we are in Voss today

Today was pretty much the best day yet. We got to take a boat to Voss from Flaam and it went through the most beautiful fjords. I cant even really decribe it except to say it was so beautiful.

I dont have time to write! oh no!

Here are some photos of the fjords. p.s. Ross and I might be on Discovery Travel. I'll write more about that later. TEASER

We are in Flam

No photos today, which is too bad because we just travelled by train on the most amazing and beautiful train ride you could ever imagine. It was about 6 hours and went from Oslo to Myrdal and then we switched trains and went from Myrdal to Flam. 

There were waterfalls and mountains and it snowed and trees changing colors and our ears popped and I bought a sandwich and we watched two more episodes of the Office...and now were in Flam, a sleepy little mountain town with not much going on. We just need to grab some dinner and maybe visit the tiniest church in Norway built in the 1600s and maybe take our picture by a sign I saw that said Farts and then tomorrow we get on a boat to tour the Sogne Fjord, the biggest and most beautiful fjord in Norway (not 100% sure of that fact so take it with a grain of salt). I am typing this with my backpack on. I only bought 15 minutes of internet time. 

Sorry mom and sisters you maybe wont get your typical awesome souvenir stuff here is EXPENSIVE. Im pretty must only gonna buy food. I just picked up a really cute sweater that had windproofing inside and thumbholes and it was $400, so I put it back down.

Oh, and mom I saw a polar bear taxidermized in a box and it had that weird felt ruffle around the edges like they did to dads bear. Maybe its a Norwegian thing and you should be proud rather than embarrassed.

Well bye for now, more later. LOVE kady (and Ross)

Oslo

Today was kind of a big day. First, we slept in until 11am. That was kind of an accident, but was mostly because we came back to the 'flat' at 8pm because we were totally tired and then we had to watch the Emmys until 11pm and then we slept twelve hours. But the good news is we got to see all the writers who won Emmys from shows we've never seen. It's always good to get English TV abroad though...

Anyways we got showered and walked to the train station and took a train plus a bus to see the ski jump which is currently under construction. It was pretty cool to see though because it sits up on top of the whole city and you can see all of Oslo from up there. Also when the 2011 Ski Jump competition is on TV I can bore anybody sitting next to me with the comment that "I've been there!!"





After that we took the bus and train back to the city, and walked
one hundred miles to get to the National Art Museum so we could see the Scream. That was pretty cool. They wouldn't let me take a photo though so you'll have to imagine it. Edvard Munch seemed like a pretty dark soul. They had a room full of his stuff. I really liked it. They also have a couple of Picassos, some Gaughans, Cezanne, Degas, Manet, etc.

From there we walked another hundred miles to get to a neat lunch cafe place where we paid $20ish for meat and potatoes. It was really yummy.

And then we walked another hundred miles to get to the Opera house. That was pretty cool. You can walk all the way to the top of it on these stone ramp things that are part of the architecture. You could see a lot of the shore and city from there too.




And then we took a nice walk through the bad neighborhood where the junkies and the prostitutes hang out. Apparently it's only illegal to buy a prostitute so only the buyer will be arrested. So the ladies just kind of hang out no big deal. We saw a dude totally strung out laying there. The reason for this nice walk was we wanted to tour the fortress where in the old days they would watch for bad guys coming up the fjord, and also put prisoners in jail.



Then we went for a beer and now we're home. I think literally without exaggerating we walked maybe 7 miles today. Oh, and I pooped for the first time since getting here.

Feels good.

Aaron, I stole this other moment from you

Your son is a total slosh. Two beers in three days, and when I offered him a third, he said, "no. I'm good."

I guess he's trying to ease himself into the old Hexum alcoholism.

This is the hat I lost.

It's an exact replica of the hat that I lost on Safari.Click here to read about the other hat

Aaron, I stole this moment from you

Ross's first beer:
!!!

I was so proud!




It was a "Viking", produced and distributed in Iceland. Drank in Iceland. p.s. at the very end, Ross said, "I'm not really a beer man."

Back to Iceland for a bit.

So one of the things that Reykjavik is famous for is it's hot springs, which are actually geothermal situations just below the surface. They have tons of them, and lots of volcanoes and I guess it's because they are on a major fault. Anyways, we got to go to the "Blue Lagoon" and soak for hours in this water, that is high in Silica and minerals and human excrement. It was pretty fabulous, but it was also highly disturbing because there were so many people in there. Ross said, "just think of it as a human stew". EW.

