Conference turris::scandia

362.0. "What I did on my summer vacation" by MOVIES::JJOHNSON (Jim Johnson, VMS Development/Europe) Sun Aug 27 1989 11:43

Now that the holiday season is almost over...
Some miscallaneous notes about our recent whirlwind tour of Scandinavia
- the conclusion being that in every place there was more left unseen than
what we actually saw.
We (two adults and 4- and 5-year-old kids) took a package from Silja Line,
which included a round trip ferry crossing between Turku (Finland) and
Stockholm, a day cabin on the ship and two nights in the brand new hotel
Ariadne in Stockholm.  The whole lot cost us FIM 902, which is just over
$200.  A very good deal; the hotel was nice and the breakfast was by far
the best we had in Scandinavia:  several different kinds of bread, herring
(nice for those who can stomach it first thing in the morning...),
cereal, yoghurt, cold cuts, salads, both soft and hard-boiled eggs.
Our next stop was Oslo, where we stayed in the Holmenkollen Park hotel.
Again a nice place, and it had a wonderful luxury for weary travellers:
a combination showerhead/massage unit in the bathroom.  (They will also
wax your skis...)  It was obvious that the hotel was geared for winter
sports enthusiasts.  The drawback was that it was so far away from
downtown, and the tram stop was not all that close - when it was pouring
rain.  The staff was not as friendly as in the previous hotel and the break-
fast was not as good, but it was still ok.
We took the train from Oslo to Bergen - wonderful.  It's a very scenic trip
and takes the better part of a day.  The train was clean and they had a
restaurant on it, too.  We found the serving trolley perfectly adequate and
reasonably priced.  We also discovered that it's a lot easier to travel on a
train (or a ferry) with kids than on a plane or a bus.
We stayed in the hotel Admiral, which is right on the waterfront.  The hotel
staff was very friendly (with the possible exception of the people at
reception...), the hotel itself was nice but breakfast had slightly less
variety than the previous hotel.  All the hotels had some number of cable
or satellite channels, and the ones in the Admiral included BBC1, complete
with the text tv.
On to Copenhagen where we stayed at the hotel Richmond only a couple of 
blocks away from the Tivoli gardens.  Yes, a very central location, but the
hotel was not airconditioned and having the window open meant that it was
very noisy.  For some reason the hotel itself always seemed to be much
hotter than the air outside.
This was the most expensive hotel we stayed at, and it was very disappointing.
They gave you soap.  Period.  Even Howard Johnson's gives you a shower cap,
which these people didn't.  Their breakfast was very disappointing as well.
Here we are in the land of good cheeses and we get only one variety at break-
fast.  One variety of cereal, one variety of bread, two varieties of cold
cuts - and five different kinds of Danish pastries...  The staff at the
reception desk didn't always know what they were doing or saying.  Because of
their lack of information we very nearly missed our only chance to make a
trip to Legoland.  We paid a deposit on the day-long trip at the hotel with a
credit card and were assured that we could pay the balance with a credit card
on the bus there.  It turned out that the people in the bus only accepted cash.
Fortunately we had just about enough and were able to exchange traveller's
checks at Legoland itself.
As far as the kiddie attractions go, the three big hits were Legoland, the
Tivoli gardens and the "ball sea" on the ferry, in that order.  Legoland's
rides are tame enough for a four-year-old to go on by himself, the staff is
friendly and the restaurants are fast and efficient (four-year-olds get
bored very quickly if they have to wait for their food).  The Tivoli is
geared more for teenagers.  With good stomachs.
The adult attractions were maybe a bit different.  Having been to Stockholm
before, we skipped the things we saw earlier and headed to the Wasa ship
museum.  (The Wasa was a 17th century war ship that sank in the Stockholm
harbour on its maiden voyage in 1628, was carefully raised in the early 1960s
and is being restored.)  We found this to be a fascinating place, especially
after we saw the film about the restoration process.  We also made a sight-
seeing tour of the city on a boat.  The nice thing about Stockholm is that
you're not stuck on buses all the time.  We also enjoyed all the various
things we saw at Skansen (an outdoor museum/zoo/entertainment area).
In Oslo our sightseeing was cut short by huge thunderstorms and pouring rain,
but we did see the Vigeland park, which was great.  Our favourite among the 
statues was "the angry boy", considering who we were travelling with.
In Bergen we saw the Hanseatic museum and enjoyed just walking around in
general.  The scenery was beautiful and the town itself was clean, pretty
and virtually free of graffiti.  "Bryggen" was also a very nice place to
wander around in.  (Out of all the towns we visited, Bergen was the adults'
favourite.  Stockholm is very nice as well, but has noticeably more graffiti
and other bad things that big cities have.  We really didn't get a chance
to see very much of Oslo.)
In Copenhagen we found the hologram museum (?) which was much bigger than the
one in Stockholm.  Amazing what people can do with light.  Right next to it
is Louis Tussaud's Wax Museum, which was smaller than Mme Tussaud's in London,
but fortunately also a lot less crowded - you were actually able to *see*
the wax figures.  Our favourite was the scene where several famous artists
were painting the Mona Lisa, each in their own style.  Of course we also liked
the Tivoli itself, not to mention Legoland.  And it all started with simple
bricks...  The scale models were very impressive.  (They didn't seem to have
either the Apollo launch pad or a shuttle model.)
We've never seen so many hot dog stands in one place, by the way.  Can be
recommended.
On the whole it was a very nice little tour which gave us lots of ideas for
further trips.

Jim & Sirkku
    

    Nice trip report, but I can't resist (insert smiling face):

    I have here a Howard Johnson's shower cap which I am willing to swap
    for five kinds of Danish pastry and three kinds of bread.