Saturday, November 04, 2006

So What Did You Do This Weekend?

3 days, 6 countries, 3 Ferries, 1 car, 980 driving miles and we are back in Dublin with our new Volvo XC90. Jay and I left for Goteburg, Sweden on Wednesday afternoon. We had some time that evening and went over to the Mall next to the hotel. It was so nice to see so much COLOR! I have read about and I can attest to the Irish phobia of color, in their clothes, decorating and even their weather. But to be in Scandinavia where the bolder the better was exciting. It made me want to redecorate the house, except it isn’t mine. It was FREEZING in Sweden. The temp was in the low 30’s and the wind was bitter. We were not too adventuresome in the eating department and opted for a sushi place down the street for a snack and the hotel restaurant for dinner. It was just too cold to walk anywhere.
Thursday after picking up the car and touring the factory we headed to our first way point, Hamburg Germany. This was strictly a trip to pick up the car so we didn’t do any sight seeing but covered a lot of area. It took longer to get there than appears on the map which seems to be the case all over Europe. We drove down the coast of Sweden and since it gets dark, pitch black, at 4:30 we missed seeing any part of Denmark in the day light. We took a short ferry across to Germany and arrived into Hamburg at about 10pm. We awoke the next morning thinking we had an easy 4 hours to Amsterdam. It was slow going (which included a stop at IKEA) we arrived in the port at Rotterdam at 7pm. Here we boarded an overnight 12 hour ferry to Hull, England.
We disembarked at about 8am and headed across to the other side of England to take a ferry into Dublin. This we thought would be our longest day was infact our shortest. The total drive time without stops would be only about 4 hours but with our obligatory stops to Costco and a shopping mall near Manchester (with no Thanksgiving to appreciate, Christmas shopping is in full force) We arrived at 5pm to take the hour and a half crossing to Dublin and were home by 7:30pm.
Phew and here we go again on the 11th to Spain. And I thought life would be less busy here in Europe....

3 comments:

Jenni said...

All this to pick up a car?? Are you going to take it back to the states with you? Love it, I'm jealous that you went to Sweden, the motherland. I hope you love your car, didn't you have one of those already? BUt nothing like one fresh off the line, right? You'll have to go back to Sweden another time and give me the skinny. Spain will be lovely, make sure to pick up some olive oil. Where in Spain are you going? Are you driving again? You are so living La Vida Loca!

Carina said...

I'm echoing, I have to know where in Spain you're headed.

Jodi said...

Hola amigas! We can drive the car over here for six months then Volvo will have it shipped to the US. We are leaving for Marbella (flying into Malaga) in the south of Spain for a week. We are going to take a couple of day trips to Cordoba, Ronda and Sevilla. In June we are going to Barcelona. Adios!