Post for September 29 and 30th

September 29
We took several trains from Eindhoven, Holland to Gent, Belgium.  Again, the trains were not very friendly towards people with luggage.  And that certainly was true with an incident we had after getting on the train in Antwerpen.
The way our train tickets were, we had all day to get to our destination.  But we tried to catch "the next available train" because we just wanted to get to Gent as early as possible.  Antwerpen has a very very nice train station.  It is well laid out and has an almost cathedral-like interior in the front.   Since we had gotten there in good time, we took time to go the bathroom before heading to our track.  At the bottom of the escalator going to our track was a nice waffle stand and it was so tempting.  So, we went up and Guillermo waited with the luggage by the train which was already there.  We had about 12 minutes before it was to take off.  I went back down to buy the waffle and a bottle of water then went back up and held that waffle precariously while negotiating my luggage to the train.  We got on, got decent seats with a small table (no stairs!) and since there was no place for luggage, placed Guillermo's big suitcase on the seat next to him - and mine on the floor in front of that seat. The train took off and we settled in to enjoy the waffle (which was piled with cream) and a bottle of water.  Oh my goodness that waffle was delicious.  What they sell in the states, those pieces of cardboard, in no way compare to what real Belgian waffles are like.  The waffle was on the table, the bottle of water (opened) was on the table and all of a sudden the train brakes.  The bottle of water went flying into my lap and I got soaking wet.  Guillermo's suitcase on the seat fell off onto my suitcase on the floor, which forced my suitcase out into the aisle and my suitcase started ROLLING DOWN THE AISLE!! Since there was hardly anyone on that train, that suitcase got quite far before someone stopped it.  It certainly wasn't funny at the time, but looking back on it, it's hilarious to think of my suitcase rolling down past the few people that were on the train!!!  Anyway, fortunately, the waffle didn't fall and we were a little more careful about how we placed our suitcases after that.

This was certainly a day of bloopers.  We get off the train in Gent's Dampoort Station and realized too late that the next stop is Gent's St. Pieters Station which is right by our hotel!!!  When I bought the tickets online, I thought we HAD to get off at Dampoort and at the time, it's possible we hadn't gotten our hotel yet.  Who knows.  The crazy thing was that we had to take a taxi from Dampoort to St. Pieters, when we could have just stayed on the train.  Crazier yet was the taxi driver dropped us off at the train station because he wasn't exactly sure where the hotel was!  So we ended up walking from the train station to the hotel anyway!  Oh well.
It started raining a little after we arrived in Gent.  We got our hotel and then stopped at a place to have some lunch.  After that, since we had several hours before we had to meet Peter for dinner, we took a tram into Central Gent and walked around a little bit.  Gent is actually a very nice place.

  When it was time to start heading over to Peter's place, we couldn't decide if we should take a taxi, a bus, a tram or what.  By the time we got around to leaving, it was too late for anything but a taxi.  So, we asked the taxi driver to drop us off a little bit away from Peter's place so that we could walk around a bit and plan on arriving just a little after six.  This is a canal that is near to their place.

We had a very nice evening with Peter, Stephanie, Marie and their little baby Nicolas.  It was definitely worth it traveling to see them and we are so glad we took the time to do that.

September 30th
Today was a beautiful day, weather-wise, so we were able to walk from our hotel to the train station with no problem.  We figured out which train we needed to get on to get off in Zaventem, which is close to the Brussels airport.
This was a nice train ride.  Comfortable, easy to get on and to our seats, and not crowded at all.  This was a train to Brussels airport, and there was no place to store luggage!!!  So, we took a four-seat section and kept our luggage with us at the seats again.  The train didn't start getting fuller until we got closer to the airport and that's when people's luggage started taking up aisle space.

Soooo, we get off at Zaventem, which at the time I made the reservation seemed like a decent place at a decent price.  I couldn't find a reasonably priced hotel closer to the airport nor in downtown Brussels.  We get off at the train station and it looked like a very small station, with not much there.  There were two ways to go up to street level from the tracks and we picked the side to the right.  Once up on top, there was NOTHING!  No taxis, no restaurants, stores, hotels or anything.  Just a little pharmacy which Guillermo went in to enquire about where to get a taxi.  They told him we needed to be on the other side of the tracks.  So, off we go to the other side.

When we got out on the other side, there were several restaurants and shops, but not one taxi in sight.  So, we stood around wondering how to handle this.  We decided to get a couple of drinks at one of the little restaurants and then ask the people there to call us a taxi.  They were so nice at that little restaurant and even told us that if we wanted to have dinner there, they would come and pick us up that evening from our hotel.  They even said they thought our hotel was close enough to walk to, but after watching how the taxi went - well, it's a little far and it was along highways with no sidewalks.  Not a good idea with all our luggage.

After checking into our hotel, we found out which bus would take us to Central Brussels and got on it.  Nice long bus ride through various sections of Brussels, which was so interesting.  We saw many beautiful buildings and nice scenes along the way.  We got off the bus at the central bus station and without a map but with directions from an information booth we set out to see what we could see.

