Our Christmas in Norway was not as uneventful as we had hoped for and certainly did not plan, and not in the good way where Santa surprises you with something you didn't realize you wanted but absolutely have to have now that you've got it.
It was wrought with missed flights, a stinky airbnb, and a birthday celebration that...
We found ourselves in Kirkenes after debarking from our two night cruise on the Hurtigruten. Kirkenes is a tiny little town of only 3,000 inhabitants on just over 500 acres, and was upgraded from a village just 20 years ago! The peninsula is sandwiched between the Bøkfjorden fjord, and the Varangerfjord fjord that borders Russia, and the city is...
One of my most favorite Icelandic Christmas traditions is the exchange of books on the evening of the 24th of December. After a feast, which begins promptly at 6p, presents are opened by all. Included in the gifts is always the traditional gift of a book. The rest of the evening and the entirely of Christmas Day is spent...
Believe it or not, Iceland wasn’t the last time we went winter swimming. There is something entirely primal about confronting below freezing weather in your skivvies and jumping into a slightly less cold pool. It kick-starts your heart, makes your bones jump and fills your lungs with the breath of a dragon. Swimming is a natural pastime in Iceland,...
Our journey to discover the best Disneyland in the world has been a magical one. A journey that has taken us from the snow capped mountains of the Matterhorn to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. We've traveled over 23,000 miles, over a span of five years, to be able to pronounce: Mickey Accomplished!
Our family has celebrated, rejoiced and played...
Nothing happened according to plan this trip to Norway. And I mean that in the most literal sense. When we arrived at the Scandic Hotel, chosen because of how often we’d seen it pop up in search results in Google and we just wanted a sure thing, it was early in the morning after our Hurtigruten cruise. We couldn’t...
In the winter, Tjörnin Pond, in the city center of Reykjavik, is a gathering place to play ice hockey and soccer, and to go ice skating. This can be done formally or informally, as there is no where to rent ice skates for the pond. This means you’ll want to either bring your own skates or step out in your boots...
We actually had our heart set on some Elephant Ears at the pier to be enjoyed while riding the Ferris Wheel at the end of the dock of Pleasure Pier, but unbeknownst to us, said Pleasure Pier is closed Monday thru Thursday! After drying a bucket of tears and wringing out our soaking clothes from the injustice of it...
Our most magical experience during our family trip to Scandinavia was Husky dog sledding in Norway through the snow blanketed fields of Tromsø.
Truly, we had some incredible experiences in the land of Trolls - a spiritual excursion to witness the Northern Lights in Kirkenes, an authentically cultural journey through the North Cape on the Hurtigruten, and even celebrating...
When we visit a new place, we love living as the locals do - participating in local customs, eating the native foods, walking through their neighborhoods, and everything else. When we came to Iceland for Christmas, we wanted to have an Icelandic Christmas. We wanted to eat skate on Þorláksmessa, (dish of putrefying shark), and reindeer on Christmas. We...
