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3 days in Copenhagen, Denmark

October 2, 2016 / Erin McKinney / 2 Comments

Overall, short story: Copenhagen is a really nice city with a lot to see and do. It was the busiest and most ‘New York”-y of all the Scandinavian cities we’ve seen… but that also meant a good mix of history, culture, food, art and architecture.

We had 1 short evening, 3 full days, and one morning at the end total…and even though we had a couple long days of exploring…it felt like the right amount of time to feel like we had seen the highlights of the city…and according to my steps app, we walked 20 miles! ha

Now, the Play by play:

The first evening was uneventful. We arrived on a RyanAir flight…which means it’s like a mile from the real airport haha. Every RyanAir flight, I feel like they built a special terminal with a half mile hike just to deter you from booking the cheap airline.

Just like most cities in Europe, there is an awesome public transit that will run you straight from the airport to the center of the city in under 15 minutes. We purchased Copenhagen Cards for the trip because we had 4 days here and this city’s pass actually sounded like a really good deal. Free transport on all of the metro, buses and trains in the city and like 70+museums and places with free admission. In hindsight-it was awesome. So convenient. We did canal tours, museums, rode the metro, took buses around town and never had to spend a dime.

We arrived a few hours ahead of Juliana and her family, so we got our room at The Square hotel. Fairly small…especially for the price- but it’s Scandinavia and it’s RIGHT downtown…so I have just resigned myself to the fact that everything is double price here.

We found a close restaurant: Axelborg Bodega, a Danish comfort food restaurant and pub. For being in a touristy location, it was quite good. Norah said it was “too fancy” but when asked why, she said it was because our waiter had a mustache. lol

A Hoegaarden on draft in a giant glass

Once Juliana and Ryan and their two little ones arrived, we just hung out with them for a couple hours and let the kids play around before heading to bed.

Full day 1

We ate breakfast at the hotel- a very small Swedish style spread… but not a lot of stuff. It was charged to the room so I didn’t pay attention at the time… but it was $60 for the 3 of us! For the equivalent of a continental US breakfast. wowza. So…we didn’t eat there anymore. lol

We started off on our walking tour of the day seeing so many sights and buildings…The most famous part of Copenhagen probably is Tivoli Gardens. It closes two weeks a year. Guess which two weeks…yep. this is one of them. haha so we just saw the gates. and a lot of construction.

We walked across to City Hall Square.

This dragon fountain of a Dragon fighting a bull was pretty cool. It’s been here about 100 years… it looks good for its age I think 🙂 On down we passed some cool doors, a crab on the cornerstone and Dragons on the doors.

We took a Canal ferry tour.

Of course, the Asian people loved Norah. Taking her picture before she even got on the boat.

They were selling Carlsberg beers on the ferry platform- so when you can drink in public, you do… lolthe tour went past a lot of the famous sights of Copenhagen including Nyhavn with its picturesque street of colorful buildings and old boats.

The Korean guy across from Norah gave her candy. This child is going to learn a hard reality that adults don’t just give you things and think you’re amazing once you grow up 🙂

Once we finished our canal tour we kept walking through the city. Past Holmen Church, an “as close to original” church as you can find in Copenhagen. Finished in the early 1600s, it was largely unaffected by city attacks and the two major fires that ravaged Copenhagen in the 1700s. The current queen of Denmark, Queen Margrethe II, was married in this church in 1967. She’s an interesting lady…. She’s a painter…an illustrator. Most famously, she did the illustrations and translation of the Danish version of the Lord of the Rings. She speaks 6 languages, she has designed costumes for theatre and ballet and she’s an absolute chain smoker. ha I’d hang out with her. She has no real political power…and has even publicly stated that she will abstain from all voting to ensure no partisanship. She is also the first female ruler of Denmark, as the law was amended to allow her to ascend the throne after her father as he had no sons. Sounds like she is a great ambassador for her country but I admittedly don’t know a lot of details about her.

Also, in the same area across the bridge is the old Stock Exchange from the 1600s with an amazing dragon spire on top. It’s hard to see, but that spire is 4 dragons, spiraling up to the top. It’s now just a boring Chamber of Commerce building, but it’s an awesome example of 1600’s “Danish Renaissance” architecture.

After a little walk, we found a Joe & the Juice and had a quick recharge. Lucca (aka “Yew-ca” as he says ..most adorable little boy ever.) tried helping the girls with their puzzle which they weren’t big fans of. ha

We found trampolines in the middle of the street so we jumped on them. They do make you happier!

Denmark is widely considered the happiest country in the world. I would be careful to not confuse happy with smily and “midwest” friendly- as most folks we met were just doing their own thing…but truly happy with their life? The Danes got it going on. They have free healthcare, free child care, free preschool, a year of maternity leave (3 months of that at 100% pay!), paternity leave, the highest level of volunteerism in the world, almost 90% of their population voted in their last election due to the perception of fair and uncorrupt leaders. (compared to under 40% in the US and the train wreck we’re looking at in politics.) Also, 50% of the population in Copenhagen bikes to work and for travel. Literally- if felt like EVERYONE had a bike. This picture was taken out our hotel window. This isn’t the Tour de France… this is just a side street downtown on a normal Tuesday. Insane. Bikes have their own real traffic lanes and their own signals. It was incredible to see that kind of infrastructure.

