Back to Blogging- Don't worry, I didnt forget about you

I’m baaaaaack. Actually I’m not back at all, I am in a totally new place- Stockholm! The city of, uh, of, uh, hmmm… it’s not really known for much, is it? They claim to be the “Capital of Scandinavia”, but I guess all the other Scandinavian countries get really mad when they say that, and since I’m contractually obligated (not really actually) to make nice with the other Scandinavian countries I googled something else. Apparently some people have been trying to give it the nickname “Venice of the North” but a) it obviously hasn’t stuck because I have never heard of it, and b) it is in competition with St. Petersburg and some city in Belgium who are also pushing for that nickname. Swedes are pretty passive as a people, so I don’t think they are going to win that fight. But anyways, a lot has happened before we moved here, so I guess I will get right to it.

8/28/08 Moving Day #1

We had to be out of our apartment in Lund by the end of August, and since we weren’t planning on moving to Stockholm until after we got back from our cruise on September 8th, we had to find a place for our stuff for a week. We generously volunteered Bjorn and Ulrika, who live across town. Lund isn’t a huge town, but since neither of us own a car, it makes things difficult. The good news is that we asked Håkan, who we went camping with a few weeks back, and he thankfully said yes. The bad news was that it was Ulrika’s birthday the next day and they were having a large party, which of course means grocery shopping, cleaning, etc, with no time (or space in their clean apartment) to help 2 crazy kids from the states who have waaaaay too much stuff (ahem, Blake) move their stuff in. But they were awesome and helped us out anyways and after 2 car trips across town, we were done with that. (This whole process took several hours and somehow I am understating the drama here which isn’t like me at all.)

Pre-Cruise Barcelona

Luckily we were almost instantaneously rewarded because after a crazy long day of moving, we hopped on a flight to Barcelona the next morning! Blake’s mom generously gave us this cruise package (thanks again!) and we decided this was the best time to use it because Blake is ending his Valle scholarship and I am starting mine. (Like the passing of the torch or something. Go USA!)

Tamer let us stay at his place there, which is even better in the summertime, because we got to use the beach this time! We had already seen most of the main attractions when we were in Barcelona in January, when it was pleasant and not scorching hot outside, and we knew we would do plenty of sightseeing on the cruise, so we mainly just relaxed on the beach.

Since I am not good at relaxing (and Blake isn’t exactly designed for sunbathing) we did take a couple of hours to go downtown and see Tibidabo, which is a church/amusement park on top of a mountain. The views were amazing, but I was a little confused by the message they were sending.

Both Friday and Saturday night Tamer and I said we were going to go out to the clubs just after our power nap at 10 pm, and every night, neither of us woke up and Blake watched bad Egyptian TV by himself. Don’t ask.

If you want to fast forward through my long blog post about the cruise, click on the following link to see all the pics:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28113775@N02/sets/72157607318340664/

Cruise Day 1: Barcelona Port

On Sunday, (also known as Cruise day! Woohoo!) we took the bus downtown, caught a subway and then started walking to the port. The information that the cruise gave us said that the port was within walking distance of Barcelona’s city center. It wasn’t. Not even close. It was almost a mile to the bridge. Oh, I didn’t mention the bridge, did I? Yeah, there was a ginourmous bridge that was almost a half-mile uphill and then another half a mile down to get to the terminal. Yeah, that was fun in the middle of the day, when it was 90 and we had our huge backpacks. You know what the first thing they do when you get on a cruise ship? They take your picture. We looked so hot. Pun intended. The good news is that the second thing they do is hand you a glass of champagne.

The cruise ship itself is pretty amazing. Except for all the Spanish people. I never thought I had anything against the Spanish until I spent a week with them (and all their kids!) on a ship. They have no respect for lines, other people, noise levels, spatial awareness, anything. At first I thought it was just the swarms of kids that I loathed (I was already aware of this scorn for any gathering of a large amount of spoiled kids so this feeling did not come as a shock to me), but soon I realized that it wasn’t only the mini-Spaniards who were causing this feeling. Turns out we caught the last week of the Spanish summer holiday season and there was an especially large proportion of Spaniards on our ship. Blake and I chatted with several employees on the cruise ship who shared and actually encouraged our feelings of disdain.

The weirdest thing about cruises is the mandatory safety thing. I'm sure they didn't have to do crap like this on the Titanic.

