The last Chapter

After 2 days of uploading pictures to my flickr account I now have the pictures posted from our trip. Here is the link to view those pictures. http://www.flickr.com/photos/27447108@NO2/sets/72157619601260428/

Here is the final reports from our travels.

Oslo, Norway

Well I found a place for me to get a job making $30/hr. with no experience required. All I have to do is make sure the fries do not burn. Yes that's right at the McDonald's in Oslo the starting pay is $30/hr. Just remember one thing the Happy Meal is $26. Oslo is the 3rd most expensive city in the world ( I guess I should feel solace in knowing that we were not in #1). So what do you do when your in the 3rd most expensive city? You shop of course. You shop for small cheap souvenirs. In our case we walked the whole city to end up at the first store we started at and bought our keepsakes there.

Another thing to do in Oslo is take pictures of all of the naked people. That's right they have more detailed naked statues in this place than I have ever seen. To make it worse Becky wanted to go to a park that had even more of these statues. I had to draw the line. One can only see so much nakedness before they get tired of that (I probably just lost my man card for saying that).

Copenhagen, Denmark

Being back in Denmark only signaled one thing to me . . . vacation was almost over. Getting off the boat was a little scary. I was scared to think that from now on I would have to pay for my food and it was not going to be a five course meal. To make it worse no one would be turning my bed down at night and leaving me chocolates on my pillows. (Hint, hint Becky. This could lead to our marriage being perfect. Ummm does anybody have a doghouse I can borrow after that comment.) We arrived at the airport but could not secure ourselves on an earlier flight so we went back to our favorite meeting place, the Marriott hotel. We met up with my parents and decided to tour the local 7 Eleven. Let me just say the bacon wrapped hot dogs at 7 Eleven looked really good. I did not get a chance to try one, but I hope they start selling them here soon so that I can try them. Finally we left for Amsterdam.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Let me just say up front this city gets a bad wrap. Many people picture it as a dope smoking and prostitute riddled city. We found that this only exists on one street for about two blocks. What you don't hear about as much is all of the canals that exist here and how much people just sail up and down the canals enjoying the day. Another great item of interest here is the Anne Frank House. This is the same house that Anne and her family hid in during the German occupation of the city made famous by her writings in "The Diary of Anne Frank". So much of what occurred to the Jewish population of this time period can be seen in this house. After going through the house it was quite an eye opening experience. It really is true you never know what someone goes through until you are in their shoes. Being in the house and seeing the close quarters and only imagining how scared they were of being found was a tough experience. It makes you more sensitive to others and to the persecutions that still go on in our world today.

I would like to go back to Amsterdam some day and tour one of the old windmills, see the Hermitage (a smaller branch of the Hermitage museum located in St. Petersburg, Russia), and tour the Heineken brewery. This is why we tour on cruises like this and spent a day in a city. It gives you a great taste and lets you know if it is somewhere you might want to go back to again someday. I would say overall I would include Stockholm, Helsinki, and Gdansk on that list.

Oh by the way I did find one picture I wanted to share with you from Estonia. Not sure how you pronounce it, but no matter how I said it it came across as being painful and bad.