We made our way over to Paper Island, famous for its Street Food scene. I could have eaten here every meal! Foodie paradise. Stall after stall of everything you could think of. I ordered two meals basically because I couldn’t make a choice and I thought I’d never be back! ha (breaking news: we went back haha)

I got this Brioche bun pulled Duck burger… omg. i have no words.

and also this terikyaki rare flanksteak with tempura green beans. so worth it. even if i couldn’t breathe.

Kegan went for the meats, choosing a Brazilian churrasco style street meat stand.

We walked on down to Nyhavn to explore the canal a bit by foot instead of boat and pose for the quintessential pictures.

We next walked through the “Freetown of Christiania” but photography is banned, so we didn’t chance it and take any pictures. Christiania is a real life hippie commune thats been functioning for over 40 years. It is a self-proclaimed autonomous state…and there is even a sign when enter that says “you are now leaving the European Union”. The police used to warn against entering because they didn’t have access to everything inside… but I think that was before last month’s events. To understand “last month’s events”, some history is needed. The commune started in the early 70s when some hippies, as a way to protest the military and government’s abandoned lands, decided to squat on some seaside property that the military had recently stopped patrolling. This quickly became a full blown movement… and the Danish government actually met resistance from citizens who wanted these hippies to be able to stay as part of a giant social experiment.

The one aspect that has seen the most controversy is the open drug trade that was basically allowed up until 2001. You could go down “Pusher Street” through stands made of plywood and pick your drugs. The police knew what it was, but it was allowed as it kept the drug trade out of the rest of the city. A conservative government came to power in 2001 and all of that changed. No longer was it ignored… but it was still the known place for softer drugs like cannabis and hash, although not so open and in your face. Just a few months ago a tourist was beat up for photographing some of the stands on Pusher street. But…all of this came to an end on Sept 1. On August 30, police tried to stop a guy leaving pusher street with a box of money (proceeds from a day’s worth of cannabis sales) when he pulled a gun and shot 3 police officers, one of which died. This was the first police officer to die in Denmark since 1995. It was a big deal. They found the guy… but this was the last straw for residents of Christiania who saw this as their Achilles’ heel for public approval of their lifestyle and commune and they bulldozed down all of the stalls along pusher street themselves the next morning and really started taking a stand against drug sales in their area. So… now it was just a peaceful walk through a spray-painted hippie land… and it was hard to see what the allure of the whole thing really was… I’ll admit, I really wanted to see Pusher Street, but it turns out I was just a month too late.

After leaving Christiania and “returning to the EU,” we passed The Church of Our Savior, famous for its 400 step external staircase to the top. I really wanted to climb it but a mix of walking through the city all day and not wasting more of everybody’s time plus Kegan probably having to carry Norah made me decide it was a bad idea. Ha Next trip, Copenhagen….Next trip.

On our last leg, we passed The Round Tower. It was built as an astronomical observatory attached to the church and has access to a library in the same building. What makes this so unique, is the fact that there are no stairs in the tower. Instead, the inside in a giant ramp that winds around to the top. It was designed wide enough so that a horse and carriage could ride inside to the library to move books in and out. We didn’t go inside… but another one I’ll save for next time.

We made it back to the hotel having walked about 7 miles! We could have had one more interesting experience, there was some sort of intake center for the Church of Scientology right outside of our hotel.

As fun as that could have been we decided to just laugh at them from the outside. Am I the only one who feels like Scientology is some sort of inside joke I’m too nerdy to understand?

We hung out in the lobby for a while and then headed to our rooms for a bit. We got Indian takeaway from the restaurant downstairs that we found to be quite good but Juliana and Ryan didn’t really care for it.

Day 2

We started our morning walking the opposite direction from yesterday passing the Planetarium on our way to the Carlsberg Brewery

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Yes, you are seeing correctly below. That is a swastika on an elephant. Carlsberg used elephants and swastikas on their beers since the late 1800s…but discontinued the use of the symbol after the Nazi’s obviously ruined it’s use in the 1940s. However, the original elephant gates from 1901 still surprisingly remain.

I caught this awesome rare photo while we were there. There are almost no other people visible -which by itself was rare- but then this horse drawn carriage came strutting up the street! and then made a U turn right before the gates and….all I had was an iPhone. lol I did the best I could. Figures. I’m still happy with it and think this might be one of my “framers” from our travels.

We continued on through a park looking for The Cisterns. I had read that it was hidden underground through a little glass triangle entrance. We found it and it was awesome.

This used to be a giant tank that held 16 million liters of water in the 1800s, when the city’s drinking water wasn’t the cleanest. Now it’s empty and sort of haunting. They have a featured artist right now that has created a haunting low soundtrack and some projected animations throughout the cisterns to give it a very surreal and artistic feel. If no one has used this yet in a horror film, they should. This is a MUST visit if you go. I will go back anytime we are close to see another artist’s rendition of this underground space.

After The Cistern we parted ways with The Wilsons. They had to head back to catch their flight and we were off further away from the hotel in the Nørrebro neighborhood. After finding all of the restaurants I had researched closed for lunch, we found a pizza joint. I asked the guy what the best pizza was, he said chicken pesto… so we got that. I cant complain. In a city where Indian takeout cost us close to $80, an $18 pizza with water and fries that was pretty good felt like I stole it. haha
I wish we had little cute plant shops in the US and Ireland like they do across Scandinavia. I would buy sooo may plants. and kill them all.. and then probably buy more, because they’re adorable.