So, we visited the botanical gardens which were very pretty.

Then we walked down a pedestrian street (where we had another delicious waffle with cream).  Here is a church we saw along the pedestrian area. 

Then we decided to go have dinner at a pizza place we had passed earlier.  But by that time, the place had closed to the public and was having a private party.  Too bad, that pizza had smelled so good!!!  So, we decided to get back on the bus, get off in Zaventem, get something to eat there and maybe walk back to our hotel.  We noticed when the bus went by our hotel and noticed that it was too FAR from where we were going to get off to back to our hotel.  We ended up eating at that restaurant where the guy was so helpful earlier in the day.  We asked him to call us a taxi when we were done eating and he said that instead he would have his nephew take us home.  We had to wait a little while for the nephew to be free to take us, but that was ok because it gave us a chance to walk around a little in Zaventem.  The town is a lot bigger than we thought!

Meeting cousin Hans

It was quite an endeavor to get from Oslo, Norway to Eindhoven, Holland.  It put our luggage to a test, without a doubt!!  First we lugged our suitcases from the hotel to the Oslo train station, which wasn't too far but it definitely wasn't on smooth surfaces.  Then it was a matter of getting our luggage on the train and taking it all off again at the airport.   Then, for a while, we were free of our luggage after we checked them in at the airport.  After checking our luggage we went to the lost and found to see if my umbrella was there and much to our shock, IT WAS!!!!  So, now we have two umbrellas but I'm so happy I got my umbrella back.

Our flight to Amsterdam was good.  We picked up our luggage and then had to figure out how to get to the train station.  Once we got that figured out, we caught the first available train which again, was a matter of getting our luggage on quickly.  This train was not easy because all seats were either up some stairs or down some stairs.  And there was no place that we saw where you could store the luggage.  Finally someone told us that they could be placed between the seats.  But then, all too quickly we were at our next stop so then we had to lug all our stuff back up the stairs and off the train.  Since train tracks were being repaired in this section of our route, we had to get on a bus for a while.  That was a long walk going from the train station to where the buses were parked with all our luggage.

When we got off of the bus, we were dismayed to see that the train tracks were a slight distance away bur thankfully there were elevators where we could take our luggage up and then cross over the tracks on a bridge.  This time, when we caught the train, we didn't even bother with dealing with the up or down stairs on the train.  We just stayed in the small section by the door.  The trains were very crowded now and we ended up having to stand after our next stop, but that was preferable to us than going up or down stairs to find seats.

Our train stops were Amsterdam, Utrecht, Geldermalsen (which is where we caught the bus), then Geldermalsen to Hertogenbosch and then final stop in Eindhoven.  Doesn;t seem bad and it wasn't really.  The hard part was lifting our luggage up to and off off the trains.

Once we got to Eindhoven, we went out to where the taxis were to get a taxi to our hotel.  The taxi driver in the first car at first started to put our luggage in the trunk of her taxi but when we told her we were going to the Crown Inn Hotel, she said that it was only a 5 minute walk away and she couldn't see us paying for a taxi when we could just walk there.  We thanked her for being so kind to let us know that, but then the taxi driver behind her started arguing with her - yelling at her why she didn't just take us and telling us that it WASN'T  just a 5 minute walk,.  We told him that we appreciated the first taxi driver's honesty, gave her a few euros for saving us from LOTS of euros and then left them.  It WAS just a short walk to the hotel and since the weather was so nice, it was definitely worth walking.

We checked in and first thing I did was call Hans to let him know we had arrived.  We agreed to meet in one hour.  We met him an hour later down in front of the hotel and we sat at one of the outdoor tables and had a drink while we got to know each other a little bit.  It was so easy talking with him and we really enjoyed his company.

After a while, we walked around the pedestrian area, saw a nice church, and he took us to a marijuana shop because we had said we wanted to see one.  That was so strange - to see a place where they had menus with all the different kinds of marijuana combinations that you could order!!

Then we got in his car and drove to the restaurant we were going to eat at that evening, where we had an absolutely delicious meal in an old warehouse that had been converted into an interesting restaurant.  This is what it looked like across the road from the restaurant - it was an interesting area.

After dinner, Hans drove us around the city along the trail of lights that had something to do with Holland's liberation from Germany.  The trail ended at this lake where there were all these beautiful lit scenes.  Here is one of them.

Then Hans drove us back to the area of our hotel and walked with us to the front of the hotel.  We said goodbye to him there and as he left, we felt it was definitely worth taking the time to meet with him.  We had such a good time with him.

Museum Day

Today we took a boat out to a peninsula called Bygdoy.  There are many museums on this peninsula and we visited the Viking Ship Museum, the Polar Ship Fram Museum and the Norwegian Maritime Museum.   All three of them were very interesting.

We're on our way to the peninsula!

