Since this blog is called ‘Jill and Sal’s Excellent Adventure’ I figure it’s about time I add some color commentary. The last 10 days have been a fantastic start to our 3 month round the world adventure. After 4 days each in Iceland and Copenhagen we’ve made it down to Germany, where I’m typing from our Berlin hostel, the Easterner in former East Berlin.
A quick summary of my highlights of the trip to date. Iceland was just amazing. I’ve never been to a place with as interesting, varied, and beautiful landscapes. From our initial bus ride from the airport to our homestay in Kopavogur, a suburb of Reykjavik, we were greeted with the strangest moon-like landscapes – barren, rocky terrain with little vegetation, dotted with occasional cottages on the coast. The landscapes only got more impressive the next day, when our host, Ester, drove us to a large fascinating cave (Jill’s first spelunking adventure), some gorgeous red-colored hills (which of course I climbed), and finally a little-known valley where we hiked a few miles to some natural hot springs and bubbling sulfur pools in the middle of the wilderness. After that little adventure Ester let Jill and I borrow her car for the day – we dropped her off at a wedding party and went to the world-famous Blue Lagoon Spa, a natural lagoon with powder-blue water situated amongst craggy black lava rocks, known for its beautifying silica mud. The next day Jill and I again drove Ester’s car – this time for the whole day to see the key sights of the ‘Golden Circle Tour’ – The fantastically beautiful Thingvellir, the country’s most famous waterfall Gullfoss, and the geyser at Geysir (where we get the word geyser). I told Jill I felt like we visited Zion national park, Niagara Falls, and Yellowstone all in the same day – where on earth can you see such amazing sights all in one day? Full disclosure: it definitely helps when you have 24 hour sunlight and get perfectly sunny weather!
I know I probably wrote too much about Iceland (forgive me, I’m new to blogging and in general tend to be a bit long-winded) but that’s because I was blown away by it. Aside from the high prices of lodging and car rental (which we largely avoided due to the tremendous generosity of our host) and the unpredictably cool/rainy weather (which again, we largely avoided) I can’t think of a more perfect destination for a summer escape. I am already thinking of my next trip to Iceland – in a few years I’d like to get some friends together to go camping, hiking, and fishing for a week or more.
Ok enough with Iceland. In Copenhagen once again we were met with tremendous generosity. Jill’s cousin Emily and her husband Owen live in Copenhagen, and Owen’s coworker and good friend, Jesper, was out of town so let us stay in his room in his apartment, and his roommate Casper was kind enough to host us for 4 nights. Clear enough? J Casper was a perfect host as well, as he had lasagna waiting for us on our arrival, gave us maps and directions around the city, and provided very interesting conversation throughout our stay. Likewise, Emily and Owen treated us to a fantastic Danish BBQ (grilled sausages and veggies, French hot dogs, and all-we-could-drink Tuborg for me and red wine for Jill) and meeting up with them has certainly been a highlight of our trip so far. As for Copenhagen itself, we found it to be a pleasant and very walkable/bikeable city with good public transportation and clean and modern city center. The ‘free bike rentals’ proved annoying since we couldn’t find any of the free city bikes for over 24 hours, and once we finally got the bikes we realized that they were… well… terrible to say the least. Despite that we had fun biking around, seeing the sites, and eating the occasional meal – which for us to save money was one big daily buffet meal and a snack here and there throughout the day (i.e. a loaf of bread and spreadable cheese).
After a 7 hour bus-ferry-bus journey from Copenhagen we arrived in Berlin, and once again we’ve been blessed with gorgeous weather which seems to be a trend thusfar – I think that God is being kind to us before we get to the monsoon season in India and SE Asia! We did a 3-hour FREE walking tour of the city yesterday which was just fantastic. We saw most of the major sights in a single day – Checkpoint Charlie, the East Side Gallery where artists have painted murals on a significant chunk of the wall, the Jewish memorial, the museum district and main squares, the location of Hitler’s bunker where he committed suicide (now a shoddy car park!) and many more.
We’ve both loved Berlin – the history, the edgy feel of the city, and surprisingly the pleasant and even beautiful look of the city. Tomorrow morning we head to Dresden for a day before making our way to Prague for 2 nights, then probably Vienna. Our itinerary after that is still a bit up in the air but it looks like we’re going to do at least a week in Eastern Europe – we’ve been hearing amazing things from fellow travelers about places like Slovenia and Budapest and Croatia, and reading up more on the internet and guidebooks has really gotten us excited to check out some of these spots. Our final 7-10 days in Europe we will spend in Italy – My good friend Alessandro who was my roommate from my time in Oz has said we can use his house in Bolsena (since he is in Japan now with his wife and baby). It is a 1000 year old structure which was part of the old castle wall, and conveniently located between Rome and Tuscany (less than 2 hours drive to Sienna if I remember correctly).
I’ll write more next week, hopefully we’ll have some more good and fun experiences to share. Maybe Jill will have some time to throw some stuff up too. Ciao for now!