After pizza comes beer as we found this great Brewery pub with 40 taps of outstanding craft beer and sours. And since it was raining and iOS 10 killed my battery life, I needed a charger.

We found a good bakery that is famous for their Kanelburrer (cinnamon buns) so we got some for breakfast in the morning.

We also picked up a sampler box of chocolates from Ro Chokolade which has the reputation for being the best chocolates in Copenhagen. They were good but I don’t know that I’d need to rebuy them again.

We took the bus back down towards our hotel, and ended up with some terrible kebab meat from a place near the hotel.

Day 3

We grabbed pastries and coffee downstairs outside our hotel . I got a chocolate orange latte which I figured would end up being entirely too sweet (thinking of a Starbucks type American drink) but it was actually really good and just an essence of orange and chocolate in it.

We took a bus way up to the north side of the city during commuter hours which meant we were crammed in and I was beginning to question my idea to try to use only public transportation this trip. Haha but it was short lived and the bus dropped us off right outside of the church that we were traveling to see. This is Grundtvig’s Church-the largest Lutheran cathedral in the world and the most Scandinavian church in the world. 6 million yellow bricks. 20 years to complete. And we couldn’t go inside.

They were having a funeral that morning… so I just had to Google pictures for Kegan and show him what he was missing. So… I guess I’ll do the same for you guys. ha

Simplistic beauty. So Scandinavian.

We disappointedly walked towards the Zoologic museum…their Natural History Museum… but the disappointment was short lived, because we LOVED this museum. It’s a can’t miss in the city, too. I won’t go through everything… and trust me, I have about 200 more photos I didn’t include here. I’ll just leave some photos with a few notes below.

They treated the museum like an art exhibition, which actual art intermingled, like this glass spider art. I’d hate to meet the real life version of this guy!

They have the beer that started it all on display. Neat sidestory: Laboratory scientists for Carlsberg were able to extract original yeast cells from this bottle. The yeast is considered to be the first pure cultivated bottom-fermenting yeasts to be used in industrial beer production which didn’t cause the beer to spoil. Therefore, this beer is the father of the modern lager. And they remade THIS beer. But so far, only 30 bottles in the world. It’s a 140th anniversary tribute.

A whale skeleton.

A preserved “football fish” or angler fish. I felt like he was mocking me…

My little OCD child… it was totally bugging her that some of the stools were on their side… so she had to go through and fix every single one of them. She wanted to line them all up but we drew the line there. lol

A hand drawn and colored book from the 1400s on plants and trees. In my lifetime, I hope I can own one hand written book. That would be like a #lifegoal. haha

A Dodo bird skull. One of only 2 known in the world. So cool.

A 2 tusked Narwhal. The long tusk is actually a tooth… and 1 in 500 males has two tusks. A double unicorn of the sea.

The taxidermy animals were out of this world… and you could pet them! I had no idea beaver fur was so soft. I want a beaver skin blanket now. lol

A Hippo skull!

They had a wall of preserved “oddities” if you will. Enough that i could make a fine Halloween collage. haha

We even got to visit the lab and see the scientists working on piecing together a whale skeleton that was found washed ashore in February of this year. They said they have been soaking the bones in giant vats of water at super warm temperatures to speed up decomposition and also leach out the oil from the bones. The smell was really strong but it was so cool to see. Kegan got to talking to the scientists who were trying to figure out why we were spending our vacation at the Zoologisk museum. haha I just said “he’s a geologist” and immediately we were all best friends. Discussed Wyoming, geology, moving to Ireland… it was fun.

I definitely learned something at the museum. 3 words that now strike fear into me: Giant. Ground. Sloth. Holy mother of Jesus. Haha I didn’t know that was a thing until now. Apparently those cute little 3 toed tree sloths had a meaner older brother who would grew to be 14 feet tall and had leg bones the size of dinosaur’s.

They have found skeletons as old as 2 million years old but also as young as 8,000 years ago!!! These aren’t some ancient dinosaur- these guys were roaming the Earth with humans! They think humans might have actually wiped them out in the end by hunting them. This makes me want to go all Jurassic Park and find Giant Sloth DNA in the bones and release them again to attack humans. We’re like WAY overdue for a good plague anyway. What better way to go than by Giant Ground Sloth? How have no sci-fi or horror movies ever been made about my friend the Ground Sloth? I’m thinking we film one where we are trapped in the Cisterns with a Giant Sloth chasing us.

After a stellar museum trip-seriously probably one of my favorite museum trips ever- we were set on the path to Himmeriget. Yesterday’s beer tap post on Instagram prompted my friend Kyle-a fellow beer snob- to tell me about a special Cantillon beer brewed only for Denmark that we should try to get our hands on. For you non beer snobs, Cantillion is like the White Whale of all beers in the US. If you do manage to find it, you’re looking at $70+ a bottle and some major bragging rights. So…. imagine if there is a special edition Cantillon that they only sell at one bar in one country….yeah. We won at beer today.

Not only did we have the 2015 Cantillon Blåbær Lambic, we also had the 2014 Rosé de Gambrinus, the 2015 Gueuze and an Oude Gueuze from another relatively rare brewery 3 Fonteinen.

