Koldinghus

At least with traveling halfway across Europe with bus, I got the splendid idea to break the trip along the way. So with only a couple of days notice, I checked if our friends the Petersens were home in Kolding - which they were! Yay! So good to see them, it had been quite a few years since last time!

We started out strong by doing some sightseeing, and visit Koldinghus, together with Dorte and Anna.
Koldinghus is probably the main attraction of Kolding, a Danish royal castle first founded in the 13th century that have had many functions since then, from fortress and royal residence to museum.

We came to visit a specific new temporary exhibition (more about that in a later post), but also enjoyed walking around the rest of the castle.
Here in the Great Hall, with some beautiful tapestries created by Berent van der Eichen.

This south wing of the castle was built in 1550-52, as a residence for Christian III. Like the rest of the castle this part was wrecked by a fire in 1808, and today it shows the result of the ongoing reconstruction throughout the 20th century. The way this castle has been rebuilt and restored really is the magic of Koldinghus.

My favourite part of the castle was this room below, the Castle Chapel. This was added in 1958, when Christian IV initiated a major renovation and modernisation of Koldinghus. This part as well was wrecked in the 1808 fire, but was equally restored in the 1970s. The lamps along the sides are marking the columns that once supported the gallery and the large dome-shaped chandeliers hint at the original architecture. This room was absolutely stunning!

We all also enjoyed to visit the Historic Workshop and the Royal Sewing Studio.

And, we had fun in the Royal Costume Room!

Finally we climbed up the Giants' Tower, 'Kæmpetårnet', named after the four statues of giants from the Greek and Roman myths that once stood at the top of the tower, Hannibal, Scipio, Hercules and Hector. Today only Hercules remained. It was really, really windy at the top, but we got great views all over Kolding, the castle lake and the fjord.

We finished our visit at the courtyard, where the girls tried their hand at a game, looking a bit like bowling:

And finally Dorte and I reenacted the photo from 7 years ago, when we last visited Kolding and took another photo here outside Koldinghus.

Hamburg

We had some time the following day to do some sightseeing, but first breakfast in the hotel:

We turned right instead of left walking out of the hotel, and managed to avoid the sketchy streets and instead find a pedestrian area with shops, and some nice views of the water.

I had no recollection of when I last came to Hamburg, so I enjoyed the walk-about. It was perfect lovely, sunny weather for it too!

As we were catching another bus in the afternoon, we made sure to have a big lunch, another pork feast. Very German dishes, curry würst for me, and pork schnitzel for Linnea:

Then we embarked another Flixbus, which this time took us from Hamburg into Denmark, and Kolding.

Summer holiday 2022 - the Scandinavian part

Normally I plan my summer movements already in March-April. I am a planner, and I like to have things to look forward to. This year was very different for many reasons, both that the company didn't release the summer leave until very (very!) late, but also as we didn't know where Lucas was going to end up.
Once we knew that and when we were going to NZ, I tried to find some tickets to Scandinavia for after that trip; but there was absolutely nothing that I was able to book. So even while in NZ, I had no idea of how the rest of the summer was going to look.

Coming back, I started scouring our staff travel site daily to try and find some way, ANY way, to get to Scandinavia. I don't know why this summer there wasn't many tickets released for staff, or many tickets at all, but there was absolutely nothing! Having to transit didn't make it easy to chance on stand by tickets, especially not when the travel situation around Europe seemed chaotic like never before. But also because I am not very good dealing with uncertainty, now even less than before Covid.

In the end, during my daily sessions of intense googling, I finally found two seats that I could actually book - to Amsterdam. Ok then, Amsterdam it was!
This time more than ever, it felt real appropriate with a glass of bubbly on boarding, on our way!

Almost felt like a bonus that both our bags made it this time!

I then had had to find a way to get us to Scandinavia from Holland, and let's just say I looked at all options, flights, trains, renting a car... Finally, we ended up continuing on by BUS! We waited five hours in the airport, and then we took a Flixbus across the Netherlands into Germany, to finally reach Hamburg about 6-7 hours later.

It was actually quite nice getting the chance to enjoy the scenery (and the greenery) like this, across Europe. The bus was comfortable enough, and had wifi, so time passed no problem.

Arriving in Hamburg late at night, I had booked us a hotel just across from the bus station as our next bus was departing the next afternoon. It turned out that wasn't the very best part of Hamburg, and as we went to try and find some dinner, we ended up on some rather sketchy streets. We turned around, entered the first Bierstube that looked alright, and had some pork knuckle before tucking in for the night, ending the first part of our long trek.

Recharging

We made it back to Abu Dhabi, and lo and behold - so did all four of our bags! Yay!

We got really surprised (and happy!) to see them all four appear on the luggage belt, as our flight out of Auckland ended up being more than an hour delayed, cutting our transit time in Sydney to just about 1,5 hours. We had resigned to the fact that they wouldn't have made that, considering the fiasco on the outbound trip with a 5,5 hour transit.
But there they were! Happy days!

