Summer 04

Since we went to Cuba in February, we only had a couple of weeks left for holiday this summer. We didn't want to end up lost and confused and angry as we were back then, so we decided to do something safe and still have a good time. We decided to go for Europe by car. We passed through Sweden one fine summer day. After seeing the temperature in Sweden though, we were a bit worried how we would survive without air condition in the car. We continued though, and managed to get to Copenhagen 10 minutes before the camping closed for the night. The sunshine was gone, and instead we had pouring rain. It was cold as well, but we managed to put up the tent for the first time in the rain without too much trouble, and even though it was a rough start, we slept quite well. Next morning we got up early to continue through Denmark and as far as we could through Germany. We ended up at a very small camping in the middle of nowhere. This is the car and the tent. (tent to the right ;P). As we visited Kassel for lunch, we tried to find out if there was something interesting about the city to be seen. We spent quite some time finding the local tourist office, and finally got information about the different options. We went up a hill to find a beautiful castle and garden, and also this old medieval castle. Unfortunately we got there so late that we didn't have time to walk up there. We decided to try to come back on our way home, which we actually did, but we were there on a Monday, and of course everything worth seeing is closed on a Monday.
We had ok weather during daytime, but whenever we put up the tent, rain would come and the tent would be wet again in the morning. When I turned the map page, I mistook one of the highways for another one, and so we ended up taking a different route down to Switzerland. We ended up quite far east on the German side of Bodensee.
In Bodensee, we had the most spectacular lightning we'd ever seen. It just wouldn't stop raining, and the thunder and lighting was so close, that we could feel the earth move, and all through the night we heard sirens from the fire engines as they tried to help the rain extinguish the flames. We wanted to see some mountains, and went up the Grimsel Pass and we stopped to take a short visit to this one but it wasn't big enough, so we went to Chamonix, and took the fast and easy way up to Aiguille du Midi. 3842 meters and being the Vikings that we are, we went up there wearing shorts and t-shirts. We did bring a sweater though, and I think if it wasn't for those we wouldn't have had a very nice time up there.
Here you can see Kristian with Mont Blanc somewhere behind him hidden by clouds. The system also made sure that we couldn't go down before the system announced the ticket number we got as we arrived. Which meant that we were guaranteed to spend almost two hours on the top. As we were having a snack in the cafeteria, the power went out, but apart from that and the heavy breathing going on all around us, it wasn't much interesting going on. The fog took away most of the view as well, and pictures can't really display the feeling of beeing extremely small that one get looking at these huge mountains.
We then drove through the valley of Rhône, and seeing the city of Sion and the two twin hills, Valère and Tourbillon, with the castle and the church on top, made us stop for the night, and spend the night at a hotel. As soon as we got ready to take a walk in the city, there was rain. We decided to take a walk and find a place to eat rather than being stuck in the hotel lobby, and found a nice place with good atmosphere and very good food.
The next day we went up the hill side and visited the church. It was a long walk and because of the heat, we decided that one of the hills was enough culture for one day, and started the long way down to the riviera. The lack of air condition in the car was starting to give us some headache, but with thoughts of swimming in the Mediterranean in mind, we had a good time driving after all.
We decided to go to Toulon, and while traffic through city was awful, we got to the camping that I visited with my parents 12 years ago, and we also managed to talk the hosts there into giving us the nicer spot under the trees with some good old bartering. (I pretended to be really upset about the deal they gave us and Kristian bartered using my bad mood as a way to get those guys to agree taht in order to satisfy me, it was probably best for all of them if we got the spot under the trees.) The camping is located very close to a small beach, it's a few hundred meters to walk, mostly down narrow stairs.
Because of the camping being close to private villas, we had the inconvenience of meeting with French culture, which includes party all night with live band playing all the songs you never liked in their original version. We stayed up trying to mingle with the other French guests at the camping for a while, but when they started discussing French politics, we figured we would be better off leaving.
Afraid of ending up another night without much sleep, and that being the last night before we would return for Norway, we left Saturday evening and continued as far as we could before making a stop. What we didn't know that this was the last weekend of the joint holiday for all of the Be-Ne-Lux countries, and of course all of the tourists spending time at the Riviera like us, would be going back home at the very same time we did. So, we stopped at some Motels until we finally found one that had a room for the night. The beds were crappy, but we got a few more hours of driving than what we would have if we had to go look for a camping. The next day we spent driving, with our goal being Kassel, and the fancy castle we wanted to see. Halfway there we figured that we would be there on a Monday, when it would most likely be closed anyway, and on Enno's recommendation we planned for a stop in Bremen instead. The rain had started again, and being tired from driving, we decided to go for a hotel this time as well, and ended up at Le Meridien in Hildesheim. A very nice hotel. We ordered room service and spent the night in bed watching MTV.
This actually became our last stop, as we were speeding through the rest of Germany and Denmark, we decided to try to reach home in one go. We arrived at Lambertseter at 4.30 in the morning, really tired, but a day before we had planned.
It's funny how no matter how nice your vacation has been, it's always so nice to get home, and this time was no exception.