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...
“Boy Howdy Howdy”, is the one thing you’ll have running through your head year after year when you think back on your stay at the Hotel Cheyenne at the Disneyland Paris Resort. It’s like the song that never ends. Now, hear that in your head, and then add a french accent. It even sounds silly in your head. This...
Across town, in the opposite direction of the graffiti and promiscuous pictures was where we found our home for Christmas. This darling airbnb, with red cupboards in the kitchen and four single beds laying side by side each other in the bedroom, was perfect for our celebrations. Though we longed to be in Tromsø, we were finally in a...
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...
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...
Scandinavian Airlines, SAS Airlines, flies throughout Denmark, Sweden and Norway to 1300 destinations all across Europe. Their slogan, “We Are Travelers” is fitting as Scandinavians travel an average of five times a year throughout the three countries listed above! It was also fitting for our particular family as we are not only travelers, but have Scandinavian ancestry. Everything comes...
Our family trip to Norway was one of those standby adventures gone wrong, but one we probably should have known better to anticipate. I was stressed for weeks leading up to this vacation. We had three flights to take after disembarking the Disney Wonder cruise ship, and making our way to our Christmas destination in Norway. That meant three...
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...
Iceland is an enamoring country where in winter the locals walk outside to go snowboarding, in summer they write books under the midnight sun, have a crime rate that is so low even the police don’t carry guns, and celebrate Christmas in Iceland with 13 different Santa Clauses!
Iceland is one of the top 10 most festive places to celebrate...
Driving in Iceland in the winter can, and most likely will be terrifying and treacherous. Many of the roads are actually closed during the winter because driving conditions are so poor, including the entire northeast region. Driving in Iceland isn’t too bad in the city, but once you leave Reykjavik, country roads aren’t a priority for snowplows. In addition...
