, soak in the beauty of this place and give thanks for being able to be there.

Each fall my church does a ritual where we all bring a little jar of water from a place we've visited during the summer or from somewhere that's sacred to us. We combine all our various little jars to symbolize us coming together again after our summer adventures and recommit to each other and our values that guide and sustain us. I've got my little vial of Lake Crescent water to to merge with everyone else's this Sunday, and I think it's so cool how certain places on this earth can sustain and nurture our spirits when the world seems so unsettling.

But, I digress! Back to quilts and Friday Finishes! This one was a long time coming, wasn't it?

The applique was the most intricate I've ever done, and since it was all assembled with glue, the top was really stiff afterwards. I took the risk of soaking it in the tub for a few hours, cringing as the water turned color from dyes coming out of the fabric. I quickly changed the water a few times until it was clear, and all turned out fine. I wrung it out by rolling it up and walking all over it in the tub and then carefully spread it out in a spare bedroom to dry. Amazingly, it all seemed to work out just fine.

The final challenge was quilting it, and I did a combination of things - I cross-hatched the outside wide border, taking great care to mark each line so it would all be even. I think that part took the longest. Inside the border I did some micro-stipping, and then just a bunch of my old standbys - squiggly lines, spirals, figure 8's...it all worked. 

The backing is the same one I used for the "Folk Flower" quilt, since I had just enough for this, and it seemed in keeping with the floral front. I hand-finished the binding. 

So, that finally wraps up this challenge! It was fun to do something outside my norm, and every time I do applique a learn a little something more.