Author: Clark Llamzon

Welcome back dear readers! Since our previous episode in Goa, we have been taking advantage of downtime back in Hyderabad. For me, that meant tuning up my LinkedIn profile and dropping the occasional job app🤷‍♂️. For Swathi, it was buckling down and studying doctor…things. Soren/Meera were partying non-stop with their ever expanding fan club. And of course drinking tea and napping. Lots of that. Swathi and I also played tennis regularly as the courts were conveniently located across the street from the house in India. We are terrible at tennis, and we can proudly say that after 1 month we have improved to…pretty bad.

The last two weeks haven’t all been business as usual however. Here are a few highlights:

5th Year Wedding Anniversary (Aug 15)
They say time flies when your having fun. We must be having fun, because I can’t believe I’ve been married to my wonderful and beautiful Swathi for five years! Here we are, just a couple of kids, getting married back in 2013:

 And BOOM all of a sudden it is five years later:

We celebrated by going out for shopping and a nice lunch at Manjeera Mall. August 15 is also Independence Day in India, so it was exciting to be in a celebratory mood with the whole city! We were welcomed home with a nice cake  from the family after we got back.

Riding the Hyderabad Metro (Aug 16)
While riding the metro might not initially seem like a highlight, this was definitely near the top of Soren’s India to-do list. Plus, the metro had been under construction since before our wedding (5 years ago – see above) and recently opened. It was about time we check it out. Soren was amused:

Chicken 65 😋 (as often as possible)
On the theme of anniversaries, this August was my 5 year mark for learning about Chicken 65. It is kind of like an Indian version of General Tso’s chicken and I LOVE it. Swathi’s uncle got me Chicken 65 as often as possible. Definitely a highlight.

The Trampoline Park (Sat Aug 18)
We decided to have an outing to a trampoline park for the day. Basically, this was a giant warehouse with different trampoline stations that you can bounce on. They have a free bounce area, a trick jump pit, a basketball hoop and dodgeball station.  Although I was initially worried about popping my ACL, it was very fun:

Also, Swathi decided to hulk out on me in the foam gladiator pit.

It was fine though. I got my payback on the dodgeball court 🎯🎯😎

Steel Factory Shopping (Aug 21)
Went on another outing to the steel factory outlet where they manufacture steel dishes, cups and other housewares. Swathi’s aunt led the way and found us the best items. Steel is actually the perfect medium for little children. The items are lightweight, easy to clean and nearly indestructible. If anyone wants to start an stainless steel company selling these puppies to mama groups you know where to find me:

We also went Indian jewelry shopping and Swathi bought some clothes. We did not have to go clothes shopping for the little ones as various family members and friends kept getting them new clothes.

Marvel Movie Super Marathon!! (like every night)
What started out as a casual attempt to catch up on the first Ant Man movie spiraled out of control and turned into a nightly journey through the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Our final tally of superhero movies included: Ant Man, Ant Man and the Wasp, Black Panther, Thor: Ragnarok, Captain America: Winter Soldier, Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Best (or worst) part? We didn’t even make it to Avengers: Infinity War yet.

Lakshmi!! (Aug 24)
Our last day in Hyderabad was momentous indeed. It was an auspicious day as everyone celebrated Lakshmi. To make it even more exciting, Meera received a gold necklace from her “Big Ammamma” Lakshmi (Swathi’s aunt) as featured below:

That’s all for this episode. We left for an over-night trip. Join us next time for our penultimate stop on our world tour: Hong Kong🇭🇰🇭🇰!! How will we cope with the children after having constant care-giving family members for 1 whole month!?!

Namaste and welcome to another episode of our summer 2018 world tour! And what a great episode it is: our beloved sister (in-law) Sruthi makes a guest a appearance, we discover Meera’s true calling in life and we deliver on our previously promised crocs (plus lions, bears and tiger trains oh my).