Now Nathan has about a weeks worth of work before he has another week off. We have all landed, beaten the jet lag, recharged. Now the plan is for Lucas and Nathan to come up to Scandinavia later in the month; and for Linnea and I to shoot off as soon as possible, to get the most out of our holidays.
At the moment, I'm not quite sure exactly when and how we will travel. I'm keeping an eye on flights and loads; but with the whole of Europe seeming utterly chaotic this summer (because of the "post-pandemic travel bug"), it might have to be a bit of an adventure trip getting there..!
Wish us luck!

Last night in NZ

Linnea and Chester have been best friends this trip. She's taken him on nice walks, given him many cuddles and coaxed him to sleep in her bedroom at night. Big goodbyes when we left.

For our last meal together we went out to a restaurant called the Good Home. It was just us and Auntie Nikki, as Uncle Kieran had gone to Sydney earlier in the morning for a work trip.

Thank you White family and NZ for a good time! Another family holiday now converted into good memories!

Emotional work

The kids and I were last in NZ during Spring Break of 2019. It was the last time we spent with Grandma and Granddad, as they passed in September the same year. Nathan was back again in the fall, but then Covid hit and because of the strict restrictions in NZ we haven't been able to return until now.

So it's been over three years, but lots of things were still in storage waiting for us to deal with them. It was both really emotional, but also quite a bit of fun, going through all the papers, documents but above all - old photo albums:

Granddad's photos from Abu Dhabi, back in the day!

It took several days, so many things to look through and consider. We ended up bringing home with us a lot of old photos, photo frames, paintings by Grandma; and some Christmas ornaments, decorations and kitchen things. Obviously, hadn't we been restricted by the space and weight of the suitcases, we would've brought a lot more things, but that's how it is unfortunately.

Another main objective was to finally clear out the storage unit:

While in Taupō we also finally got to go see where they are resting, in the Overseas Services Cemetery. I was happy to see it was such a beautiful place, not far from the Waikato River, with great panoramic views.

A long overdue visit, and very emotional of course. We miss them a lot. NZ is not the same without them. ❤️

Rainy and wet

We weren't that lucky with the weather while in NZ. I could've taken the cold, we had packed all our Icebreaker stuff and all the merino wool clothing; but unfortunately we also had a lot of rain. A lot, it rained every day in fact. Boo.

Linnea and I tried to find the dry breaks, to take Chester for little walks around the neighbourhood. From up the hill behind the new house, we got nice views of Lake Taupō.

One day I had nice company outside the window in the kowhai bush, by this tui bird which spent ages jumping around in the bush, feeding off the nectar of the flowers. So pretty!

World's coolest McDonald's

We have always thought this Maccas is the coolest, and ever since the kids were small we have had lunch here at least once on each visit. We have enjoyed many, many burgers and chicken nuggets sitting in that DC3.

Now they had a flash new sign, that showcased their very true award - The World's Coolest McDonald's.

Although I must admit, I enjoy more the lunches we have around town here in Taupō. There is not a bad café in town! Here below we went to Piccolos on the first day in Taupō:

And this below was my plate of corn fritters, which I enjoyed on the last day in Taupō for this time, when we went out to the L'Arte Café by Grandma and Granddads old house:

Bad travel mojo

We had a bit of bad travel mojo on the way to NZ, when it came to our luggage. Even though we had well over 5 hours transit in Sydney, one of the bags didn't make it to Auckland. As per usual I had spread our things across the three bags, so luckily it wasn't just all the things from one person that got missing. But most of the things in the missing bag were Linneas, her shoes, her toilet bag etc.

For the first time I had put Apple Tags in all the suitcases so I could actually track the bag and see where it was at, in real time. This turned out to be really handy! For example when I got hold of Baggage Services and they tried to tell me the bag had been put on a flight... and I could see that it was in fact still in Sydney!
I spent days emailing and calling, although most attempts to get to speak to someone just ended up in an endless phone queue - like this particular day, when I gave up after waiting two hours...

I appreciate that many places across the globe are experiencing trouble with getting luggage to right places at the moment. The post-pandemic travel bug seems to have hit people hard, and the airports can't keep up. Still, I was really unimpressed with the lack of information. Had I not kept emailing and phoning myself, I wouldn't have had any news about the bag at all. 

The bag finally caught up with us, after a slight detour to Christchurch, after TEN days. Wi-hoo!
But if this wasn't enough, Nathans bag didn't make it across the ditch either when he arrived two days after us! Argh! His turned up on day three though, so it was slightly faster finding the right way.

Cousins night out

Liam and Caitlin wouldn't join us for the next part of our holiday in Taupō, as they had to get back to Uni. So the cousins spent their last night together having dinner out on the town in Pukekohe: