Norway 🇳🇴 & Iceland 🇮🇸

We hadn’t seen our friend Rob in years but he’s one of those people you can vibe with quickly. He and his partner Michael were amazing hosts, taking our family in for six nights in Oslo. They made us feel totally at home, and showed us around their city. 

Oslo is #goals for other cities. It’s a scenic city on the ocean, with a river and parks, designed thoughtfully and creatively. In front of one neighbourhood library there is a converted cargo container that acts as an outdoor room for the summer, stocked with children’s books and games. To top it off, they sell waffles, coffee, and lemonade. We must’ve eaten two jars of jam as a crew. Another library was « kids only » so we had to chill outside while the girls played for an hour or so - sitting in cable cars, exploring little reading nooks, making crafts. 

We also all enjoyed in The Kon-Tiki Museum, with the actual raft on display. It brought a lot of our travel experiences together with references to Rapa Nui, Raroia, and Ecuador. Thor Heyerdahl: what a paladin — the ambition, the hutzpah, the sticktoitiveness! The Kon-Tiki Expedition remains an inspiration. Available at a library near you. 

Our three day stopover in Iceland gave us enough time to drive around and see some of its otherworldly geography. Lava fields, dormant volcanos in the distance, sweeping fields, waterfalls, active geysers, and thermal springs — and that’s just the bit we saw. 

We spent a day at one of Reykjavik’s seventeen(!) pool complexes. The kids relished the water slide and we hopped from pool to pool as the temperature suited. Geothermal heat is a swimmer’s delight. Iceland was a calm, peaceful place to wrap up our trip. It would be nice to return there for hiking someday. 

In the last six months, we’ve done many wonderful things. It has been exciting, challenging, surreal, yet very real. Home is, of course, the last stop on our trip, and we are all ready to enjoy being back in Nova Scotia. 

Venice 🇮🇹 & Paris 🇫🇷

We spent a few days in Venice, where we tried to stay cool during the heatwave days, and went exploring the labyrinth of streets in the evenings. We stayed in Cannaregio (the Jewish Ghetto), which was the perfect neighbourhood for calm walks far enough from the main roads. The architecture of Venice is eye candy, and the gelato is fantastic. Just like we did at DisneySea, we took a gondola ride. This time it was just us, and the gondolier told us about the community and its history. 

We went to Murano one day and spent time at a glass jewelry workshop. We also went to San Marco’s Square where the girls fed pigeons. 

From Venice it was actually quite a gruelling journey to Paris. We had booked an overnight train, which would have been very comfortable, but there was a landslide in France that made the track impassable. So the new deal was a train to Milan, then an overnight bus to Paris. Sadly it was one step up from a school bus and was stopped at the French border because it didn’t meet the environmental standards. We waited five hours for the replacement bus, then made our way to Paris, where there was a heat wave. 

Luckily our AirBnb was another great one, a whimsical apartment in Montmartre with loads of fun stuff to look at and toys for the kids. To beat the heat, we went to the Louvre to appreciate the air conditioning, and the art. The Egyptian section is my favourite. We also found a community pool and went there three times during the week. 

When the weekend came, we were lucky to get visitors! James and Naomi zipped over from London. What a pleasure to spend time with family, especially these two legends! We had a great time exploring the city: la Tour Eiffel, great lunch, Shakespeare & Co bookstore, an amusement park. It was fun to spend time together and we were sad to see them go.