It was equal parts fabulous and disgusting. You germ freaks out there will get me on that one. It was gorgeous. Rainy, chilly day. To soak in a virtual hot tub and spread white gunk on your face for a mini facial and have the sleet hitting you in the head, but warm under the water was so so so cool. But to move your arm through the water and get a long hair with several snarled, "sub-hairs" attached to it and also to see people spitting, people with boogers hanging out of their noses...etc. Well it was too much. I lasted about 45 minutes I think before I had to call it quits. It was very nice and I would do it again. I just had to keep thinking about that shower at the end. I think the pros outweighed the cons. I *THINK* they did.

p.s. I think Ross gets embarrassed when I take our photo like that. I have several with his shy closed-eyes smile. get used to it, because I'm going to post lots more over the next two weeks.

We are in Oslo!

Today we got up at 4am and got on the bus for the Reykjavik airport. We almost missed the bus. I was getting ready pretty slowly and of course Ross got ready faster and waited for me, and I could tell he was sort of thinking we should get down to the lobby because time was running out. I was like, "whatever, Rookie, Who has travelled more? I know what I'm doing" and continued getting ready, knowing we needed to be approximately 5 minutes early for the bus. Of course I exaggerated to him that we needed 1 minute, and then he said 5. Well we made it down there 5 minutes early, at 4:45. There was another key on the desk, meaning that the other person getting on the bus had checked out, but they weren't waiting. They weren't outside the door (the normal bus-waiting place). I happened to look to the street and saw the bus was on the street, all the way across the parking lot, ready to drive away. I screamed at Ross to run while I grabbed my backpack and we made the bus just in time. I was like, "yah, next time let's be 10 minutes early" and he agreed.

In all the confusion, I left my hat behind. My loyal readers will remember the hat that I forgot on the safari bus in South Africa. Same hat. Left in Reykjavik, at the Capital Inn Hostel. I've decided to buy a derby hat for every trip and leave one in every country. It's my new "thing". Actually I'm super bummed because the plan was to NOT do my hair ever on the whole trip and just hide it with the hat. NOW WHAT AM I GOING TO DO???

Here's a picture of Ross and me in Oslo (me without my hat).


And here's my first meal here, at a yummy restaurant... pasta with surf and turf Ox and Scampi and some other unknowns. DELICIOUS.

Dear Debbie

Thank you for the awesome treats! We Are eating them right now! While watching the office. In Iceland.

Our first hostel

Im sorry to report that its actually pretty nice. Ross is sleeping and there's a tv and sink in the room. Were going to sleep and then walk to a nearby observatory to overlook the city at night. After I posted earlier we walked and walked and walked probably three miles to our place. We took pictures of the mountains and watched graffiti artists and went in a crazy bookstore that smelled like that great old book smell. We stopped for water bread cheese and ham from a gas station and are going to chill tonight. I have flight of the conchords season two on my iPod and Ross has season three and five of the office on his so were set for a chill evening. We booked an early morning trip to the blue lagoon. Google it... We used Ross' money since he's so rich now because of the ATM debaucle. Love it here. I love walking! Not a lot of english spoken here. Typing from my iPod so sorry for broken English.

Reykjavik Iceland

So we are here and we are killing time because our flight arrived at 6:20am and we can´t check into our hostel until 2pm. We dropped our big backpacks off there though and walked to a bus stop and took the bus into town. We walked around for an HOUR trying to find a place to have breakfast. Couldn´t find anything. Finally I had to get out our little tourist map and follow it up to the city center and we ended up finding a place where you could get a sandwich. Every food place we found before that doesn´t open until 11am on Saturdays. Now, is that because everybody stays up late on Friday night and drinks and then sleeps in on Saturdays? Doesn´t anybody want breakfast in the morning? That was weird.

The plane ride over here was about 6 hours. I slept for most of it, but Ross didn´t sleep at all. I offered him my drug cocktail of Adavan + Melatonin but he wouldn´t take it. So I have jetlag but he really has jet lag. Poor thing. For us it is basically 6:30 in the morning right now, but here it is 11:30. We just want to go to SLEEP. After that, we´re going to try and go to the hot springs. Ross just accidentally withdrew way too much money from his account because their $20,000 option (about $200USD) is listed like $20. on the screen, so he thought it meant $20 dollars, but instead it meant their $20,000. They put commas where periods should go and periods where commas should go. Confusing. Also this key board has all kinds of letters that don´t belong on a keyboard and I am trying to avoid them.

I can´t upload photos here, sorry...there are no USB ports to this terminal. So you´ll just have to imagine the awesome photo we got of ourselves at the Minneapolis airport in the Viking thing with the heads cut out and our heads in it.

