Tori's European Travels: 2011

Hello my loyal blog readers!

Since we last spoke on this blog (it has almost been a year), I bid you all farewell and went on with my life back in DC.

After conversations with my two greatest and most loyal fans (largely due to that whole unconditional love thing), I was informed that there was a small audience who would still read and enjoy my sassy travel blog. My mother said, "Oh, just post your pictures and we will be happy." I was content and happily agreed to fulfill my mother's wish, even though I made the argument that it was a study abroad blog for when I was in Sweden only. When all of a sudden my father piped in via iPhone speaker phone stating "It was called Tori's European Travels, not Tori's Swedish Travels." In true Phil Lardner fashion, it was a logical argument and I had to concede.

So here we are again, a year after I started my original blog, embarking on a new adventure of post-abroad travels in my senior year of college. In the time span of 5 months, between June and December, 201, I will have had the great fortune of going on three trips to Europe. This re-vamped blog will focus on these travels and those in my future. And hopefully by this time next year I will be writing this blog while living and working in Europe post-graduation!

Trip #1 brief synopsis:
In June, I accompanied my family on a fantastic Mediterranean cruise. After a few hours of me wandering around Venice searching for my family like a true lost American tourist, Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad, Alli and I boarded the Nieuw Amsterdam to travel around the Mediterranean. We traveled through the Greek Islands, different parts of Italy and eventually to Barcelona. Some of the highlights were our wonderful waiters, DJ Jazzy and Gene, Grandpa trying every food under the sun including escargot, a multitude of family photos, the wonderful wine packages (Grandpa and I enjoyed a few bottles of Pinot Noir), the numerous celebrations (Grandma and Grandpa's 65th wedding anniversary and Alli's 18th birthday) and of course, Grandma and Grandpa ordering drinks from the waiter that was in love with me and called me Miss Victoria. For the full story, please see Cheryl Lardner's fantastic scrapbook!

After we docked in Barcelona, we stayed a few extra days at the Hilton. After our 13 hour tour day, I spent the rest of the time working on papers for my online summer classes. The day after I bid my family good bye and went to my friend Marta's apartment, who I met while in Sweden. My other friend Xavi picked me up from my hotel and we wandered around the city after lugging my heavy bags all throughout Barcelona. And when I say we lugged my bags, I mean Xavi. We had lunch in true Spanish fashion with great food and even better wine. We met up with Marta and her boyfriend Sergi and we went to a great Catalan dinner. The next few days were spent going to the beach and hanging out with my wonderful Spanish friends from Sweden! Guillermo even came in from Zaragoza to visit! We had a wonderful time and it was extremely difficult to leave the gorgeous Barcelona and my amazing friends!

Trip #2 synopsis:

Back in March, as I prepared to go on my spring break trip to Jamaica, I found this amazing deal on Travel Zoo for a weekend in Iceland. I was desperate to go and posted on my Facebook status asking for any willing travelers to go with me. My awesome cousin Molly eagerly responded and agreed to accompany me, and so we booked our trip for Labor Day weekend. As September got closer, I realized how absolutely absurd it was that we were going to Iceland for a long weekend, but I was so psyched for our crazy little adventure!

Molly arrived in DC on the Friday morning of Labor Day. I picked her up from the airport and we quickly discovered that neither of us had done any research on activities to do in Iceland. The lack of research that we did before the trip would definitely be made up for by the abundance of literature we received and read while we were in the country. I think we read every brochure and travel guide that exists about Iceland. We were under the impression that we would be going on a city vacation: full of dinners out, bars and the notorious Reykjavik nightlife.

Once we checked into our hotel, we realized no one else seemed to have the same impression of Iceland that we did. We arrived at our hotel after stupidly taking a cab from the airport. Due to the fact we took an overnight flight, we were sleep deprived and confused and paid an outrageous cab fare. We accepted our fare, cursed ourselves for not being smarter travelers and proceeded to try and check in. In the span of the hour we waited for our room, we chilled in the lobby and ate breakfast. Every person we saw was head to toe in full out hiking gear. It felt like we were at the Grand Canyon Lodge, and we definitely had not received the outdoor adventure memo.

