Nordic Cool

First, we had a sweet visit from Roberts and Chapin (otherwise known as Natalie and Adam) right after we got home from Greece. It was a fun night out filled with laughter, curries, and a lot of pints. Good times. Visitors are fun.

I think it was all the curry, but I was sick for the next week with a cold again. Maybe it was just the Manchester cold that gave me a cold, or as our friends in Scotland call it "The Dampness". Well, I was sure laid out for a bit, but Heather was very kind and took great care of me and fed me soup to feel better. It was only Mr. Noodles and I did have to boil the water myself, but it was kind of her to get it out of the cupboard for me. She even put the pot on the stove! I appreciate it, honey.

After mostly getting better it was time to get back on the ol' travel trail, as we had not travelled since we got in from Greece, eight days previous. It's ridiculous. I know.

I've had a strong infatuation with Helsinki for some time now. I think it all started with a t-shirt that I bought on sale that had a logo of the 1954 Winter Olympics on it. I also enjoy snowy climates and feel they often get the short shrift by tourism for being frozen solid in the winter months. I'm not advocating winter travel to ice cold destinations filled only with herring and reindeer, but this is the fall and I wanted to go. And badly. I knew it would be expensive too, but I really had no idea how expensive. Please just keep your fingers crossed for us that we can buy back our wedding rings from the pawn shop before heading home.

It's also kind of hard to say no to countries that you want to visit that share borders with the places you are going. I mean, how could we not go to Denmark too? I wouldn't want Denmark or any Danes to be upset with us. We capitulated and started off from Copenhagen.

You all know how much I love to fly too, so get this: we left Manchester to Copenhagen in a hurricane. Well, I think it was downgraded to a tropical storm by the time we left, but it was W-I-N-D-Y. I think I'd cancel the trip next time and swim to Denmark.

OK--Enough preamble!

Copenhagen was wonderful. Again, another easily accessible, clean, artistic, and smart-looking European capital city. Besides the cost, it was almost perfect, although it was super flat (but once you start complaining about the topography you can take off).

We walked around (maybe a little too much) and scampered over to Nyhaven to procure the hands-down, second best sandwich I have ever had in my entire life.

The meat was a carpaccio of some sort of game (elk, caribou?). It was melt-in-your-mouth good. The bread was nutty and soft. Arugula (or Rocket if you prefer). Sweet Mustard. Tomatoes. Unreal.
(btw, the best sandwich I've ever had in my life is waaaayyyy too long of a story for this blog. You'll have to buy me a drink and I'll tell it to you).

It could have been a bit warmer out for our taste, but it was still a great area. Oh, Heather's sandwich was good, but not even close to mine.

The Danes (and Scandinavians) really know their architecture and we loved wandering and looking at the monumental buildings. We should have taken the canal cruise to get a good look at them all, but ran out of time.

This is the Opera House. It wasn't my favorite building, but I had the best picture of it. The underside of the front overhang was reflective and picked up the water and front atrium spectacularly and that doesn't really show up in the photo. I blame the flat light. Wait, I blame Heather. She took it. Way to go Heather.

This is some crazy orange, Danish, tudor-style complex that we snuck into.

We worked our way down to the Danish design museum. I was really excited to see it as the Danes were kind of the world leaders of international design from the 50s to the 80s (if not still). The museum had a retrospective of a famous Danish designer. It was cool, but something looked a bit off. Judge for yourselves.

I know right? Just off a little.

Anyway, the museum was ok for the first third, then we hit the contemporary stuff and we almost stole it all for our house. It was the coolest stuff!!!! Chairs, phones, houses, couches. I particularily enjoyed the three Jacobsen chairs. He was a famous Danish designer who put together a whole hotel (the SAS). He was the architect and made everything in the whole hotel including three 'new' chairs. Heather forgot to take a picture of them though. They did have a cool fabric exhibit, which led to portraits of us.

We walked up and checked out the little mermaid statue. It was cool, but really sad as some woman was pouring out the ashes of her husband in front of the statue while her parents took pictures and she cried.

