Now here's some little stories, we'd like to tell,
about five travelers, you know so well.
It started way back in history with Frej, Kiran, Selina, Sofie and C
For our 10-year wedding anniversary on May 24, we planned a trip to Nice, France in March, booking flights and a hotel. 3 days before we left, we got a message that the hotel we booked had water damage and that they wanted to relocate us to a hotel really far away. So, after dropping off Selina, Kiran and Charlie, about 10 hours before our flight left, we luckily booked another hotel (so much for booking ahead of time!!).
Friday, May 24
Old town, Nice
After a quick night's rest, we woke up at 5:45 AM, left Frej to go to school himself and we were on our way... We flew Norwegian Air and arrived into Nice around 10:30 AM. We took the bus 98 from the airport to our hotel, dropped off our stuff and wandered down to Girabaldi square. We had a great lunch, enjoying the freedom of being on our own, sitting in sunny 18°C weather. We walked through the old town with narrow walking streets packed with tourists and lots of small restaurants and shops. The houses had green shutters and small balconies used for plants and for drying clothes. Then we walked to the Promenade des Anglais and took a quick rest on the beach that is made entirely of smooth, palm-sized rocks (and no sand).
View of Promenade des Anglais from Castle Hill
To regain a bit of energy, we aimed to find a small coffee place, but mostly only found restaurants selling seafood and eventually found a small Thai shop, where Sofie had her first bubble tea and Cherian had a small cup of French coffee. We headed up the Castle Hill near the old town to see the breathtaking view of Nice and its surroundings. After checking in at the hotel, we got ready for dinner and went down to the Le Port to eat at an Italian vegetarian restaurant (Zucca Magica) that was decorated with pumpkins all over. After a nice meal and a pichet of the house wine, we mozied into the old town and got a drink listening to an awesome band at a small jazz bar. Saturday, May 25
Renting city bikes
The traffic in Nice made us feel like we were in India... First, there were lots of scooters and then the unspoken traffic rules seemed to be that you just push your way through intersections, drive your scooter on sidewalks, double park when you need to, or park over crosswalks at the intersections. (But then again, everything else is disorderly coming from Copenhagen)...
Matisse - "Horse, Rider and Clown 1947"
But Nice also has a great city bike system where you register your credit card and mobile number, find a bike station, place a phone call and then you can take the bike from one stand and return it to a different stand in the city. So, we decided to brave the traffic chaos and rent city bikes. We biked up the hill to see the Matisse Museum (Selina insisted that we went there) and learned about Henri Matisse. After the museum, seeing the rain clouds moving south from the north, we biked down to the shopping area, got a quick baguette to eat, and began a bike ride towards Monaco, which is just 13 km from Nice. Due to the hills, we didn't get very far, and as it started to rain, we stopped at a fancy (500 EUR per night) hotel with a good view overlooking the bay of Villafranche-sur-Mer. It was perfect timing as it started to pour, and we enjoyed our frothy cappuccino and hot chocolate (and free WiFi). After the rain passed, we headed down into the cute little town that was a lot
View of Villafrance-sur-Mer
more quiet than Nice and dipped our feet in the cold water on its sandy beach. We biked back with a strong tailwind, and we were back in Nice in no time. For dinner, we went to a vegan restaurant (Le Speakeasy) that was run by a older American lady. It was like walking into your grandma's messy dining room with only 3 tables (10 people could be seated). The food was kind of more like home cooking, so all-in-all a very unique experience, and very atypical to most Nice restaurants. After dinner, we went out for drinks in the old city again but then figured out that the city bikes were not such a good deal as we thought. We thought it was one euro for the day, so we kept them for 10 hours, since they also had a combination lock that we could use. But, it turned out that it was 1 EUR just to have access to the bike system for the day, but then you have to pay by hour, where only the first 30 minutes are for free. So, we were charged 21 EUR each for the bikes for the day... So, then, we figured out how to just go from stand to stand within the 30 minutes and that is plenty of time to get from place to place in Nice. Sunday, May 26
Can you see the little red racer car? (we hardly could)
Since we had seen most of Nice, we decided to check off another country off the list, so we took a 20 min train ride to Monaco. But, it turned out that it was the day the Formula 1 Grand Prix was going on, so the train was very crowded. And when we got there, the streets were packed with police and souvenir stands. Tickets to get a seat on the grandstands were 500 Euros, but there were also streets where you could pay to just get a decent view. So, a romantic stroll through Monaco turned out to be crowded and loud trip with race-car noise and helicopters flying around all day.
Observatory Cave, Monaco
Despite the crowd, we hiked up to the old fort/village where Prince Albert II lives (palace tours were closed though because of the race). Then we walked along the coast on the top of the cliff surrounded by lots of plants and cacti, enjoying the view over the sea and the bustling port. We eventually got a glimpse of the race. We wanted to find the Exotic Gardens and the signs led us to a bus that took us there. It was a very nice tropical garden also with lots of cacti. There was also a cave where we climbed down 300 steps to check out the stalagmites and stalactites.
Socca with parmesan, mushrooms & salad
We went back to Nice and had socca for lunch - a Nice specialty - a chickpea pancake. Then we enjoyed the last bit of sunshine for the day on the beach in warm 20 C weather. Then we picked up our luggage at the hotel and took the bus to the airport for a flight at 20.40. It was such a great second honeymoon (10 year anniversary weekend)!! What an amazing feeling to spend some time just as a couple and to spontaneously enjoy the day (vs. having to deal with the daily grind)... Big thanks to Selma´s family, Emma´s family, Kim´s family, Capella and Camilla for making this special weekend possible!!
