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Oslo, Norway

We stayed in Oslo, Norway for a few days. This was our entry point to the country. We found that Oslo is just another big city. There is a few good things to see but we weren’t as impressed as when we walked in Copenhagen.

Opera house
Opera house
Downtown
Tiger Statue
Opera house

Just playing with mirrors…

Akershus Fortress
King Haakon VII & Queen Maud and also King Olav V & Queen Princess Märtha

We visited the fortress and castle. We really enjoy the castles and old stone buildings from the medieval time. They have a lot of old furniture, paintings and tapestry.

Royal Palace Oslo

That’s where the king is when he is in Oslo. Apparently, he is very friendly and easy to approach. And no, we didn’t get to meet him. Maybe next time…

Parliament building, Oslo
We also saw one of the Scream painting in the National Gallery by Edvard Munch for free while in Oslo. It is free on Sunday so we think it was worth it.

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København, Denmark

A good break from the Cruising now. We stayed in Copenhagen for 2 nights. We really like the atmospherehere. This is one of the nicest city we have seen.

Seb
The Little Mermaid

Of course, we first stopped to the little mermaid. It is a famous sculpture from Edvard Eriksen. It is to commemorate the famous tale from Hans Christian Anderson. He is the author of the famous story The Little Mermaid.

Bull chariot statue
Church 

As the sign says… we might as well go check it out.

Nyhavn, København, Danmark

This is a really nice little street by a canal. It is also, together with the pedestrian shopping streets, the most touristic streets we walked in Copenhagen.

Amalienborg Castle Place

Pedestrian street, Copenhagen
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Cruising like a Norwegian

We flew in New Orleans a few days in advance to visit this interresting city. It’s a very popular destination for young adults that play jazz music. It is dotted with bars that have live music playing from 7 PM to late at night. We really enjoyed the feeling of having a snack of homemade chips accompanied with a nice beer while watching an unknown band playing at the “Maison”, a small local bar on the famous Frenchmen street.

New Orleans also offer really nice architechture with French and Spanish inspiration. The French Quarter is a must see. You can walk and get lost for hours just for fun enjoying the architecture.

There is also the Bourbon street. A party street in the French quarter that offers tons of bars and beer “take away” kiosk. That street is filling up really quick at night.

French Quarter
Norwegian Star
This is the boat that took us for our transatlantic journey. It was our first time on a cruiseship and it was great. We decided to travel by boat to Europe as we have all the time in the world and we were thinking it would be the best way to relax and cut ourself from our old work life and it really worked. We didn’t think much about anything but the present and the fact we are leaving for a round the world trip. This is really hard to realise. We have to remind us often what we are doing. We also didn’t have internet access during our cruise so this really helped cutting ourself from the outside world.
Room 10538
Room 10538
Our Private Balcony
Miami
Miami
Ponta Delgada
Ponta Delgada
Portas da Citade
Sunset
The “freestyle” idea for cruising is great. You just put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door and sleep until you wake up, eat when you’re hungry and enjoy the balcony as you wish. We had a nice balcony room which had a good view on all the stops we did. We were lucky enough to be on the good side for all the stops so we could have a view of the cities. We also had 9 days at see so we enjoyed the view of the ocean a lot.
Dover
Dover Castle
Dover Castle

Dover was really interesting. We did a tour of the old tunnels. They were built right in the rock, underground. They were used a lot during World War II to plan the evacuation of the troops from France to England. There was also another level used as an underground hospital. The tour helped us learn more about some history we didn’t know. We also visited the castle. A nice example of a medieval castle with a great view from the top.

View of Ponta Delgada

Ponta Delgada is a small town on an Island in the middle of the Atlantic. It belongs to Portugual and Portuguese is the language they speak. This was the first time we had a problem with an unknown language. People we talk to didn’t speak English or French. We know it’s not the first time this happens but it made us realize how it’s going to be. We took a few hours to walk around and then went back to the boat. It would have been nice to explore the rest of this island, not only the city, but we had just the one day. 

Helsingborg
Kärnan, the medieval tower of Helsingborg
Seb’s Bank

Since most people are calling me Seb, I thought this was an interesting bank :).

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Bye Bye North America

We sold everything we owned in Fort St. John, we left our jobs, gave our dog to a good family and left.
We did a 10000 km road trip across the United-States and up to Quebec.
We visited the families for a few weeks.
We flew to New Orleans, LA.
We are ready to embark on a cruise across the Atlantic to Copenhagen, Denmark.