I was so worried on the plane that the people next to me were going to have to get around me to go to the bathroom that I couldn´t really sleep, and they never did need to go to the bathroom anyways. I said I slept the whole way and I did, but like interrupted weird plane sleeping. So like I said, I´m tired. This post might not make much sense.

We saw a cute little old man on his bike, who had a mean growl on his face, and so I smiled really big to cheer him up and instead, he just stared at me the entire way by, me smiling, him growling.

Another little old lady wouldn´t smile either. What´s up with that?

A repeat of a blog from before I left for South Africa...

If I die on this trip, I would really appreciate it if everybody were to be EXTREMELY SAD. The following songs must be played at my funeral:

Rainbow Connection -- Willie Nelson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX9E_D_HjBo
Keep me in Your Heart -- Warren Zevon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7NQjLZvw44
Treasure -- The Cure http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLeVAG7xunA
Hallelujah -- Jeff Buckley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AratTMGrHaQ
Revival -- Soul Savers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp1rL7DI_D4
I Promise you I Will -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei7uVNyna1M (HYSTERICAL)


p.s. Please please please make me a photo montage just like Bianca's!!

The inevitabilities:

When travelling with your younger, male cousin, you pretty much have to sleep in a bra.
There's really no other option.

Procrastination Station

Aaron and Paula and Ross will be here in 2 hours. And what am I doing? Facebook. Blogging. Reading articles about Facebook do's and dont's.

What am I not doing?
Showering.
Choosing my 'plane' outfit.
Finding socks and underwear.
Putting liquids into a plastic bag.
Separating all travel documents to keep them at the ready.
Having a martini. (Scratch that, and move it to the previous list.)
Deciding if I should bring that cute bulky sweater.
Sweatpants? Will I regret not taking them?
Taking a nap...(hmmm, might have to move that to the previous list too.)

Don't worry! I work best under pressure. I just found this hilarious Pie Chart of Procrastination:



See ya!

Packed!

I am packed! (Almost.) I still have to put T-shirts, underwear, socks, pajamas, money and small extras like that in my bag...but I feel pretty good. I go to work tomorrow until about noon, and then I just have to go home and finalize everything.
I like my new backpack. I bought it on eBay used, but it's pretty awesome. I am excited that this trip will be sort of 'backpack-y'. I usually bring a suitcase when I go. So this will be new.

I am packing so light!
Two pairs of jeans. Two jackets, a raincoat and some undershirts. That's about it. I even consolidated my books and decided against certain items because of their 'size' and 'weight'. It feels sort of grown up, even though it seems like how kids travel. My flight leaves at 7:30pm~ish. So Aaron and Paula and Ross will meet me at my place around 5ish and we'll go to the airport extra early.

The itinerary is as follows:

September 19th
Arrive in Rekjavik, Iceland

September 21st
Arrive in Oslo, Norway

September 23rd
Take the "Norway in a Nutshell" train/ferry/bus tour to Bergen, Norway.

September 26th
Take a ferry to Stavanger, Norway

September 27th
Take the two hour hike up to and explore Preikestolen, or Pulpit Rock. Google it, it's awesome!
CLICK HERE TO SEE A PHOTO

September 28th
Take the ferry back to Bergen, and the night train to Oslo.

September 30th
Fly to Stockholm, and take the party boat to Helsinki, Finland. Explore for the day and possibly go to Tallinn, Estonia.

October 3rd
Party boat back to Stockholm

October 5th
Fly home

Pretty good for all the hours I've been working. I was pretty stressed but I think we've got a decent itinerary. I dont normally plan, and wasn't quite sure how to do it so we'll see how it goes. I hope to get to an internet cafe a lot while I'm there so I can keep the blog updated.

I know, Right?

I booked a TON of hostels tonight. We're officially scheduled for more than half our trip. So I feel better. We leave on Friday!!!

Remember to check back for lots of fun stories...

Norway

Getting there...

Is the entire battle. This is HARD WORK people. Trying to plan this trip. Have I mentioned that typically I don't really "plan" trips? Well, I don't. So far, we have our Iceland Hostel booked. That's it. 18 days, and only 2 nights are booked. Plus we're going to travel all over the god-forsaken (yes, that's the Hal in me) place so I have to book trains, and boats, and ferries, and buses. ETC. p.s. we're leaving in 6 DAYS.

Not complaining, but this is just not my forte. Tonight I was determined to get SOMETHING done, and so I booked a ferry from Bergen to Stavanger and our flight from Oslo to Stockholm.