Then because our child is awesome and took a nap while we drank.. (Seriously. Child of the year award) we also tried the 2015 Crooked Stave Nightmare on Brett Raspberry on draft and it was the best beer either Kegan or I had ever had.

Up until we had that one at the end, the Cantillon Rosé De Gambrinus was my favorite but it had to take a backseat.

We managed to get ourselves back downtown by bus and met some soccer hooligans from Manchester on our way back to the food truck place that just loved Norah.

Norah had homemade carbonara pasta

I had Crispy Duck from the chinese place and Kegan had fried chicken which he forgot to photograph. haha

We walked the almost 2 miles back to the hotel and took a different route than we had previously gone, so we saw some other cool stuff- but only having my iPhone, it was too dark to photograph anything very well. You’ll have to settle for these.

Overall, we had a great trip. Amazing sights, clean city, tons to do, great infrastructure. I think we will definitely be back at some point in the future. If for no other reason than the Cisterns and to climb that round tower and church spire! 🙂

Lindsey and Kaleb arrive in 2 days and I’ll try to post some highlights from Ireland, especially if it’s somewhere new I haven’t already blogged previously. Also, I’ll do a post for our 2 day trip to France- both Normandy and Paris city.

Our first two weeks in Ireland

September 25, 2016 / Erin McKinney / 5 Comments

Sorry it’s taken a couple weeks for me to get this up… but I’ve had trouble catching some wifi. ha But more on that later.

We arrived back in Dublin from Sweden and drove out to Tulsk to meet Phyllis, a sweet older lady who had a cute little “apartment” to rent. They converted a garage into a cute little one bedroom house from her mother in law years ago and now they rent it. I found it on AirBnb and with it being only 15 minutes from our purchased house, it was perfect.

The windows bump out a couple of feet and Norah has taken this over as her play area… and I think it’s perfect! Is it just a Norah thing…or an all little kid thing… that they love small confined spaces? Norah will crawl into her closet under the shelves and watch her iPad. ha weirdo.

Our first trip to “town” was to go to Roscommon to open a bank account and get groceries at Tesco- the Ireland version of Walmart, sort of… at least as close as it gets.
We parked in the square downtown… (which I’d come to learn throughout the next two weeks was completely coincidental that we found a spot. haha) This is the old Gaol (jail). Built in the 1700s, used as a jail, a leprosy hospital and later a mental asylum in the late 1800s. Of note, Ireland’s only hangwoman worked here, Lady Betty. This lady put the Capital C in Crazy. Apparently, she was a destitute widow, with one living child. Her son left for America at a young age in the late 1700s to escape her crazy temper… She was slightly insane and a recluse. She lived by herself for years and years in Roscommon in a tiny little shack. 20 some years later, a man came to her door and asked to pay for her bed for the night because the inn was full. She, being slightly insane, stewed and thought about this seemingly wealthy man who had taken her bed and how terrible it was that he had so much while she had so little… so she took a knife and killed him in his sleep.

Going through his effects she found letters addressed to her…and quickly realized she had murdered her own son, who was thought to have not disclosed who he was in an attempt to see if she had changed for the better over the years. She was immediately taken to jail and sentenced to death at the gallows. The morning she was to die, the sheriff paraded the inmates into the square to await their public hanging, only to find out that the hangman had taken ill. With a restless crowd anxious from some hangin’, Betty called out to the sheriff that she would perform the hangings. The sheriff was stunned and agreed. (probably just for the entertainment factor)…but it turns out- she was just cold and heartless enough to pull it off-executing up to 20 people that day. She was so cold and emotionless, that when the hangman died shortly after, the sheriff appointed her the hangwoman of the jail and she lived inside the rest of her life. Oscar Wilde’s father recorded that she was so heartless, she used to draw portraits of all the people she hanged with a burnt stick on her wall and she also was in charge of the flogging of the prisoners, earning her the nickname “the woman from hell”.

So…there’s that. lol Now its building full of commercial businesses and some apartments… including the worst Italian restaurant I’ve ever eaten at. ha Seriously. It was terrible.

Turns out you have to make an appointment to open a bank account in Ireland, so we made an appointment for the next day. Stopped by Vodafone and 3, two cell phone providers, trying to get internet. We cant get broadband internet at our house (although I’m pretty confident there will be fiber there within the next couple of years through Imagine.ie- a fiber company that is targeting rural Ireland to get the most rural areas high speed access. Sadly, this should include us! haha), which leaves us with 4G SIM card internet. There is no “unlimited” SIM 4G internet, but with a contract, you can get 250GB a month for around $70. While I can use more than that by streaming Netflix or Amazon…and letting Norah do Youtube.. if we don’t stream TV and monitor the munchkin’s Youtube time, this should be fine… plus, we WILL have unlimited data on our Irish cell phones… so 250GB for the TV and computer should do just fine, even if it makes me grumble a little to have to monitor my usage. I have had quite the issue getting a contract so far, though. First they said I had to have a bank account in Ireland because they needed the IBAN number. So I got that. (which was no easy feat either) Then it was, no we’ll need the debit card… Well, those wont show up for another week. So they said they could use a utility bill as proof of address. So, I called PrePay Power, which is what is connected at this house, and got a letter with address verification. But they said PrePay power doesn’t work- has to be a billing statement. grrrr.

So, for now, until my bank card comes in- I have prepaid internet. $20 per 7.5GB haha but I’m connected!