After we had filled our bellies with coffee, bread and cheese, we regained our senses and looked to book some activities for the weekend. We settled on going to the infamous Blue Lagoon and getting in water massages and then the next day going horseback riding through lava fields. After a kick much-needed cat nap, we headed into town and wandered around Reykjavik. Reykjavik is a small little city, very gorgeous and very Nordic. We spent a few hours wandering, got a few blisters and saw pretty much all of Reykjavik in a few hours. Molly also was kind enough to help me try and conquer my one goal of finding and H&M. After we walked 3,000 miles to the nearest mall, we discovered there was no H&M. Needless to say I was heartbroken, but not as heartbroken as we both were later when we discovered our hotel had a free shuttle to the mall. After our exhausting day of walking around, we decided to be super lame and eat dinner at the hotel and go to bed at 8:30 pm.

The next day we were super excited for our trip to the Blue Lagoon. The Blue Lagoon is a mineral enriched hot spring in the middle of the Icelandic lava fields. It is pretty much the most perfect place in the world. Envision hanging out in a hot tub that is filled with minerals that are good for your skin while sipping on a drink from the in-water bar and people-watching people from all over the world put white mineral goop all over their skin. Oh, and I forgot to mention the in-water massages. Molly and I are quite the massage experts and this was definitely something that neither of us had experienced before. We received massages while laying on a yoga mat type thing and the masseuse would hold you up while massaging you. We had to put complete trust in Oskar and Ava, as we could easily fall into the water, and embarrass ourselves in front of hundreds of goop faced tourists. The stakes were high! After our day in heaven, we decided that in the future every layover we would ever make would be in Iceland due to Icelandair's Blue Lagoon layover package.

After we got back to the hotel, we showered and got ready to go out for dinner in Reykjavik. We were becoming smarter travelers and got on the free shuttle into town. We were wandering around looking for a restaurant when all of a sudden we discovered this cool Danish bar. We went in were looking at the selections when all of a sudden I saw something that almost brought tears of happiness to my eyes This something was Somersby cider, my all-time favorite drink that I hadn't had since Sweden. Molly tried one and instantly understood my love affair with Somersby. We had one and vowed to come back the before dinner the next day.

The next day was our last full day in Iceland and we were doing our one adventurous activity for the trip: horse back riding! I adore horse back riding and was thrilled to be going. Molly was a bit more apprehensive. She was putting on a brave, excited face, but I know she was really questioning our choice of activity. We got to the stables to find these cute, little Icelandic horses. Molly was paired with this cute teddy-bear like horse, who was allegedly named after an Icelandic beer, but we never found out his name. My horse was the complete opposite of Teddy beer horse. Her name was Lisa and she pretty much hated her life. She was not enthused to be working and was even less enthused when I forced her to go in the advanced group and made her trot and gallop. After our eventful horse back ride, we went back to the hotel and went into the amazing pool/hot tub in the hotel.

Once we had finished our few hours of lounging, we decided to head into town early to hit up the Danish bar before our dinner reservations. We got to the bar, sat down and ordered 2 ciders. We received our ciders from the bartender and I almost cried for the second time in this bar when I heard the price. It was happy hour and ciders were two for one. We spent the next hour happy as clams drinking cider and loving life. At the end of happy hour, we bid the Danish bar a fond farewell and proceeded to the Lobster House for dinner. Our dinner at the Lobster House was absolutely delicious, however, the atmosphere was very romantic. We were the only non-couple in the place. The romantic music, candlelight and dim lighting was definitely a perfect place to get engaged at, not for two cousins who just came from cider happy hour.

The next morning we decided to go back to Reykjavik to kill some time before our flight and try the infamous Icelandic hot dog. In all of our guide books and brochures it said we had to try a hot dog from this one stand by the harbor. We tried our "interesting" hot dog at exactly 10:30 am, when the stand opened. We don't know why the hot dog was so famous or what was even on it, but we can both say that we tried it. We headed back to the hotel and printed our boarding passes. This time it was Molly who was crying the tears of joy when we discovered that we would be sitting in the exit row on the flight home.

For my next European Travel, check back to my blog in January after Zoe and I come back from our 20+ days backpacking through Europe!