That's pretty random and haphazard. Oh well.
Here's a picture of the boat we're taking from Bergen to Stavanger:


Looks kinda pretty. I'm not getting my hopes up. (Ferries and me don't get along. Right, Alason?)

My dad had his LAST day of work today!

I'm SOOOOOOOOOOO happy for my dad! He had his last day of work today!! I didn't even know it was his last day until he called me and said that he had a couple hours of work left and then he was done. I was like, "cool! for the weekend?" and he said, "no, Forever".

He RETIRED! I'm so JEALOUS!!

He turns 62 on September 17th or 19th I can't remember. Anyways, YAY dad!

Parking Ticket

The first $1.50 I put in the machine gave me only 45 minutes (at 25 cents for 15 minutes), the second dollar gave me only 30 minutes and the third dollar gave me zero minutes. The meter was clearly faulty. But of course, the meter maid didn't miss a beat and gave me a $42 TICKET. Thanks, Minneapolis.

I found some wildly hilarious cartoons that I might send along with my check for $42. That'll show 'em.




get it? the ghost has to still feed the meter...even though he's dead...? HJAHAHAHAH aaaahahahAHAHAHAA



Get it? Poor Cinderella's coach turned into a pumpkin because she forgot to feed the METER!!! HAHHAHAA




Get it??? They are stranded on a desert island and all they are worried about is quarters??!!! HAHAHAHAAAAAA


Get it??? They're stuck on an island and they're worried about quarters...........AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!

I brought Murphy to go to the bathroom at Lund's the other day...

...and we went to the last stall. I had him "go potty" and there we stood, hovering over the toilet, breathing in the STINKIEST smell in the whole world. The person before us must have been sick. I tried to wipe and swipe the bowl before he tried to go, because little kids are at that height where the dirtiness can actually get on them. Anyways, the whole time, I'm like, dying over the smell, and Murphy who doesn't say much basically ran from the toilet after he finished going to the bathroom. He went over to the door, with his pants around his ankles, like "get me out of here!". The point of this story is that the entire time, I'm saying to him, "Stinky". And, "Icky". And, "can you say, 'Stinky'?" I couldn't use that stall to go myself so I brought him out to the sink area and asked Josette to keep her eye on him while I used a different stall. I realized then that there was a woman in the middle stall. Taking a long time. Probably thinking I was talking about her, while saying "Stinky" six thousand times.

I would like to publicly apologize to that woman. I meant that the toilet in the END stall was stinky, and not her. (Though I decided later that she was probably making some 'stinky' herself, it really wasn't fair what happened there.)

Sorry!

I love my neighbors

The other day I hung all my clothes on the line at the neighbors' (she lets me use her line), and left to take my nephews to the State Fair*. I didn't get home until about 11pm. I remembered the clothes as I was pulling up to my garage, and was frustrated because I had Murphy with me and planned to put him straight to bed. And now I was going to have to send a half-asleep seven year old into my house and take clothes off the line, all while hoping that he wouldn't decide to come outside and start playing. Well, the clothes were off the line, folded, and in a basket waiting for me. Also, my front sidewalk had been completely trimmed up of all the skraggly grass that grows almost halfway across it. It's now perfectly manicured. They are so awesome. This is the same guy who takes care of my snow all winter long, cleans out my gutters twice a year, and took down an ugly old fence on my property.

*State Fair was fun...we saw all the familiar sights:

Goth kids
Fighting couples
Face painting
Girls in impossibly tall heels
Mullets
Toothless ride operators
Little girls with spray-painted pink hair
$2.50 bottled water
Pregnant teens

I talked to a woman while waiting in line for my $5 pizza slice at Blue Moon (fantastic flatbread pizza, and a pretty good value, it was about a foot long in the shape of a triangle) and she said that her friends make bingo cards and play the "People Watching Game" and set up all the kinds of people you might see and then play bingo all day.

Back to paragraph: Anyways, great neighbors.

Our old Outhouse

When we were little, our cabin got a brand new outhouse. We drove it down the road on a trailer, and, judging by this photo, I was 6 (this is the haircut I had in 1st grade). I exclaimed, "this crazy house has windows in the seat!"

It was so exciting!





So in May, when all of us kids went up for a little reunion, we drove up to the old cabin and trespassed on the new owner's property and took this photo for nostalgia's sake:



I guess we really didn't want to go inside. GROSS!!!

getting excited for my trip

One of the things that I really like about traveling is seeing things in person that you have only seen before in pictures. Look what I'm going to see in Norway!:



I have seen some pretty cool stuff in person...like Stonehenge (not my photo):



Maccu Picchu (not my photo)



The Leaning tower of Pisa: (not my photo)




A lion in Africa!: (my photo)



The gorge at Rhonda, Spain: (my photo)



Also, and most amazingly, Willy the Walleye, in Kabetogama, Minnesota:

Me, at work

My lawn...again

Remember the last time I mowed my lawn???

