Another warm up hike, and grocery prices in Norway

Our friends Marti and Ryan flew from Texas to Sweden, then rented a car and had a five hour drive to meet us at their Airbnb near the village of Sinnes.

But we were already fairly close to Sinnes, so while they were driving, we decided to go for another hike.

It doesn't matter how expensive a country is if you don't buy anything!

We got up at 6:30am (sunrise is at 4:30am!) and decided to do some driving right away. As I've said before, we're trying to conserve our cellular data, and so far it's been pretty easy to find free WiFi in just about any town. Every town has a library, although the hours vary a lot, and not all of them have unsecured WiFi. And, most grocery stores, even the small ones seem to have an unsecured connection.

Speaking of grocery stores, we haven't been in one yet. We arrived on June 1st, and today is the 6th and we haven't spent any money in Norway yet! 

Yes, Norway is stunning!

Yesterday we did our first longer hike in Norway. Not really that long though. In fact, at just under four hours it was more of a training hike for some of our upcoming Norway adventures!

We had slept close by so that we could get an early start on the trail, and we managed to get going by 9:15am.

And we're not even in the good parts of Norway yet!

It's so nice not to have much of a plan, and simply be able wander and explore at our leisure. And especially when there is so much to see... and we're not even in the good parts of Norway yet!

Yesterday we drove a little further north. But only a little... 40 kms (25 miles) to be exact!

Staying in shape for what's to come!

It was such a nice campsite that we had for our first night in Norway that we decided to stay a second night. We were located right beside a nice bike trail, so Ruth packed us a lunch while I got the bikes ready to go.

We had no idea what route we were going to follow, or how long we were going to be gone.

Welcome to Norway! Country number 52...

Norway is a new country for us and it has been on our "to do" list for a long time. But it's a country that is best explored by motorhome, so we needed to get a European motorhome to do it. And the original plan was to do it last summer, but then Covid threw a wrench into things and we weren't able to pick up Max until mid June of last year. By then, we decided it was best to put it off another year.

But we are here now, and we're really excited. It's going to be a great two months!

Very frustrating!

We posted our May expense report yesterday evening. You can read it here if you missed it.

It was only a 35 km (22 mile) drive to the port town of Hirtshals at the northern tip of Denmark. We had a few things to do there, so we arrived fairly early.

May Expenses

Well, May was an interesting month from an expenses perspective. We drove a lot of miles, having started the month in southern Romania and ending it at the northern tip of Denmark!

Our planned budget was about $1,700 CAD, and we spent a total of $1,817 CAD ($1,437 USD, €1,338). Not bad, considering we drove about 2,600 kms (1,615 miles) and visited 6 different European countries.

Now very close to our ferry departure to Norway

We had been parked overnight at an area that is very popular with hikers and bikers so it only made sense to go for a bike ride before we left. Ruth had read that there is a 12 km (7.5 mile) bike route around the lake, so I got the bikes off and we went for a ride.

Temperature never got much above 13C (55F), and there was not much sunshine, but there was also no wind to speak of.

Denmark is one of the safest countries in the world

Denmark is one of the safest countries in the world, especially outside of Copenhagen. There is an extremely low crime rate, and the risk of natural disaster is virtually zero. There is hardly any graffiti, which is often an indicator of the level of crime. Interestingly, housing prices are quite low. You can buy a nice liveable house and property for about $100,000. But vehicles and fuel are expensive. Overall, I would suggest that Denmark is simply a nice country. It's unfortunate that they get winter here!

The official language is Danish, however they are taught English at a very young age, and 86% of the people speak English as a second language.

Welcome to Denmark!

Denmark is not a new country for us.

In fact, Denmark was country #7 on our list of visited countries. We were in Copenhagen way back in 1999. We flew here from Canada for a long weekend!

Well, that was a miserable day!

We had to drive right through the middle of the city of Hamburg, but we waited until almost 10:00am, and really, the traffic wasn't very bad. Certainly better than I expected, so that was good.

There's one direct route north and it's all on the freeway. We normally try and avoid the freeway, but the weather wasn't great and there wasn't anything we wanted to see along the way.

Matching more of my father's photos in Hamburg, Germany

Some of you will remember that my father did two trips to Europe in the 1950's and took quite a lot of slide photos. Ruth has digitized them, and when we are in some of the same areas, we try to stand in the same spot he might have stood in order to match up those 1950's photos and see what it looks like today.

You can see previous examples of our efforts here, here, and here.

Made it to the big city of Hamburg

Lots of driving the last few days. Max's odometer crossed the 14,000 km (8,700 mile) mark yesterday. We picked him up on June 18th of last year. It's hard to believe we have had him for almost a year already! 

That's quite a few miles in the first year, but I think the second year will be much less.

The pretty town of Schöningen , Germany

Although we had no problem finding decent overnight spots during the past seven months, it is refreshing to be back in Germany where it's downright easy. Many towns and villages have dedicated motorhome parking, and many of those have facilities for emptying and refilling holding tanks.

We did a longer drive yesterday... got up at 6:30am and drove non stop for an hour and a half before we stopped for breakfast.