That night we ended up, well, throwing down on dinner. We went to Kiin Kiin, the only Michelin starred Thai resturant in the world. It was extravagant and totally excessive and so unbelievably good it's really hard to explain. Hands down the best meal we have had. The pictures aren't the best--you know who's fault it is.

The third course, scallops.

Dessert- coconut ice cream, dried coconut, frozen coconut and caramel. Sounds boring? It was insane.

Dang it was good. Walked home along this.

The next day we walked down the street to the train station and jumped aboard to Stockholm. It was a pretty fun train ride, even though we were facing the wrong direction (I don't like sitting backwards). Heather was able to work, while I watched some guy's laptop through the seat crack in front of us (Fair Game with Sean Penn. It was very entertaining even without sound). Two observations about the Swedish countryside: 1) There are a lot of lakes. They are mostly small, but it seemed like there was a new one every few kilometers. They are all surrounded by idyllic cabins too. 2) We passed a lot of farmland and there were no derelict vehicles, refrigerators, or anything broken down on the land. Very different from other rural places I've seen.
We stayed in Sodermalm. Please excuse my lack of umlauts, I don't know how to make them on my keyboard and I'm pretty sure I'll never need to use them again in my life. They are cool though. Our hotel was small, very small. I was kind of surprised how small it was even though it was called Three Small Rooms. Go figure. It was very centrally located and the neighborhood was ultra cool. We headed out to the local beer hall and I had reindeer stew while Heather feasted on a plate of Swedish meatballs. The meat balls were good, but the lingon berries on the side were the bomb. I think Ikea sells them, but I never thought they would be so tasty!

The buildings around Stockholm were a bit surprising. All of the buildings are very similar. As we later found out, many of them were built or approved by a government department from the 50s onward. This department was focused on functionalism and they are mostly just square blocks. Once you get out of Soldermalm there are more grandiose flats that kind of resemble old brownstones, but I just figured there would be more 'monumental' architecture everywhere.

We walked around the first day, mostly shopping, looking at ultra cool clothes that were too much money. We did manage to find the two stores in Stockholm that were having sales and picked up some threads.

Here is a giant hall dedicated to all meats Swedish.

We were both too wimpy to try the smoked eel, and they just looked too scary to eat. The lox and smoked salmon were nice and fresh (compared to the fish in ol' Manny), but still didn't measure up to Van.

It was also mushroom season in Scandinavia. That is a heap of Chanterelles!

We just recently watched "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" and there was a big car chase through this park. See if you can spot it if you watch the movie.

The next morning was my birthday. Barf. I wasn't too happy about it as I am no longer in my early thirties and I really enjoyed my early thirties. Dang, I'm almost 40! I hope no one buys my a chicken. I wanted to go and get a simple tattoo in Stockholm that just said '35' but Heather talked me out of it and instead I got a tattoo that she picked.

I think it looks good.

For however much it sucked, I had a very nice birthday. We started off with a cruise to the island park of Djurgarten and a nice long walk.

I knew that Stockholm was an island city, but I thought it was one big island. It's pretty cool, the city is actually like 40 small islands, so you are always really close to the water. Very comforting for two people from Vancouver.

We then jumped back on the Metro and headed to the library. Why the library? Turns out, it's the coolest library you will ever go to. It was really neat. I don't think the pictures do it justice.

We then jetted back downtown to the photography museum for an exhibit on Robert Maplethorpe. I had seen a few of his pictures, but never a whole exhibition. They were really stunning (and sometimes shocking). I've never seen anyone else get as close to showing the body looking like classic Greek sculpture in photographs.

Heather then took me out for another cruise to Skeppsolmen Island for dinner. I love cruises.

I had the apple smoked cod with apples and mussels. It was devine.

Then dessert in Gamlastan. Raspberry pie and custard with old style hot chocolate. A fantastic birthday indeed! Thanks Heather and Stockholm---you will always be the bomb, on my chest.