June 18, 2009.

Last night when I got home, I wrote on a used envelope:

"Would one of your boys like to mow my lawn for $20? ~kady (I'm desperate)"

And I stuck it in the door of my neighbors' house two doors down. The mom called me this morning, and yes, they would like to mow my lawn!

And so, it will be mowed on Thursday, for the 4th time this summer, for the low, low price of $20.

Herpes Simplex

Here I am, looking gorgeous as usual.  That thing under my nose is a cold sore. I've been getting those since I was 17. They're usually precipitated by stress, and so of course I always get one when I travel.

One time I had a cold sore on my nose while I was sitting at a pub in Ireland. I had been talking to two elderly gentlemen when they informed me that Jesse Ventura had just been elected as the Governor of Minnesota. I was marveling at how the heck they knew such a random detail, and then they informed me that there are more Irish in America than there are in Ireland and so they keep track of things in the States. Anyway, at the end of this 2-beer, 30 minute conversation, one of them leaned over and whispered in my ear, "By the way, your nose is bleeding".

Hostels

There is a terrifying horror film that I will never see, but the previews haunted me for weeks:





Apparently there are four of these movies already. And I guess the premise is that young college students travelling in Europe get tricked into staying at Hostels, where creepy gross people who have a wish to totally MURDER somebody in a gross and horrifying way stay there and then they pay the owners money for full on access to these kids and they kill them.

On a side note, the second thing I ever said to Summer Grimes was when I found out she was going alone to Eastern Europe and wanted to spend a month there, going from Hostel to Hostel. I had just heard about this movie and so I told her, "don't get murdered in a hostel!" And now we laugh about it, because she thought it was kind of weird at the time.


ANYWAYS...I'm trying to find cheap accomodation in Scandinavia, and it looks like really the only option is to stay in the dreaded Hostel. But then, there is the fear of sleeping on a giant piece of cardboard with no pillow, no sheets, and no blankets. And, what if there are sheets, but they're filthy? What about bathrooms and bugs and...whatever. Also, where do you put your stuff?

What if I have to stand in a shower that is gross? Should I bring flip flops just for the purpose? Will there be toilet paper?

Fabulous Tip

So, my armpits have been through a lot lately. I seem to be allergic to "invisible" solid deodorant, and while in the olden days there was always 15,000 choices in the deodorant isle that DID leave white marks on little black dresses, now there are only one or two. I get impatient trying to stare them down. Also, I have bought into the possible Old Wives' Tale that it's giving us all breast cancer. So, a year or so ago I quit using deodorant altogether. "Gross!", you might say, and you might just be right. I can go days and days without stinking or sweating and then one day I'll be dripping and fainting over the smell. This is embarrassing when it happens. Especially when somebody comes in for a hug.

Anyways, I was lamenting about this the other day to my Fabulous friend "J" (I'm withholding her name in case this story embarrasses her more than it does me), and she mentioned that she has been using Distilled White Vinegar on a cotton ball in her armpit. No sweating. No stinking. So I tried it. AND IT WORKS. It seems so simple, and yet, it's pretty obvious. I have been using this stuff for years on my hardwood floors and adding a cup to my linens to get out the smell, and for an all-natural cleaning product. Why not as a deodorant? Anyways, it's a miracle. Give it a try!

A Tiny sun spot on my otherwise crappy life

Ross and I bought our tickets to Norway today!

We were going to go on this trip back in May, but fortunately never bought the tickets because Ross' delayed passport didn't arrive until a week after we were supposed to leave. But this is better, so much better!

Work is just as busy, but I'm more mentally able to plan a fun trip now, rather than back in the spring.

We leave at the end of September. On the way there, we have a 2-day stop in Reykjavik Iceland, and then we fly to Oslo. Two weeks later we fly home to Minneapolis from Stockholm Sweden.

So that's the only plan so far. But we want to try to go here:

Google preikestolen norway to see more photos. It's like a giant rock that you can hike to.

p.s. my life isn't that crappy! I'm also going to Chile and Argentina in November!

Absolutely the only fish caught on Girls' Fishing Weekend 09

Good thing Ashley represented. Last year, the one fish caught was by my dad.

Check out anna's post about our half marathon

Click here