First, we feature our guest star of the week Sruthi! Sruthi would have joined us on earlier adventures, but she had to be responsible and prep/take the bar exam (booo!). I would also like to note that she managed to stay awake through all of Mission Impossible: Fallout one day after arriving. Very impressive. Anyway, we’re all happy to have her back and she was warmly welcomed:

Another highlight of the week was doing Meera’s first rice eating ceremony. The ceremony roughly breaks down as follows: (1) family gathers to take turns feeding her rice for the first time, (2) determine her future calling in life by letting her crawl to grab various objects. Spoiler alert: she chose a book, a gold bracelet and a wad of cash in that order. Feel free to draw your own conclusions, but I think she’ll be a glamorous scientist that stumbles upon a MAJOR discovery which she then parlays into a new career as a business mogul:

Guess banana farming just wasn’t compelling enough. Also, she liked eating the rice:But we are jumping around. Let’s pick up where we left our intrepid heroes last week: facing lions and crocs and bears…oh my?

July 29: Hyderabad Zoo Park 🦁🐅🐻🐊
So let me start by saying that the Hyderabad zoo DELIVERS. Tired of lethargic bears that mope about? They have HIGHLY motivated bears. Hippos? Got one lurking. You want crocodiles? Here are like 40: The park was actually so big that we had trouble covering everything in one day. We somehow missed the tigers! Closest we came was this tiger themed train around the zoo. We wrapped up the day with a trip to a Biriyani house in old Hyderabad on our foodie cousin Balu’s recommendation.

July 30 – Aug 2: Lazy 😴
Lots of laziness going on here. Having trouble recollecting now, but days were something like this: coffee, lunch, tea, nap, dinner, bedtime. Exhausting, I know. Also this happened: Soren also spent some time figuring out how to pedal a real bike on Tejas’ bike:August 3: Sruthi!
Plz refer to top of post. Sruthi showed up. Children rejoiced. Mission Impossible was watched. Nap.

August 4: House Hunters Hyderabad
Went to view an apartment Swathi’s mom had purchased as an investment. I was expecting something nice, but this place was very nice! Don’t believe me? My video walkthrough took 3 minutes and I still might have missed some rooms! The property itself was lovely and looked like a resort.

Most important however, Soren got his first ride in an auto rickshaw after the walkthrough. Another important step in his quest to experience every mode of transport ever:

August 5: Lazy 😴
A day with no photos 😮! We spent the day visiting with Swathi’s mother’s lifelong friends from school. Meera was charming as always. Soren hid from the company, but was eventually lured out with toys/presents.

August 6: Rice eating
I know, I know! We already told you about everything the rice eating and how Meera decided against banana farming. But…we saved some good family photos for the end:

All righty, that’s it for this episode. On the next installment, the gang heads to Goa for a vacation within a vacation.

Hey all, we’ve been in Hyderabad with family for almost a week now and will remain here until Aug 24. Aside from a side-trip to Goa (Aug 7-11) we’ll likely spend a good amount of that time putzing around the house and eating delicious food. Hopefully, we’ll also be better about posting now that we have some down time. Our readers (our mothers?) are hungry for content and we will deliver!

Meera has been the star of the week as streams of adoring family and fans stop by to meet her. Our aunt and uncle are two of her biggest supporters:Soren meanwhile has re-united with his little running buddy from last summer: Tejas! We thought the two take some time to warm-up, but they recognized each other immediately and jumped right into play time:

It has also been nice to just have the whole family together with no agenda for a while. Now that we’ve moved out of our Pittsburgh apartment, this is probably the closest we’ll have to a home until Tacoma:
On to the 🏃⬇:

June 24-25: 🛫 Barcelona to Hyderabad🛬
This journey was our longest travel leg so far. After a 7 hour flight from Barcelona, we landed to change planes Dubai. It turns out, DXB actually has the largest terminal in the world and we got to hike almost all of it for over an hour as we transferred! It is so long, in fact, that they set up free ice-cream stands mid-way to keep up morale for weary travelers. This is true!

I’ll let this picture do the talking as to the journey itself, but let’s just say that it was…tiring.

After stumbling delirious off the plane, we recuperated around the house. Young Meera even ate her first real bites of food. Let’s just say she was a bit confused:

July 26-28: Hot jet-lagged mess 🤪
These days are a bit of a blur staying up super late and sleeping in. Think most of the days (for my part at least) was spent staring blankly into space while taking slow sips of coffee. We went for a walk by the tennis courts on the 26th as our big activity. Swathi and I even got a tennis game in later in the night!