PrePay Power brings me to another strange thing here. Instead of the electric company sending you a bill every month, you have the option of prepaying your electricity. For me, it doesn’t really matter, but I think this would be really good for someone living on a small fixed income…or really terrible at managing money. You can top up when you want to…and the box in your house tells you how much credit you still have remaining, it also has options where you can view your usage by hour, day, week or month… I talked to the company and they said they never shut the electric off for $0 balance during nights or weekends, and they even have a feature of a $5 IOU where you can press a code and “owe” them $5 of electricity if you cant top up but you’re at zero. All pretty neat. Also, because they get payment for 100% of the electricity they give, they have the lowest kilowatt hour rate in Ireland. Something like .17/hr …so I went ahead and activated it here. So for now I literally have no Irish “bills”. Cell and internet is prepaid, water is free and electric is prepaid. I think that’s pretty awesome!

Back to Roscommon:

We did get to witness a traditional funeral coming through town. I thought they looked Greek or Sicilian, but Kegan thinks they were Irish… People were walking alongside the hearse very slowly through town, I’m guessing on their way to the graveyard. Sure did back up traffic for 20 minutes…. I have no shame, I snapped a photo- for anthropological purposes… 🙂

After our trip to the grocery ($106 by the way…. like half of US prices for the same type stuff…), we went back to the rental. I had been promising Norah some makeup, so we did that. Green eyeshadow, purple eyeliner and gold lipstick.

Dog became a muddy country dog for the first time. haha

Kegan tried to start a fire, which proved difficult since the turf they left us was still a little wet and the wood stove isn’t really ventilated properly. (we tried the fire for a couple nights and woke up freezing so we just decided to go with paying for the kerosene fuel oil that runs the radiators. ha)

I know that its supposed to be terrible weather here….and we’ve only been here two weeks- but there is an awful lot of sunshine for a place that is supposed to be miserable. haha

Kegan and Norah and dog all walked up and down the road here and met some friends, including a horse that the lady said we could have if we wanted it. haha

Also, a Swiss guy named Bruno who gave Norah chocolate. Unfortunately, no one on the road here is giving away miniature donkeys…which is what I want. haha Phyllis- dead serious- told me a pair of donkeys would be LOVELY in the front yard… that if I wanted to get them, she would gladly let me keep them here. hahahaha these Irish people are the BEST in the world. hands down.

After hanging around a couple days with no internet (seriously guys… I was having some mega withdrawal. not even reliable cell data. or cable television! haha) and exploring a couple area towns to see what stores and such were there, it was time to tackle the barn at our place (Sept 16) since our container was arriving from the states on the 19th.

The current owners didn’t exactly clean it up for us. They took a couple things they wanted but left the rest of the crap.

We’re running a fine line right now, because our sale still hasn’t closed…but the owners gave us the keys, said come and go as we please, and didn’t even want a lease agreement or anything. So we know they are done here and full expect us to be proceeding as if we own it. However, because legally we don’t own it until Ireland issues the owners a “grant of probate” allowing them to actually fully sell this property on behalf of the estate of the late owner, we don’t even want to remove anything from the property yet. So, we just piled everything that was in the shed into the back 1/4 of it, allowing us to put all of our belongings in when they arrive.

And for those keeping track, we made a cash offer at auction back in May for this property. It is now September and we’re still waiting on this clearance from the government. The law office expects it “any day” but has expected it every day for over 2 months. But…what do you do? Our lawyer told us it could take 3-4 months… so we’re just now on the tail end of that….so from his estimates- it’s about time to hear back. I figure I’d wait until October to make a stink. We have tons of exterior work to do, like fixing up 2 years of overgrown grass… and planning the improvements for the house and ordering the items, so that when we do get clearance to close, we can immediately begin.

We cleaned up the barn nicely, so we were ready for Monday.

Me, on Monday that week:

We talked to Phyllis at our rental house and said that if she knew of anyone looking for some cash work on the side, we could use some help on Monday unloading our shipping container. She volunteered her son. haha We didn’t know what to expect, but on Monday, her son and her husband showed up to check out the house and help us. Turns out they are plumbers and electricians- husband has been doing it for 40 years! Life just works out sometimes. So, while we waited for the truck driver, they turned our water on for us. Willie, the husband, said the house had great potential… and I think he meant it, because he later told Phyllis the same thing. haha Also, they climbed in the attic, looked around, noted that it was full of insulation and totally dry which was the one last thing we were really worried about was finding rotting trusses or mold…but it honestly looked like a model house up there.

I had wanted a plumber on site when we turned the water on, so that if we ran into busted pipes or anything, we could address the issue immediately…and good thing we had one! The owners had removed a washing machine from the kitchen…and left the uncapped pipe wide open. So, the second the water was on, it was pouring out into the kitchen floor. doh. but it was quickly addressed and its not like we cared about the floors or anything anyway. haha

Turns out Dominic, the son, has a 4 year old son himself that cant wait to get together and play with Norah. I’m pretty excited about that as well! Life just has a way of working out. He even said to let him know before we hire out anything in the house and he’ll make sure we get in touch with good people for fair prices. Gotta know someone in a new area… so this was just a perfect encounter. Plus, he brought a dolly (a “trolley” here) which came in MIGHTY useful, because the semi couldn’t get up to our building like we had planned… and we ended up trucking EVERYTHING across the yard into the barn.