Quite a nice boat we passed.

A couple of scenes from the Fram museum.  We got to go inside the Fram which was very interesting.

A scene we saw while waiting for the boat to take us back to Oslo.

We had dinner in an Italian restaurant that evening, which wasn't that great.  Afterwards we bought a few souvenirs.

Last stop in Norway - Oslo

This is the whole gang waiting at the train station in Bergen.  It's quite early in the morning and it was raining and cold outside.

The Bergen to Oslo train ride was spectacular!!!  We climbed through beautiful fjords to a high plateau where things looked mighty rough, especially in the weather we were having.  These pictures are the best that could be done through train windows.

Wow, you talk about isolated, in the middle of nowhere.  We just couldn't imagine, it only being September, how it must look around here in mid January.

Now we're off of the plateau, having gone through a pass.  Trees came back and the weather got better.

But the whole train ride, really, had intervals of rain.  We'd think, Oh, it's clearing up now.  But always up ahead, past the clearing, we could see a new line of clouds and pretty soon, it'd be raining again.  It was great!

Once in Oslo, we made our way from the train station to our hotel.  After checking in, we walked to an area called Aker Brygge, which was by the water and had lots of nice ships and many nice restaurants.  Most of them were quite expensive, but we ended up in one that seemed a little less expensive than the others.  We had a good meal there with a nice view to the water.  These are some views around the area.

Walking back to our hotel, we took another route and found a nice pedestrian street with souvenir shops that we plan on visiting before we leave.

Next stop is Bergen

 So, last night went better than I thought it would.  I tried sleeping up on the top bunk because all our suitcases were on the 3rd bed but in the end, moved all those suitcases and slept down by the port hole.  It was a better place anyway, because whenever I wanted to, I could just move the curtain and look outside.  We docked in Alesund around 12:30am and it was nice to be able to look out and check.

We had to be out of our cabins by 10am, so after breakfast we had to pack up and place our larger suitcases by an elevator so that someone could gather them.  The rest of the time on our boat, (until 2:30pm) we had to have all of our stuff with us.  We tried getting good seats to hang around in but people had grabbed those quickly after breakfast.  But that was ok, because we grabbed those seats when everyone got up to go for lunch.

It was another cold and very rainy day.   Last scenes from the boat.

Disembarking from the boat went very smoothly.  We had to wait a little while for our luggage but at least it was all there.  Then we had arranged, while on the boat, to take a bus tour of Bergen after getting off the boat.  So, that's what we did next.  It was about a 2 hour bus tour and at then end, they deliver everyone to their hotels.  It rained the whole time - from arriving in Bergen to arriving at our hotel.

 This is the view out the window of our hotel room.

That evening, we looked for a restaurant that was in the Lonely Planet book of Norway that Fernando had given us.  That restaurant didn't seem to be in business anymore, there was a different one in its place.  So, instead, we walked across the street to Bergen's Fish Market (which Lonely Planet also suggested was a great place to eat).   This place will fix you anything they have in their cases.  Here is dried and salted cod hanging from poles in the Fish Market.

Guillermo and I shared a plate of Monk Fish (the fish in the middle) and Hake.  It was very very good.

The view we had from our table in the Fish Market.

There's Guillermo and John at our table.

How Bergen looked after dinner when it had gotten a lot darker.

We are on a boat until tomorrow!

We checked out of our hotel and took a cab to the pier of Trondheim where our boat with Hurtigruten cruises was docked.  This is the closest we have come to doing a cruise and I guess this could be classified as a cruise ship.

The weather is not on our side today though, it is gray and cloudy and rainy so there aren't going to be too many good opportunities for beautiful pictures.  6 hours into the cruise the waters became a little rough and you could really feel the boat swaying as it went over those waves.

We had a hamburger for lunch in the cafeteria and didn't opt for the reserved seating for dinner so we all ate in the cafeteria again.  The food was ok, nothing special.  It was nice pulling into the port of Kristiansund since we had spent a night there and the port of Molde, from where we had caught a ferry twice.  It was nice to be able to recognize a few places along this route!

It was pretty much cloudy, rainy and cold all day, although the sun peeked out when we were in Kristiansund.  When we were out over open waters, the boat felt rougher.  We always knew when we were pulling into a port by how calm everything was.

Scenery along the way.

 Approaching Kristiansund

We had driven over that bridge to get to our hotel a few days ago in Kristiansund.  

We had a fairly long stop in Kristiansund so we took plenty of pictures.  It would rain, then the sun would come out, then rain again.

Now we're on our way out of Kristiansund and heading out to somewhat open waters.

There's the hotel we stayed in - with a nice rainbow behind it!

Looks like the weather is about to clear up!  But that's not how it goes around here at this time of year.  Next thing we knew, it was raining again.

Our room on the ship had a little port hole to see out which was nice (it's behind that curtain).  It also had 3 beds - one a bunk bed.

Here's our somewhat messy room!