Cruise Day 2: Sea Day

The second day we were at sea. We kept busy by trying to go to every event that served free drinks. (Blake and his pension for free food and drinks has worn off on me. Well maybe it is part grad school too. Either way, free stuff makes us happy.) Somehow we ended up on the returning Norwegian cruisers list, which had an event that served free drinks and appetizers. (Well, you get all the free food you want on the cruise, so that wasn’t a biggie, but drinks are rather spendy.) During this event, we met 2 couples from Florida who were about our age, Ami and Carl, and Amy and Mike. Here we are, being the cool, returning cruise members that we so obviously are:
After that event, we went to an art auction (free champagne, duh). We bid on a lot (ha! yeah right) but mostly stayed for the raffle we had entered. For the record, I never win anything. One time my mom and I were at a craft fair and we entered a raffle and we were talking about how we never win, and this cute old lady running the raffle was like- oh you never know! Well, we ended up winning a ridiculous pink pillow with a cat on it. I still think the lady rigged it because she felt bad for us. Anyways, back to the art raffle. They had some Rembrandt and Picasso sketches that were worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Well, one of the contests was to guess the price of the Picasso. Well I came closest! I thought I had won the Picasso itself (Worth around $69,000), but instead we got to pick a painting out of a set of five. And pay $45 for shipping. There is always a catch. Then they started the raffle and Blake and I both won! I got a mini-facial at the spa where the girl gave me a list of “essential” products that would have cost me over $400! I’m 26! How bad can my face be?! (Don’t answer that!) But Blake won us a bottle of champagne which didn’t judge us and made us feel good about out faces. Amy and Mike admitted that they would have hated us for winning had they not just met us a half hour before that. Later that week we met an older couple from Tacoma who also remembered us as the hot-shots from the auction! We really should have gambled after that or bought a lottery ticket or something. Oh well.

That night we went to dinner with Amy and Mike and we all wanted to check out the show that night. (For those of you who haven’t been on a cruise, they always have some sort of entertainment show every night.) We went to the Dancing around the world, or something like that, which somehow managed to offend every person in the audience. Some countries were just bad and confusing, but the American one was quite comical. I tried capturing some of it on video so you could see how bad it is for yourself:

Cruise Day 3: Malta

With some advice from the art gallery director we woke up early and went up to the top deck to see the city of Valletta on Malta as the ship pulled into port around 7 am as the sun came up. It was absolutely gorgeous, check it out:
We were one of the first off the boat that day, along with the folks we met from Florida, and a couple from Tacoma- Kenny and Alice. To get to anything of interest in Valletta you have to immediately walk up a huge hill. Even at 8 in the morning, it was so hot there that we were all sweaty and gross by the time we got to the top.
We wandered around a bit, and then went to St John’s Co-Cathedral. This is a baroque style cathedral which was absolutely beautiful. None of my pictures do it justice, which is unfortunate.

After that Blake and I hopped on a bus across the island (about 45 minutes) to go see the Blue Grotto. It was nice to dip our feet in the sparkling blue water- we wish we had had more time and had brought our swimsuits, the water was perfect!

At first we couldn’t find the grotto but then we hopped don a boat tour which took us through it and in and around some other caves. The tour itself was terrible, the guide would pull into a cave, say its name, something like “mirror cave” or “death cave” or “bacon cave” and then quickly drive off to another one with no other explanations. But it was nice to be out on the water on such a hot day. Here is the actual Blue Grotto:

It was a short day at port (we arrived around 8 and had to be back on the boat by 2:30) so we had to make sure we caught a bus back to Valletta so we didn’t get stuck on Malta, which meant running up a huge hill in the middle of the day in almost 100 degree heat, and then sitting on a non-air conditioned bus for 45 minutes and then running back down the hill to get to the ship. We were pretty gross by the end of the day.

We did have time to buy a couple of bottles of Maltese wine, however. One bottle was going to be a gift (more on that later), and the ship claims you are not allowed to bring alcohol on board, so when we got back on the boat, Blake clearly said to the security people, “hey, I have 2 bottles of wine.” They are supposed to keep it and then we can pick it up at the end of the cruise. But they just ignored him, and so we just walked on with wine at almost every port (except the second to last one, but we had already smuggled on several bottles by this point, so it didn’t matter.).

Oh- I almost forgot. All the locals there totally looked like Heidi Walters (who is Maltese, so it makes sense)! I wish I had gotten a picture but I have found random strangers don’t like it when silly American girls take their picture for no apparent reason. Oh well.

Cruise Day 4: Naples and Pompeii

Everyone had told us that Naples is pretty gross, and so we had planned on just going to Pompeii and then hiking up Mt Vesuvius. Well, Pompeii was absolutely amazing and we spent quite some time there hiking around and exploring. We were done there around 1 pm, and since it was hot as hell again outside (which I am not complaining about... I love every second of it!) we decided against hiking up Mt Vesuvius. Plus, now I can still use one of my favorite quotes from Zoolander:

“So I was freeclimbing Mt Vesuvius, when I suddenly lost my grip, so I'm falling and falling, and then I start to think. Hey, haven’t you been smoking peyote for the last six days, and isn’t it a possibility that this is all in your head? And it turned out I was right. I've never even been to Mt Vesuvius.”