The next morning was incredibly surprising. We flew to Helsinki and had a smooth flight with minimal sweating and no panic!!! Unreal!!!! The cool nordic winds calmed my heart. (Well, until we flew home). Still, it was an encouraging sign.

I do believe I've pulled a CanManc longshot, meaning it's been too many days writing about one trip (I started on Monday and it's now Friday) so I'll just leave Helsinki and Tallinn for the next one. And soon--I'm running out of days!

Blast-er from the Past-er

Ahhhh. Last November Bliss. That is not a shark.

Manny Cats!

Oh Manny Cats. How we've missed you. You specifically, Mabel.

Later,

CC

The Search for Sea Urchins

It's quite childish, but I call sea urchins 'pokers' and I hate them. My ageing eyeballs are ever vigilant for those pokey little bastards and I refuse to step on one. In the Adriatic and other parts of the Med the devil's spines are everywhere, but I had yet to see one in Greece by the time we had left Santorini. I was quite ecstatic about this, however I truly believed they were lurking under the next rock shelf, just waiting to embed their quills in my sweet, tender feet.  Well, I did find them on the rest of the islands and am happy to pass on to you the final score was: Colin 1, Pokers 0.

After Santorini we left the cruise ship/tourist beat and hit the smaller less tourist(y) islands of the little cyclades. We wanted to add a little spice too, so we didn't book any hotels and decided just to rock up on the ferries and take what we could get. Adventure! Yahoooo!

This story actually reminds me of an old Saturday Night Live sketch--It was one of those commercial spoofs that happened right after the opening monologues. It was a take on the Guess jeans adds of the early 90s, but it was for Bad Idea Jeans. I tried explaining Bad Idea Jeans to my softball team this summer, but it just didn't translate. I've tried looking for in on the internet too, but to no avail. So for those of you who remember it, Heather and I were both wearing Bad Idea Jeans when we decided not to book accommodations in advance when travelling the islands in the high season.

Oh well. It was still great, it just might have made for a few stressful afternoons.

The ferries themselves were fun. I like to call them cruises, so our cruises were fun. When we travelled around the lesser cyclades we were on a ferry/cruise ship called the Express Skopelites. The Greeks run their ferries a little bit more haphazardly than the safety conscious Canadians. Actually, I shouldn't say safety conscious, as the Greeks employ an anarchistic method of loading and unloading the ferries/cruises. This method is usually orchestrated by one man's heavily cigarette and ouzo influenced voice yelling instructions from a pulpit. He kind of sounds like a Greek version of Wolfman Jack (but with less cadence and more fear of capsizing).

Anyway, here is some unloading and loading. The second one isn't the Express Skopelitis, but the big ferry we took back to Athens. Strangely, they employed the same strategy of mass chaos when loading.

Our first stop was Naxos. The books said it was overrun with tourists and too busy. In reality, it was very Greek and filled with Greek tourists budging in line to get ice creams. I guess when the books meant touristy they actually just meant 'services'. We ate at a hybrid Thai/Indian place and loved it. The Greek food was great, but having those tastes sure made us homesick (for Vancouver and Manchester). We had a nice hotel with a great view for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, when looking for our hotel Heather tripped on the cobblestone streets and cracked up her big toe, which limited our hiking for the next week. Bummer. Anyway, here are some pics, but I'll have a lot more from when we returned through Naxos on our way home.

From Naxos we hopped on the Express Skopelitis---WAIT--Have I mentioned anything about Greeek service? I don't think so. I can do it quite quickly. There isn't any. We waited 35 minutes to buy a ferry ticket in Naxos. Time to buy the ticket? 2 minutes. We had about 7 Greeks budge in front of us. They most definitely do not know how to queue.
Well, off to Iraklia. We landed and wow--nice place.