This is how far we had to move everything.

But we’re lucky he made it THAT far…He spent 20 minutes just trying to fit and get the momentum to get up the hill. Kegan had to advise him on shortening the bed, make the corner. Stop, lengthen the bed, climb the hill, then shorten the bed for unloading again. Luckily, our man Aiden wasn’t a quitter. He did it and viola, we were at least in somewhat of a position to unload.

We had some curious cows come to check us out.

2.5 hours later, it was done. And our nice clean barn was full of everything we own. haha

Dog found the first familiar smell in a long time and was loving it.

We tried to go ahead and take the sofa in the house, only to find that it wouldn’t fit through the doors!! We thought about taking out a window and passing it through, but truth is… the room is really too small as well haha so….Dominic got a free couch! ha (and paid… we paid him, too, of course)

We headed home that night, but exhausted we didn’t want to cook, so we picked up kebabs from SuperBites in Elphin. They have fish and chips, indian food, pizza, burgers, and kebabs…and they’re open until midnight most nights…and they deliver ALMOST to our house, so I’m sure for an extra 5 bucks we COULD get delivery at our house…which really make me giggle. haha And the food was goooood.

**Full disclosure, these photos are from multiple meals over the last two weeks. We did not eat all of this food for dinner one night. haha

Since our stuff had arrived and the house is still not ours, the only thing left we can really safely do is exterior yard work. So begins the weed-eating and the raking. Kegan spent a good hour looking for his earplugs and safety glasses, but couldn’t find them. So he borrowed Norah’s from a science kit. haha i guess better than nothing.

**Note the hair as well. One of Norah’s hair clips to hold it back out of his face while it’s in the awkward growing out phase. I think he’s going for a viking braid or something. Who knows at this point. Why not? Who’s he gotta impress? haha

Kegan got his Husqvarna weed-eater out that hadn’t been started in over 5 years. Since we lived in Louisville…and he started it up in 3 pulls! Those Swedes know how to make some tools.

Started the day on the backyard behind the house.

We discovered a sidewalk that goes all the way to the turf and wood shed. Who knew?? lol so that was a cool discovery.

Also, figured out why there was rain seeping in on the concrete in the back bedroom…. this lovely pile of turf bags. The guy had been buying bags of turf, using them inside, then tossing the mesh bags out the bedroom window into a pile for at least a couple years. The pile wasn’t allowing for any drainage. So, first homeowner problem solved.

I have a feeling this wont be the last eye-roll we give on this house. haha

Norah found an earthworm. haha even though it was making her antsy…she still held it, which I was impressed with out of the girly girl. We’ll make a country girl out of her yet. ha (doubtful)

Next up was the front raised yard. Eventually we want to enclose this area a little better, put down giant pavers and pea gravel…or moss in between and make this a front patio area with seating and table… but for now, cutting down the grass to a walkable level will do just fine. 🙂

Dog has been helping us weed-eat, too. lol Goat dog.

Currently, Kegan has weed-eated (weed-ate? weed-eaten? I’m not too sure what the past-tense form of weed eating is…) the west side of the house and uncovered the septic system as well as an entire fence line of blackberries. Yay! (this, in addition to the couple of apple trees in the front yard.)

Tomorrow our flooring for the entire house will be delivered. (figured this was safe since we can store it in the barn and I found a good sale price on wood-look tile at a local store.) It’s the best wide-plank barnwood replica I’ve ever seen…so I’m very excited. I figured with an humid as Ireland is…and the fact that there’s a chance the house can sit for weeks or months at a time in the future… that tile would be a good choice over carpet or hardwood. Also, since it tends to be on the cold side most of the year, we’re going to do the under tile radiant heating mats in the bedrooms, bathrooms and living room with individual thermostats on the bedrooms so they can be turned off when not in use or set to a certain temperature overnight. We had old school radiant pipe heating in California in our rental house…and we both loved it… said we’d try to remember how “worth it” it was when it came time for us to tile again. So I’m trying to remember that as the price tag seems a little pricey. But… the tile was half the price of hardwood… so I’m factoring that in.

We had hoped to save the kitchen cabinets and just paint them…. but they’re just nasty and falling apart. Cheap laminate, left to sit with food and who knows what in them….they gotta go. I’m currently talking to a guy through DoneDeal.ie (the Craigslist of Ireland) that is selling his existing kitchen and remodeling. He has maple shaker cabinets that will paint just fine and let us replace the entire kitchen with cabinets and appliances for $1,000. Hoping that works out! Would REALLY help keep the total remodel costs down.
**Update before even posting: The cabinets are ours!