We still had quite a bit of time left in port, so we decided to try and find one of the original pizza places (Naples is the birthplace of Pizza). Even though we agree that Naples is pretty crappy (especially compared to all the magnificent places in Italy), we had a good time wandering the streets. And we had an even better time at the pizza place. The pizza was soo soo good!

Cruise Day 5: Rome

Some of you may have wondered how we were going to go to Rome on our cruise when Rome is obviously not on the coast of Italy. Well, in addition to having less than 11 hours in port at Rome, we had to take a train from Civitavecchia to Rome, which takes about an hour and 15 minutes. So we woke up early, got off the boat as quick as possible and made it to Rome by 9:30 or so. We started at the Vatican, which was amazing. I must admit, I didn’t think I was going to be impressed since I’m not catholic. But I was completely wrong. We started at St Peters Basilica, climbed up to the top of the dome, which was hot and cramped, but the view was pretty cool.

Unfortunately you are not allowed to wear tank tops or short shorts, so I had to bring an extra shirt so as not to offend anyone with my wide shouldered tank top dress, and again, it was crazy hot outside. I think this is stupid because when you make your church a tourist site, you shouldn’t be able to claim that this is for respect. No, it is just to pretend like you are a real country (ok, I guess technically they are) and make people listen to you. It really wasn’t a huge deal, but the whole thing is just dumb so I wanted to point that out. This sign was pretty funny, because I may have been wearing a tank top, which I could easily cover up, but what happens if you only have 1 leg?!!:Back to the Vatican though, yeah, amazing. After we went to the top of St Peters Basilica, we went inside the church, which was huge and gorgeous. This is what happens when a Christian (me) walks through the church:
This is what happens when an atheist enters the church:
After that we went to the Vatican museum (which includes the Sistine Chapel). It was huge! We were in there for over an hour and weren’t even close to making it to the Sistine chapel, so we realized we had to pick up the pace if we wanted to see anything else in Rome that day. So hopefully we will back another time, with more time. The Sistine Chapel wasn’t what I expected, but interesting though. Blake took an illegal picture in there (shhh.. dont tell!):
We got done with the Vatican around 1:30 and we had to be back on the boat by 6:30, which we figured meant we had to catch a train by 4:30 or so. So we ran to the Spanish Steps. Realized there isn’t much to see there, but whatever there is to do there, we did it. Here I am eating some gelatti on the steps:
Then we ran to the Trevi Fountain, which was pretty awesome. We threw a coin in the fountain to make sure we will return to Rome (that is the legend). I had noticed people taking overly-exaggerated pictures (which, of course, I would never, ever do) of them throwing it over their shoulder, and I thought to myself that they were just being silly and I threw my coin straight in, but after talking with Stephanie (who lived there for a semester), it turns out you are supposed to throw it over your right shoulder. Opps. My bad.
After that we ran to the Coliseum. We didn’t have enough time to go in, so we just walked around it and saw the outside of the forum. If we ever come back (which after messing up the Trevi Fountain thing, we probably never will) we will have to make that more of a priority.
Next we hoped on a metro to get the main train station so that we could get back to the boat, and we got there earlier than we expected, and we didn’t bother looking up train times, so we figured we should buy some cheap wine for the boat. We took our time and found a cute little shop, and made our way back to the train station. When we got to the train station we noticed the board said that a train was leaving for Civitavecchia in a few minutes so we started running. Well, after running for over a quarter of a mile, I said to Blake that I couldn’t run anymore and we said we will just take the next train. As we got closer to the platform, we noticed the train was still there and made a mad-dash to the train, and basically threw ourselves on the train just as the doors were closing. It was pretty crowded but we finally found some seats near a Canadian family that was on our same cruise. They started telling us how they were panicking because they got lost and couldn’t find the train station and that if they hadn’t found this train in time, they would have had to catch a taxi for around 300 euros. Blake and I really had no idea that this was the last train that would have gotten us back to the boat on time! We were really lucky, not sure what we would have done if we hadn’t accidentally caught it!

Cruise Day 6: Florence

So, at the beginning of the cruise, I came down with a nasty cold and sore throat. This isn’t exactly ideal when you are trying to run around every port and see as much as possible. Also, I was coughing so bad that I could barely sleep at night, and if you know me, you know I need my sleep to be a normal human being. We had made our normal plans on Friday to wake up early, get off the boat as soon as possible, to catch an even longer train from Livorno, where our boat was, to Florence. But after a long night of not sleeping, I just couldn’t get out of bed. Blake was a sweetheart and let me sleep in a bit, and we took our time getting off the boat. Which of course meant we had even less time in Florence because we missed every fast train and had to wait an extra 40 minutes to even get on the hour and a half train ride to Florence. But we made it there eventually, and went first to the Duomo.

