Hey all,

Well, it's been a few weeks since we got home from our cool trip to Scandinavia in June. Some of you might have heard the details of our trip; some may have not. As a means to catch you all up, I've made up a log of our travels and included some pictures. Saves time having to tell the story over and over again. Plus you're free to just exit and go back to enjoy where you left off at defamer.com if it all gets too long and boring. Enjoy.

After a fun day in San Francisco with my old junior high/high school pal Karletta and new friends Alexander and Frank, I headed down to the San Francisco Int'l Airport to meet my parents and brother, Sam. Needless to say we were all excited about our first trip to Scandinavia. We were excited to be flying on Icelandair after having watched the adventures in Iceland and Sweden on CBS's Amazing Race. Unfortunately, our excitement was short lived.

Our trip was delayed out of San Francisco by TWO days as a result of mechanical difficulties with the plane coming in from Iceland. As a means to make it up to us, Iceland Air gave all of us round trip tickets to any destination that Icelandair flies - good for the next two years. That certainly made our decision for next year's vacation a lot easier! Venice here we come!

As I said, getting out wasn't easy. After spending the first night of the delay in San Francisco back at my parents home (We had to drive there in a rented car as we took the SF subway system as it was too late to use it to go back home. But renting the car was an adventure. Sam instructed us to wait near the main entrance of the airport while he took the shuttle to the car rental counter and get the car. Just a few minutes later, he called to summon me. Seemed he took his license with him that had EXPIRED because he thought he wouldn't need his new license on the trip. WRONG!), we returned back to SFO only to find the flight was delayed another day! Thankfully, Icelandair put us up at the Hyatt near the airport. Covered by a big glass dome, we found the hotel warm and humid and imagined ourselves stranded somewhere in Hawaii; yet we were only 45 miles from my parents home! We quickly made friends with our fellow delayed travelers, (most likely because I was the only one with a cell phone AND a charger) ome of whom had already missed connections, train trips and cruises that they had arranged in advance. We were lucky; we only lost hotel rooms but did not lose connections. As time passed in the hotel, our fellow passengers became our touchstones. Every once in a while along our trip we would recognize a fellow traveler while were traipsing through a museum in Stockholm or walking the streets of Copenhagen. We even saw some of them on the return trip home. After a while, we all felt like some strange refugees on the Lower East Side, circa 1922, running into each other on Orchard Street. Ha!

Except for a day or two in Iceland, the weather on our trip was fantastic. Of course, silly us, we paid attention to the Weather Channel's forecast and dressed for rain. So much for that. Everywhere we went it was 70 degrees plus. We couldn't have asked for better weather.

Copenhagen was a great place though our visit was a short one as we could only spend a day and a half there. We had fun at Tivoli Gardens, the mother of all amusement parks, and I spent my time searching high and low for the infamous ice cream with jam on top. Thanks to Jenniphr Goodman for the advice; it was the best ice cream I had on our entire trip! The day before, I met up with my friend Carmen Allard who was hopping on board a cruise through the North Sea. It was great to say on Thursday in LA "See you at the Little Mermaid statue on Tuesday at 5:30 in the afternoon" and then suddenly be there on Tuesday, thousands of miles away from home and hear "Jack!" and "Carmen" as if we were meeting at the local mall. Do I hear little brown and white children singing "It's a small world, after all"?

After a day and a half in the city of Hans Christian Anderson, we hopped a fast train and enjoyed a relaxing 5 hour trip through verdant Danish countryside, on our way to our next destination, Stockholm, Sweden. Stockholm was our favorite. A city of museums and outdoor cafes, we found Stockholm a combination of some of our favorite cities; like a cross between London and Paris, with a little Chicago and New York thrown in. And the people were friendly too! With warm and balmy weather to buoy our spirits, we did our best to cram all we could of Stockholm into four days. We didn't quite make it but did get some great highlights.