For now, the exterior clean up continues….and tomorrow we’re heading to Dublin to fly out Tuesday to Copenhagen, Denmark for a few days. Long story, but a friend of mine, Juliana- who I met through AirBnb when they rented our house in Florida- has been travelling all over Europe over the last few months and came to Ireland the week we went to Sweden. It was my fault. I had her dates wrong… so since I messed up our hanging out in Ireland, I asked where else she was going to be…and we settled on Copenhagen for the last couple days of their trip. So, with low cost airlines at $41 each way, it’s not a big deal to hop a plane to another country to basically have a play date for our 4 year olds. lol

I’ve never been there, so it will be fun to explore. We only have 3 full days there, so i’ll probably roll it all up into one Copenhagen post. We return to Ireland on Oct 1st…. and on Oct 4th, Kaleb and Lindsey arrive for their 10 day Ireland/Paris guided tour. ha Looking forward to introducing Ireland to them and I hope they love it as much as we do. We’re going to jet over to Paris and Normandy for a couple days towards the end, which will be new for us as well. I’ve never been to France. This will be a nice little one day introduction to the area for planning our future trips 🙂

After that bit of fun, it’s all business until Christmas- house and remote IT work unless someone else decides to come visit us as well! I’ll keep you guys posted on any new developments. 🙂

Days 8 and 9-Stockholm -End of trip

September 12, 2016 / Erin McKinney / 0 Comments

This morning we had some breakfast and left Avesta headed for Stockholm. We dropped our car a couple days early at the airport at Marie’s advice. We took the Arlanda Express train straight to Central Station and checked in to our hotel that was right beside the station.

After checkin, we went out walking towards old town “Gamla Stan” to check out some sites.

I think this was the Swedish Parliament building…it was very cool sitting in a half circle in the middle of the river. Quite impressive.

Marie tells us as we are standing in front of this building that this is sort of a royal house…and that she has been here for dinners before because her grandmother is still part of a noble family. Wow. I didn’t know we were in the presence of Swedish royalty! so… that was pretty cool…

As soon as we crossed the bridge, we saw this Italian restaurant that my friend Juliana recommended. She said it was the best pizza outside of Naples she ever had. So, since we could use some lunch- we checked it out. I can see why it could have been great, but I think they were having a bad day with too many people and not enough help- the people beside us got up and left after 20 minutes with no soup, so it was pretty good…but I cant rave about it 🙂

However, funny- I told Juliana we were there on her recommendation- and she tells me that our waitress and her are Facebook friends.. hahaha- so I showed the waitress her Facebook picture and we were instantly friends. ha We even all got a selfie.

We continued on through old town, walking past the old German church

The Royal Palace

The temporary home of this statue. It is usually a few blocks away, but they are doing construction because that part of town is sinking into the ocean, so they decided this was a good spot for him. The statue is of Charles XIV John, who was a king of Sweden, a king of Norway, a governor of Rome, a general in France…and I’m sure a lot more. He lived in the late 1700s- early 1800s…and fought for Napoleon. He actually became King of Sweden because the real King of Sweden was growing old and childless. Since this guy had made such a name for himself in assisting Napoleon, the Swedes elected him the heir elect of their King, even though Charles XIV John had no idea. The king ‘adopted’ this grown man so that he could legally ascend the throne. He was actually well liked and really united Sweden. Napoleon totally took advantage of his “friend” being in control of Sweden and basically invaded Sweden as a vantage point for a conflict with Russia. It’s said that on his deathbed, he was still proud of defending Sweden against Napoleon and that history saw what side of the conflict he was on. Sounds like he was a fairly decent guy for a military leader. ha

We next arrived at Stortoget- the big public square. I did some research on the buildings… they’re cool… but nothing too crazy or fun to talk about surprisingly.

Marie says that back in high school, this cafe was THE cool place to hang out. haha

There’s a Cannonball stuck in the corner of this building…

I had to have one of these sock Vikings.

Our last stop was the most narrow alley in Stockholm. Martin Trotzigs Alley. It’s only 35 inches wide at it’s most narrow point.

When we got back to the hotel, we checked out the rooftop terrace on our floor. Panoramic views that my wide angle lens doesn’t do any justice to… but it was cool.

We ate dinner at a little restaurant around the corner called Polpette (meatball in Italian) that was an Italian Swedish fusion restaurant. (I’m not sure what that is haha)

(there is some glitch in this stupid site that is flipping pictures taken on my iPhone…and they dont fix, even when I flip them and look right to me…so I assume most of the following photos will be upside down- sorry….)

When we went to order our food, Norah said “I want a Donut please!” because we had passed a donut truck on the way into the restaurant that smelled amazing. Our waiter laughed and we continued our dinner. Well, that guy snuck out sometime while we were eating and bought them donuts from the truck outside and surprised them with them once they had eaten their food! That was so sweet! and he did good, because Norah loves M&Ms. haha

We came back to the hotel, I did a little bit of work, watched James Bond Spectre and we slept.

This morning, we started with the hotel’s extensive Swedish breakfast and we took the bus to the Vasa Museum. The Vase ship was a Swedish warship from the 1600s that sank as soon as she started into the harbor on her maiden voyage. oops. people scavenged the bronze and metal back in the day but it was left at the bottom of the ocean until the 1950s when they dug it back up and brought it here where it is an amazing piece of history. This thing is massive.

They think that the original wood carvings were painted like this… would have been a sight.

After the Vasa museum, we headed to Junibaken….a children’s museum/funhouse for stories by the author that did Pippi Longstocking. But it turns out they are closed on Mondays. So, we thought maybe the aquarium? …nope. Closed on Mondays, too.. So, we went to Skansen.

Skansen is an open air Swedish history museum. It has some animals, cafes, old stores and buildings, and other things.

We played some old time games: ring toss, stilts, jump rope, and that game where you roll the metal hoop around. img_5491

Norah and Axel found the car ride.

Spent some time on this playground before we headed out.

We were boring for dinner, Norah wanted McDonalds so we had that and some sushi from Sushiyama next door. Both are right beside the hotel. We packed everything up and we’ll head out at 6am to head back to Ireland.

