Tuesday, July 19th
5:16am Texas, 12:16pm France
It’s been quite a week so far and it’s only Tuesday! Since the last time I posted, we’ve been to Horsens, Denmark; Amsterdam, Holland; and Sarreguemines, France. Let’s start with Horsens. We drove on Saturday from Fanø to Horsens, which was a couple hours away. Mette’s family was having a reunion at her cousins home there. When we arrived, we were welcomed in both English and Danish by 10 or 20 of her relatives. The house was breathtaking. I wish I had taken pictures! From the outside, it looked like your average suburban home in a smallish European town. But once you get inside, you instantly feel like you’re in an Ikea catalog. The home is multilevel with just the right amount of room for entertaining, and the furniture is perfectly eclectic but so put together. But the best part is the view from their backyard. You step outside on their patio, where there are two long, shaded tables, and look out to their huge, green lawn. Beyond the lawn (complete with a flagpole with the Danish flag right smack in the middle), there is a path down to a wooded area where the river runs through, and even farther than that you can see miles of undeveloped farmland. It looks like the backdrop on The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy is skipping down the yellow brick road, seriously. We had lunch on the patio, and then watched some of the Tour de France in the TV room that has floor to ceiling windows overlooking the same view you see from the patio.
After the reunion we followed Leif (Mette’s cousin, pronounced like Life) in our van to our hotel, the Jorgensen Hotel. It had Best Western logos on in, but this place felt more like a Marriott, if you could find one that was built in 1775 haha. The town and the hotel were so charming I can’t stand it! The hotel was situated right on the walking street, so we were just steps away from all the restaurants, bars, and shops. We got there kind of late so we couldn’t do any shopping, but we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant haha. Actually, it was cheaper to take it to-go so we did that and ate it outside of an old church. That evening, everyone except Thor and I went to the bar right next door to the hotel and watched some live music. They came back pretty early because we had to wake up first thing in the morning to drive to Amsterdam.
Breakfast at the hotel at 7, and on the road by 8. We get about 3 of the 10 hours into the drive, and Hanna realizes she left her suitcase! Oops. No way were we turning back at that point, so a shopping trip was planned and that was that. No harm done, just a lot of laughing and head-shaking haha. So we finally get to the outskirts of Amsterdam with no problems (aside from the suitcase situation), but have the HARDest time figuring out how to get to our hotel in the city center. If you’ve ever been to Amsterdam, you know how confusing that city is. It’s absolutely gorgeous, but every street looks just the same, and there are dozens of them going around in a circle. Add to that a bunch of one-way streets and hundreds of pedestrians and bikers, and you start to see what a miracle it was that we found it at all. We pulled up to Hotel Armada which faced one of the many canals, and got checked into our room. The room was on the lower end of the comfort spectrum as far as our hotel rooms have gone. Horsens would have been at the top for sure. But we made it work, and by this time we’ve become so close that sharing a tiny room with 4 other people is not such a big deal.
By this time it’s already after 8, so we walked around until we found a place to eat. We decided on an Italian place. Turned out to the best choice ever! We all shared a bottle of Chianti, and Brooke and I shared macaroni and minestrone. I realized during dinner that sharing a meal with the people I love is one of my favorite things ever. And even more amazing is when I get to do it in a beautiful foreign city. After dinner we walked around a while longer, had a Heineken at a little pub near our hotel, and then turned in for the night. It had been a looooong day.
Speaking of long, I’ll probably post the rest of this later on. We’re going to walk around Sarreguemines for a while. Au revoir!