-We toured the Vassa Museum Museum, where a 400 year old ship had been unearthed from Stockholm harbor and a museum built around it.

-Skaansen Museum, a great outdoor museum the size of Disneyland where we found animals and exhibits displaying various ways people lived in Sweden over the centuries.

-And we had time to meet up with a friend with whom I had only corresponded with, Gunilla Lundquist. Gunilla runs the Swedish Deaf Film Festival and she invited us to peek in on a great innovation which we have only dreamed about here in the States - video conferencing via cell phones! It was fantastic to see two people signing with each other via the cell phone. Gunilla informed us that the technology works well with relay operators too. Needless to say, Mom and Dad were desperate to have the technology imported to the United States immediately.

We left Stockholm via Icelandair (on time, thank goodness) and returned to the scene of the crime, Reykjavik, where we had spent our first night on our way to Europe. We all hopped in our Toyota Avensis, a great little station wagon that was a cross between a Camry and a Corolla and headed the 45 miles to Reykjavik. On the way, we all commented how fantastically the car drove and we all agreed that if they sold them in the States, we would buy one.

Unfortunately here, in Iceland, the Weather Channel had it right. It was raining and cold as we drove up to our guest house in the center of Reykjavik. And speaking of guest house, someone has to define the term for the guy that ran Guesthouse Adam. We did not feel so welcome as guests. Rather than the two rooms with separate baths that we reserved, we were given a flat with one bathroom and one bathroom; Sam and I had to sleep in makeshift beds in the living room. With dust bunnies everywhere we walked, blinds that did nothing to block out the 24 hour sun (it was wild to see the sun shining brightly at 11:30 at night) and a bathroom that constantly smelled like rotten eggs (No, it wasn't Dad's doings; it was the hot water that came out of the shower and faucets, smelling like rotten eggs/sulphur), we were glad to be out on the road the next morning, checking out the scenery in Iceland. Of course we all lamented that breakfast wasn't included. We got used to the great breakfast buffets in Copenhagen and Stockholm. So much for the diet.

After driving about 20 minutes, Sam and I figured out why they chose Iceland for the challenging "Amazing Race" - it's easy to get lost there! With street names that had more letters than the alphabet and letter combinations that could foil even the best linguist, we spent more time than we wanted trying to maneuver about the cities and countryside and read road signs. Now I've traveled a lot but damned if I couldn't find where to turn right or left when Sam said "Turn left at Kringlumyrarbraut" Kringlu-what???

At one point we found ourselves on a deserted dirt road as we attempted to follow the directions given to us by the CD guide that came with the car. Our first day's CD made us want to turn it into a Frisbee; the guy's monotone voice and script's lack of directions made the trip a maddening one. I swear at one point I was going to drive into a lake. Fortunately, on the second day, we had a different itinerary and a different CD. This one was a female guide and she provided us with information as to the distance to the next stop as well as easy to understand directions. Whew. We spent our second day touring the Gulfoss Waterfall (a mini Niagara Falls), the home of all geysers, the Geysir, and we found where the Atlantic and Eurasian tectonic plates met and the site of the worlds oldest parliament. Amongst the goats and geysers, somewhere along the way, we were sure we saw people from our flight!

Our final day in Iceland was spent trying to spend the last of our Icelandic money, which was pretty easy seeing as everything was sky high there. One night we had pizza, the kind you get at California Pizza Kitchen. It cost a cool $28.00. Though we will have to travel back through Reykjavik on our way to Europe when we use our free tickets, we all agreed that we won't be stopping in Iceland for longer than a plane change. We pretty much saw it all.

So, our advice for you is if you get a chance to go to Scandinavia, go! It's wonderfully welcoming, everyone is fluent in English and there are enough museums and sights to keep you busy and running. But if you want to just stop and relax, you can do that too. It's just fantastic place and I can't wait to return sometime soon.

In the meantime, hope your summer is going well. Have a great one!