We get our short term rental house Tuesday afternoon that we’ll stay in while we remodel our house. We got this place for $150/week- and it’s within 15 minutes of our house, with a working kitchen, bathrooms and wifi! 🙂 So…it was a no brainer and will make the remodeling go so much faster and easier. I’ll try to post a few photos tomorrow or Wednesday of it. We plan rent it through Christmas…. so that gives Kegan a deadline. haha I currently have 1 bathroom planned out, a 2nd bathroom half planned…. and the kitchen cabinet color picked out. I have a BIT of planning to do.

Our first order of business will be to get the container unloaded on Monday the 19th when all of our stuff arrives! woohoo.

Thanks for reading along with our crazy adventures!! 🙂

Day 7 – Uppsala, Sweden

September 11, 2016 / Erin McKinney / 0 Comments

We enjoyed our morning around the house, had some breakfast and the kids played. We eventually headed out towards the town of Uppsala to see a few sites I had in mind. Marie and Johan hadn’t been tourists in their own area, so it was sort of new for them, too!
Uppsala is a town of “-ests”. They have the oldest university in Scandinavia, The tallest cathedral in Scandinavia, its the 4th largest city in Sweden…and back in olden times had the biggest pagan temple and now has the most famous Viking burial mounds in all of Sweden.

We started out at these burial mounds at Gamla Uppsala, or old Uppsala. This site was the site of the Thing For All Swedes. A thing was a gathering. Political, Legal, information….is was a gathering of the tribe, the area…or in this case here, great things usually regarding the high chieftains and visiting chiefs and kings from neighboring lands. All free men (because Vikings had slaves…) who were able to wield a weapon were about the participate in the things.

These are called the Royal Mounds. they think initially, they were built to give sacrifice to the three Norse Gods Thor, Odin and Freyr.

There is an old medieval church standing on the site of the original Temple of Uppsala. This area was the last area of Sweden to adopt Christianity. Supposedly their large wooden pagan temple here had large wooden statues of the Norse gods, but of course there is no trace of them left now. This church was the site of the archdiocese of Sweden in the early christian days before it was moved to the amazing Uppsala Cathedral. Erik the Saint (Erik the IX) was killed here around 1160 and decapitated, then buried here for 100 years or so until the Uppsala Cathedral was built. (more about that below)

The guy that invented the Celsius temperature scale in buried underneath the red aisle carpet.

Of course, we climbed the mounds.

After that, we headed downtown to the Cathedral. Swedish monarch coronations were held here from the middle ages through the 1800s.

The Vasa chapel is the biggest and most ornate of the chapels. It holds the bodies of Gustav Vasa and his three wives (although there are only 2 wives on the tomb Ha). He was the longest serving king of Sweden up to that time… he reigned in the 1500s. He helped defeat Denmark and free Sweden, found against Ivan the Terrible in Russia and was the first to really “unite” Sweden.

This relic box holds the remains of Erik IX (the one who lost his head at the old church at Gamla Uppsala around 1160) They dug up his remains there and placed them in a box that was used during all of the king’s coronation ceremonies for hundreds of years. Saint Erik/King Erik IX/Erik the Martyr is the patron saint of Sweden. They opened the relic box and analyzed the bones years ago and found that his bones did match the stories… that he had multiple stab wounds that had healed and that he had been stabbed multiple times and was decapitated, as the story goes.)

After leaving the cathedral, we walked around the side and found they were having a large festival of some sort…but that meant food trucks. We picked the kebab truck. too bad…because it was terrible. haha

I had promised Norah a balloon if she was good…she picked Dora.

We ended by visiting the dessert stand.

We drove the hour and half back to Marie and Johan’s where we had a late afternoon “fika” where we enjoyed chokoladbolls and coffee

Later in the evening we ordered Pizza from the local restaurant. We tried Kabob Pizza which is apparently very popular in Sweden… and it was tasty. We packed up our stuff and got ready to head to Stockholm in the morning.

Day 6 -Avesta with Friends

September 10, 2016 / Erin McKinney / 0 Comments

Woke up this morning to Marie’s vicious attack dog Nellie. She’s so sweet, she’s coming home with me. Next dog I get… I sure hope it’s a calm smart one like Nellie. Ha

We had a lovely spread of Swedish breakfast

Including…wait for it…

The tube of kaviar! Marie said its a very Swedish thing and she eats it sometimes in Eggs, the boys eat it on bread with butter in the mornings. So it turns out real people do eat it haha

After breakfast the kids all played around the house with Legos and toys and the iPad. It didn’t matter that they didn’t speak the same language, giggling and shrieking is universal across languages haha They bounced around on the trampoline and played together in the sandbox.

After lunchtime we took the grand tour of Avesta including a photo op with the giant Dalarnian horse.

After our compulsory photo op, we headed over to this cute little park where they have Bison. The kids thought it was great to run around wherever they wanted. They also had a cute little playground.

They had those red toadstools like you see in cartoons or Fairy tales. I’ve never seen those before!
Everyone of course had to have ice cream from the cafe.

Total Swedish item- they had sets of stilts on the playground for you to play around on. Kegan and I were supposed to take a picture together on stilts… But I couldn’t stay upright for more than 1 second lol it was bad.
After we got home and had naps, it was time to go feed the goats. we collected apples from the yard and some crusty bread and headed down the path.