Too nice. No hotels, hostels, homestays, or rooms on the island for the night. Adventure!? Boooooooooo. We ended up talking to a nice hotel owner who took us for a quick tour around the island to see if anyone had availability in his convertible---I love convertibles! We ended up deciding to go to the next island, Schinousa, and he hooked it up so that we would get picked up by his 'friend' at the ferry and taken to his hotel. We were very grateful and very happy that it all worked out, but let's just say it wasn't the nicest place we have ever stayed in our lives. We broke contract with them the next day and found a fantastic hotel for super cheap down the road and our Schinousa fun really took off.

Schinousa was our favorite of all the Greek islands. It was really quiet and laid back, and by quiet and laid back I mean llllllllaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiddddddd back. It was exactly what we wanted. The island is about 19 sq km'ish and it is mostly farmland for goats. Oh and beaches. Lots and lots of beaches.

We swam, snacked, read, and drank beers for 5 days. It could have been five years and we wouldn't have noticed. There was a great restaurant called Deli, which we frequented too many nights in a row (and breakfast once too--we are dorks). It was just so good. We mostly walked around and just explored looking for beaches for ourselves. One day we rented a quad. It made it quite a bit easier!

We then headed to Koufonisia. This time we ended up with a really nice place from a woman at the ferry! The only problem was it smelled heavily like sewer and had lumpy beds and paper thin pillows. Adventure! We got out of there the next day. Koufonisia was nice, but not as good as Schinousa. It was funny how we just weren't used to the hustle and bustle of Koufonisia---It had more than a 100 people.

We took a water taxi to a beach described as Caribbean-like. Unless they just meant windy, it wasn't very Caribbean like. We decided to walk back to town from this beach and found one of my favorite places in the islands! It's called the pisina--or swimming pool. I jumped into it many, many times.

It was so wicked. It was about 20 feet deep of crystal-clear water filled with fish and no pokers! The surrounding ocean was such a soothing color and it was so warm. A nice afternoon of jumping.

There was even a sea cave right beside it and we went spelunking!

This was a large cobbled beach just outside of town. I like the pebble beaches because you don't get so sandy, but man does your ass get sore.

On the last day we took a water taxi to Kato Koufonisia. It's a basically deserted island only 20 minutes away that has a giant campsite and a pub on it. It also has beaches. Lots of beaches.

From Koufonisia we went back to Iraklia and got to stay at the hotel of the guy who helped us out. We ended up with a swanky room with a fantastic view.

One thing Iraklia had more of than the other islands was cats! Somewhat healthy looking ones too. I tried to catch them all. They didn't want to be caught.

I don't know about most of you, but whenever we travel and read the travel books it always highlights festivals or events that seem to happen nowhere near the time we are there. Well, we lucked out on Iraklia as we were there on the one day of the year where there is something happening. There is this giant cave on the island that all of the islanders go to and light candles for some Saint (John the Baptist?) and hang out and drink wine and eat snacks all day long. It was supposed to be just an average hike to get to it.
It wasn't.

The cave, although cool, was super humid inside so all of my pictures fogged up. It was huge! By far the best formed stalactites and stalagmites I have ever seen. It was really neat.

On the hike back we decided to take a detour to a different beach and take a water taxi home. It might not have been the best idea...after losing our trail, rummaging through an abandoned village, and bushwacking down a mountain we made it to the water taxi with a whopping 10 minutes to spare! I'll tell you, though, it was one of the best swims I've had when we arrived. We had just sweat uncontrollably for five hours and then got to jump in the ocean.

These are some Iraklia sunsets.

Back to Naxos. We took the early ferry because I wanted to go to the Temple of Apollo. It was really cool. One of the most significant archaeological sites in the cyclades. The rest of the day we just wandered the streets. This is what we saw. Equally cool.

We had another night in Athens before we went home, but Naxos was mentally the end of our month in Greece.
There are not too many negative things I could say about Greece, even if I tried really hard. Oh wait--Pokers! I hate those bastards.

Blast-er from the Past-er

Fat from salmon that I should have been catching.

Grecian Cats!

This cat was flirting with death. I'll call him Evel Knievel.

On the flipside,

CC