Map

In red is the driving we did and purple the planes we took.
We are embarking the cruise ship on April 21st 2013 to go across the Atlantic ocean!

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The end, the new beginning!

We got in the Province of Québec on March 9th 2013, close to 3 weeks after our 10000km roadtrip. We came here to visit the family as we didn’t see them very often while living across the country.

This is the end of the Québec page of our trip. We enjoyed visiting with the family and had fun for the past month or so. We are flying Wednesday from Jean Lessage Airport to the city of New Orleans, in Louisiana. We are going to spend 4 days with the Cajun. We hope we are gonna meet a lot of interesting people and enjoy that episode as much as the previous ones.

Québec is a very beautiful city with a lot of history and the old part of the town is awesome. There is a lot of old buildings. We always enjoyed walking in those streets and we were missing it. Even when we were living close by, we always felt on holidays when walking through all the little streets with all the tourists. This season (Snowy spring right now) is pretty quiet as far as the amount of people in the streets goes but it makes it easier for walking and taking pictures.

We are now ready to see something else and it is the beginning of the rest of our trip around the world.

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With the families and Quebec City

We spent 5 weeks with our families in Quebec before continuing our journey around the world.
Seb with his parents and sister in Val D’Or, Qc 
Andrée-Anne and Roxy in a trail in Lebel-sur-Quévillon, Qc
Andrée-Anne and her dad
St. Lawrence River, Baie-Comeau, Qc
Old Quebec houses
Old Quebec
…And the Chateau Frontenac!

 It’s now time to leave on a plane to New Orleans, LA, USA to get ready to cruise!

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Colorado to Quebec

We drove a lot for the last few days of the road trip. We did around 1000 km a day to get to our destination and didn’t have anything else we wanted to see along the way.

Highway in Colorado
Colorado
Colorado Mountains

From the mountains to the plains. It is really cool how different it can be. You have the mountains with white peaks in the morning and fields as far as you can see in the afternoon.

The Plains
Bonjour Québec 
We are almost there. Just a few hundred kilometers and we are taking a break for 2 weeks. We found that idea really relaxing.
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Arches and Canyonland National Parks

The road in the desert offers a great view of all those rock monuments sculpted from the erosion. It is an endless view with red dust and red rocks everywhere.
Desert Road
Arch

This is the first arch we saw. We had to stop as Seb was too tired so we picked the first spot to stop on the right. As we got off the Jeep that is what we found behind. Impressive and unexpected.

The two last pictures reminded us of a circle of people having a discussion… you need some imagination.

Balanced Rock

It is balanced until it falls. Its “neighbor” doesn’t exist anymore as it fell in the past.

Balanced Rock
Turret Arch
South and North windows

Delicate Arch

A 4.8 km hike leads to this viewpoint. A must see. It is possible to see it from the road, but we strongly suggest walking to the top as the scenery surrounding the arch is breathtaking. Plus it is a good exercise!

Us with the Utah symbol 
Canyonland view
Canyonland
Canyonland

Mesa Arch
 
We really enjoyed the views in those 2 parks. The hikes are also really rewarding when you get to those viewpoints. A must see in Utah. We would like to go back with the Jeep and spend time doing some off road driving around Canyonland. We though we would visit those 2 parks in a few hours but ended up spending 2 days in Moab just for this. It is a good thing we don’t travel on a schedule and can stretch the trip as we decide. 
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Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is really impressive. Even all the pictures we took don’t give it justice. It is so big you can’t realise it until you stand 2 feets from the edge. We were there for the sunset and the next sunrise. We camped in the camping close by. We got up at around 6 AM to see the sunrise. It was amazing.

Sunrise

There is no word to describe how beautiful and grandiose these views are.
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Road 66

We followed it really close for the major part of our trip. It is one of the oldest and most historical routes of America: Road 66. It goes from Chicago to the west coast of California. It is filled with old dinners and motels.

 
You definitely have to love driving to decide to make this road a destination in itself. It stretches a long way with 3945km. We just did some small sections for fun. We also saw a presentation on it in Baie-Comeau, Qc at the end of this trip which made it more special for us as we saw some of the things discussed in the ”Grands Explorateurs”