WELCOME

Welcome, friends and family, to our travel website!  We're glad you're sharing this incredible experience of a lifetime with us.  We'll be spending a full three months exploring Europe, as well as (hopefully) Turkey and Morocco.  We'll be starting the journey in Norway and likely ending in Scotland, with a very loose itinerary and lots of anticipation in between.  We hope to update this site every couple of days with new pictures and stories, so check back often.  We'll also have access to email, so please drop us a line and let us know about what's going on back home.  Updates on the current political climate will be less welcomed, as we are assuming the identities of Canadians while abroad.  ;)  OK, we're sort of kidding about that.  Seriously though, we will surely get sick of each other and need to interact with other people, so help us out, eh? 

So...armed with our phone cameras and a selfie stick, we're off!

monday, june 27

We flew out of Raleigh at 10:30am. Coincidence of all coincidences, I sat beside one of my old colleagues from High Point at the gate. He was heading to Boston for a conference, and we were heading to Boston for a 9 hour layover. Woohoo! Anyway, here's a pic of us with our massive backpacks.

Because we're procrastinators, we spent a good two hours in the airport ripping off the free WiFi and attending to some last minute business. One agenda item was to call the city of Durham to have our water turned off for three months. The city worker I spoke to either didn't hear me or wasn't paying attention and I got a call two hours later from the maintenance worker to confirm that I wanted water disconnected from Voyager Academy in Durham. No. No, that is not what I wanted. If the poor kids at that school didn't have water today, my sincere apologies. 😉 Off to a strong start.

We then headed into the city to pass the time by walking around Boston's "Little Italy." Hirsh saw one of his old business school classmates, too! What a small world!!

TuEsday, june 28

Our plane touched down in Oslo around 10am Norway time. After dropping off our bags at the Airbnb, we headed straight over to City Hall for a tour with our delightfully nerdy tour guide. It's a beautiful old building where, along with other official State business, the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony is held. Do you see that long bench along the wall on the ground floor? We fell asleep smack in the middle of that bench for an hour and awoke to literally no one else on the bench and a large tour group standing directly in front of us. So that happened.

We then hopped on the tram to get to The Vigeland Park which is the world's largest sculpture park. It's stunningly beautiful. So very green, with flowers everywhere and some very impressive fountains. The sculpture artist, Gustav Vigeland, was obviously very talented but perhaps a bit disturbed. Exhibit A (and my favorite)...

I mean, it takes some strong feelings to want to punt a baby...and then to memorialize those feelings for all eternity, yikes. Here are some other pictures of the park.

Notwithstanding the above sculpture, one very obvious characteristic of this society is the focus on family. Mothers get a full year of maternity leave with 80% of their original pay, and fathers are pretty much required to take two months paternity leave. Within the first few minutes of walking around the city, we saw several individual fathers pushing strollers around with no women in sight. How refreshing! We even saw a group of fathers and their baby strollers. We also noticed many families with four or five little kids. It's basically free to have and raise children here, so why not? Overall, the people seem quite happy and balanced. Everything is so incredibly clean, efficient, and friendly that we would consider moving if not for the harsh winters. Well, it's midnight here and still light outside, but we're going to try to get some sleep.

​wednesday, june 29

Today was our museum day in Oslo. We visited 5(!) museums, which Hirsh admitted was even a little much for him. Shockingly, the museum day was Sarah's suggestion, and it's the sole reason we spent an extra day in Oslo. Below are some highlights from the museums.
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The Viking Ship Museum

The Folk Museum

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The Kon-Tiki Museum
​(that's the actual ship!)

Fram Museum

We ended the day with a delicious homemade meal of fresh shrimp prepared in the traditional Norwegian style by our wonderful Airbnb hostess, Gaby. Here's a view from her dining table. You can even see the Olympic ski jump off in the distance. Not too shabby!

​thursday, june 30

Fjord day! We woke up early to catch the 6:20 westbound train from Oslo to Myrdal. From there, we hopped onto the Flam Railway. This is one of the steepest railways in the world, with five separate braking systems. We sat beside a nice family from Nashville, TN. As for the view out the windows, the pictures really don't do it justice. It's absolutely spectacular.

We got to port and made a mad dash to the front of the ship for the best views of Sognefjord, the largest fjord in Norway. We had to aggressively - and I mean aggressively - defend our position in the front of the boat by building a wall with our backpacks. We had support from some other American comrades who pitched in with their packs, too. It was five young American backpackers against 500 Chinese and Russian tour bus tourists, some of whom tried to physically move our packs, but most of whom threw shade in their native tongue. It was a valiant battle, which I'm proud to say we won. 'Murica!

After a two hour fjord cruise, we caught a local bus to Bergen and treated ourselves to a hot meal at a local college hangout recommended by our Airbnb host. 😀

friday, july 1

Today we strolled around the small, charming town of Bergen. It's a university town, so there's a great young energy here. It's also probably the single most popular city for tourists in Norway because it's considered the gateway to the fjords. Tourists. Everywhere. After apparently about a month of beautiful weather, Bergen's trademark rain returned just in time to greet us. It's OK though, because the city's charm makes up for the dreary weather.

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Did we mention how many nice cars there are in Norway? Teslas everywhere. This country is stupid rich. But our favorite car, which we saw three times today, was this sweet matte brown Benz coupe. We even lucked into a glimpse of its real-life owner and his trophy wife/girlfriend/mistress, right after we snapped this picture!

Tourist Trap - I mean "Fish Market"

Fancy a reindeer or whale sausage?

Dinner was at a local non-touristy restaurant, and another recommendation from our Airbnb host. The plate on the left contains reindeer meatballs in gravy, carrots, potatoes, pea mash, and lingonberry jam. The bowl on the right is a ham and root vegetable goulash. The Norwegians, like North Carolinians, love their ham. Who knew? Anyway, eat all the things...

After dinner chillin' in our ridiculous Airbnb flat. It was around 11pm in this pic, btw. So much light makes for a happy Hirsh and Sarah. 😄

​saturday, july 2

Honestly, we thought today was going to be pretty lame. We had braced ourselves for a boring 9 hour bus ride from Bergen to Alesund. As it turns out, every corner of Norway is beautiful. In my opinion, it may even rival New Zealand. Here are just a handful of the endless incredible views out our bus window...

Upon arriving in Alesund, we trekked to our next Airbnb for a quick rest before heading out to dinner. A Rick Steves recommendation, this was our splurge meal after a day of convenience store coffee and ferry boat Coke and Pringles. Confusingly named Cafe XL, the food was a real foodie's dream. We enjoyed melon and prosciutto salad; fish soup with mussels, shrimp, salmon, and caviar in creamy broth; and a main entree of Parmesan-encrusted cod in a cream sauce with potatoes and carrots.