After some confusion of which 500 staircases we wanted to walk up, we chose to go up in the Duomo itself, which I think was the right choice. The dome itself has an interesting painting of the devil that typically isn’t found in most churches. The view was really nice, but you were so sweaty and gross by the time you made it up all the stairs, all you really appreciate is the fresh air.
After that we made our way to the famous bridge, took some pictures, and then it was about time for the Uffizi museum, which we had made reservations for. After our close call the day before in Rome with the trains, we had made sure to check the train schedule of when we had to be at the train station in Florence in order to make it back on the boat in time. We figured we should leave the museum by 3:30, which was unfortunate because our reservations were for 2:15. (It was the only time available.) So we had to rush through the Uffizi, which is one of the greatest collections of renaissance art on the earth, but you do what you have to do. Again, hopefully we will be back someday!

But we made the train back in time, and our last day in Nice promised to be much more relaxing.

Cruise Day 7: Nice

Nice is sooo Nice! There isn’t much to see or do, but we both absolutely loved it there. After some drama trying to get off the boat, we had a really nice day. You see, they sometimes don’t port, they just kind of drop their anchors in the middle of a harbor and take little boats back and forth to the port. What they failed to mention was that unless you had paid a fortune to take one of their excursions, that they weren’t going to let you off the boat between 7:20 and 8:00. So we get there around 7:20, and there is a short line of people waiting on the 5th floor stairs. That’s fine, we get in line. Well, the problem was that people would take the elevator down to the 4th floor and start another line closer to the actual exit (which they weren’t letting people off). Instead of telling people to take the elevator back up to the 5th floor, they would gently ask people, which of course, being Spanish and not caring that other people were waiting in line, they just ignored the workers who were supposed to be in charge. Well the people in line of the 5th floor were waiting behind one of those rope barriers were not going to just let people cut, so they took down the barriers and bum-rushed the exit. We followed (hey, why not?!) and waited in a mob of people now by this point for almost 30 minutes. Meanwhile, more people keep getting off on the elevator and the workers keep letting them cut! It was absurd. I was close to stealing one of the workers shirts and stand in front of the elevator myself and not let people get off there.

But when we finally got off, we walked up this cute little park where there were no cruise people and it was really nice and relaxing. It offered a great view of the perfect water, which we later went swimming in.
Most of the day we just wandered around the cute city and talked about how we are going to move there if McCain wins. And no, I’m not joking about that.

That night we had a big dinner with the 3 couples we had met, where all the boys (except Blake if you can believe it) ordered 2 to 3 entrees of Steak, salmon, other expensive food, as well as several appetizers of escargot, shrimp, you get the point. I already miss being at a restaurant where if you want 2 entrees, you get 2 entrees! You want 4 desserts? They don’t even flinch! Quite a change of pace from paying almost $15 for a hamburger meal from a fast food place in Sweden!

Cruise Day 8: Back to Barcelona

Well the party had to end sometime. And early. We had stayed out sort of late the night before, then had to wake up early, pack and they make you get off the boat by 9:30 am. We learned our lesson and took a cab to the bus stop to go back to Tamers. And Tamer had a surprise waiting for us. We knocked on the door and a blond Swedish girl answered the door and started speaking Swedish. Surprise! Turns out Tamer hosts people from couch-surfing and was letting 3 Swedish vegetarians and a crazy Estonian girl stay with him for the week. They were all really nice, but being sick and tired from the cruise, we weren’t really excited about meeting more people. But we were able to get one more day of the beach in Barcelona, then that evening we went downtown and got to watch some American football, and it was a good day.

9/9/08 Moving Day #2

So we get a call from Bjorn on Sunday (remember back to beginning when I said how we were keeping our stuff at his and Ulrika’s place while we were on the cruise?) and he asks us when we are getting back. We tell him the middle of the day tomorrow (Monday) and he says- crap. Turns out Ulrika’s dog, Malteh, was being put down that day (long sad story), so they weren’t going to be home. Well all of our stuff was there, so luckily he was able to arrange with his neighbor to leave the keys, otherwise we would have ended back in Lund with no way to get to our stuff that we needed to pack up to get to Stockholm. Everything turned out fine, we were able to stay at Bjorn and Ulrika’s as planned, and then move our stuff the following day, but again, we felt like we had the worst timing! Plus, remember how we had bought a bottle of wine in Malta? Well it was going to be for them, (her dog’s name is Malteh, and he has been sick, so we thought we were being cute) but since we didn’t think they would now appreciate the reminder, we gave them a bottle of Chianti from Florence instead.

So on Tuesday we took a bus to the Malmo airport, rented a station wagon, drove to Lund, packed up our belongings, and drove the 7 hours to our new apartment in Stockholm. The end. (For now. Come back later for more random stories that is my life.)