For the kids’ winter break, we went on a ski vacation in
Wagrain, Austria (just like a lot of other Danish families). On Friday the 8th
of February, Cherian came home from his business trip in Las Vegas at 8 AM and Selina
and Frej took off school and we set out for our trip at 8:30 AM. Kiran went to school that day and after
school, he met up with his afterschool program “Multi Idræt” that took a bus
down to Obertraun, a 1.5 hour drive from Wagrain.
A big building in Leipzig
While the entire trip is about a 12 hour drive from Denmark,
we decided to sleep over in Leipzig, Germany to break up the trip. The kids
were enthralled by the budget hotel we stayed at, and we arrived in good time
so that we could eat out at a vegetarian restaurant nearby. On Saturday, we
drove to Wagrain, and while we didn’t want to listen to the GPS lady who was
trying to force us off the highway, we ran into traffic and eventually had to
listen to her.
Castle outside of Salzburg
So, due to the traffic, we
had to go around Munich and we came 3 hours later than we planned. Meanwhile,
we got a SMS from Kiran’s group leader that although their bus drove through
the night, they had to sit in traffic for 8 hours, making his trip a 24 hour bus
ride!
Playing in the apartment
In Wagrain, we rented a modern 2-bedroom apartment owned by a
Danish family. It was snowy upon our arrival, and the apartment was up a hill,
so our Ford S-Max (snow tires, no chains) kept skidding out before we got to
the parking garage. Finally, after the 8th
attempt, we made it up the hill to much relief.
Ready for the first day!
On Sunday, we started skiing and snowboarding. Selina started her ski lessons in a group of
10 kids (8 Danes & 2 Germans) with an instructor named Johannes. Frej got into a good snowboarding
group for 2 days, where all the kids were really good.
One happy snow racer (and her mommy)!
Ski school goes from 10 AM – 12 PM and then again from 1 PM –
3 PM. We thought that it would be easy
to eat lunch together between 12 and 1, but each teacher stopped at a different
“alm” (a traditional wooden hut with a restaurant) for lunch, making it
impossible to gather together. So, after
the first day, we gave the kids meal tickets to get food from wherever they
stopped.
So proud to win first place!!
Selina had a great time at ski school. She made new friends and they mostly went
down the red slopes and practiced parallel turns and she improved a lot. She had
a great time going over bumps and into all the small trails in the woods. On
Thursday, the ski school put everyone through a (very small) slalom race course
and she won first place in her group.
Frej also had a good time, going “off-pist”
and getting stuck in waist-deep snow.
They went to the snow park on the second day and Frej reached his goal
to do a 180 off a jump.
On Tuesday morning, Cherian drove Frej to the town of Zell
om See (40 min from Wagrain) to meet up with his after school program “Cassiopeia”
to go skiing for the rest of the week. They
also have a blog and we read they went picnicking on the mountain sitting onbenches made of snow. Frej will take the bus home with the Cassiopeia crew and
actually get home before us.
The view over Wagrain
On Thursday, Cherian drove to Obertraun and picked up Kiran
under much, much better circumstances than last year! We were all excited to see Kiran (in one
piece) and happy that he had a great time with Multi.
On Friday, most families took their kids out of ski school
or started their journey back, but we put Kiran and Selina in ski school for
the morning. Unfortunately, there weren’t
many kids at Kiran’s level, so he went with Selina’s class for the morning (and
was kind of bored).
You first... No, you first...
While the kids are at ski school, Sofie and Cherian snowboarded
down the red slope taking it easy and enjoying the view. We had a lesson on Wednesday
where we had to do different exercises to practice carving, fast short turns, riding
switch, and even nollies (yeah, that wasn’t so successful).
Enjoying the warmth of the alm
We started out bringing our lunch and eating at a waiting
room at the top of the mountain, but it seemed like we were definitely the
minority and most everyone else ate at one of the “alms” (traditional wooden hut with a restaurant and optionally lodging) on the mountain, where
each one had a different specialty.
For skiers without fear of heart attacks
Krapfen mit sauerkraut
So, we made it to Krapfen Alm whose
specialty was making fresh homemade “Krapfen” (donuts). It looked like a family run business with the grandmother making the donuts and the grandfather as a waiter (who only spoke Austrian, so he had to send his granddaughter to take our order). One day, we stopped just for a dessert donut with
ice cream and chocolate sauce. On
Friday, we stopped for lunch and had a donut with sour cabbage and donuts topped
with potatoes, fried eggs and bacon!
Kasnocken - YUM!!
Wondered by the unique Austrian cuisine,
we went out for dinner to find some “Kasnocken” (a pasta unique to the Salzburg area with cheese
topped with fried onions – probably the original mac and cheese) and got enticed
into getting some “Topfen Knudel” (cheesecake-like dumplings stuffed with
chocolate or jam) for dessert.
Topfen Knudel - YUMMY YUM!
After ski school, there was an hour where we got to
ski/board with the kids. It was tough to
keep up with them! So much so, that
Selina wants to teach her parents to ski so that they can go faster. They loved
going into the small, bumpy trails in the forest. Around 4 PM, we would normally take the
gondola back down the mountain.
Saturday we drive to Berlin to overnight before we drive home and meet Frej and Charlie on Sunday.