On the 27th, Swathi and I rallied to go all the way to the mall to watch Ant Man! I feel like I relate to Paul Rudd. Soren stayed home to play with his toys and  Tejas.

Spirits and bodies had started to recover by the 28th. Soren and I even managed to get to the pool for a swim with Tejas and his father. Meera meanwhile had taken quite a liking to food. What a good eater!
That’s all for this episode. Preview for the next installment: crocodiles!

This is the first of a two-part post catching-up on our last week in Barcelona. I’ll be covering July 18-20 in this post, and Swathi will finish up July 21-24 in the next one.

Our final week in Barcelona has come to an end and we still feel like we just arrived! Although the stay was only two weeks, the experience of discovering the real Barcelona was one of the highlights of the time. In fact, we now style ourselves to be connoisseurs of what is really to love about the city.

Here are a few things we ❤❤:
– Tapas: High expectations were exceeded. Plate after plate of flavor-packed morsels for dinner? Yes please.

– Vichy Catalan:  Slightly fizzy and lightly salty mineral water. Perfect after a hot afternoon walk.
– Churreria San Roman: Slung Soren-approved chocolate churros downstairs -from our apartment. Owner was super friendly.
– Jamón ibérico: cured ham from wild Iberian boars left free to gorge on acorns.
– The 59 bus: After an unfortunate initial encounter (ie Swathi’s stolen iphone), this bus line seemed to appear and whisk us home every time we were worn out.
– Siestas (nothing more to add)
– Shady Avenues: The city is full of tree-lined boulevards and vertiginous apartment building that offered much-needed relief from the sun.

– Playgrounds: Fenced in play areas are pretty much everywhere in the city. Even had one behind our building that you could see from our terrace.

A few things we 👎 ❤:
– Paella: Maybe we were doing it wrong, but we all agreed that paella is basically a lesser version of biriyani. Open to being proven wrong.
– The British: Lots of British bro (and hens) packs coming here for sloppy party weekends. Get it together people!
– Sangria: So sweet it hurts. Probably did it wrong, but we are scared to try again.

On to the run-down…

July 18: Arc de Triomf & Parc de Ciudad
Late brunch  at a place near our apartment followed by naps and putzing around the house. Finally re-launched late afternoon to head to the beautiful Parc de Ciudad. We got a little distracted en route and stumbled across Barcelona’s Arc de Triomf:

The park itself was nice too:

July 19: Montjuïc
To Soren’s delight, there was AMPLE public transportation today. Started off with a Metro/bus combo to get us to Montjuïc (huge hill overlooking the city). The castle on top has a great view:

We then took the first of two cable cars down to a little park cafe for lunch. Found some big slides for sliding:

After checking out a scenic overlook, we took a second cable car down to a funicular train to get down the mountain. Like I said, lots of public transit.

July 20: Maritime Museum and Boat Rides
Headed out in the morning to see the historic boatyards of Barcelona which are now a maritime museum for the city. Apparently Barcelona first established itself as a navel power back in the 1200s by building warships and trading vessels. Who knew?

From there it was a brisk walk across the street to take a 90 minute harbor cruise. I donned my boating hat in anticipation. The boat ride itself was very relaxing. Meera especially seemed to enjoyed sitting at the front of the boat:

 

Hola a todos! We are now settling in as true barcelonés and starting to fall into the pace of life here in the city. That means late starts to the day (wake up ~10AM), siestas in the afternoon and then staying up until midnight following a late dinner. Even the kiddos are getting into the act with bedtimes after 10PM 😱😱. Soren seems to be adjusting fine with mile long hikes (sprints?) home after dinner:

We all agree that the Barcelona life is great. I was actually in this city three times prior to this trip: once in 2006, once in 2008 and two short trips in 2009. It has been interesting to revisit some of the places from my previous forays to the city. For example, here is me on Monjuic in 2006 and then 2018:

  

Notice how the second picture includes two additional children and one additional wife. I’ll be interested to see what the next photo looks like in 2028.

On to the rundown…

July 14: Beach Day
Our lazy/leisurely habits rubbed off on Tony/Robby/Ashley (henceforth T/R/A) and we got off to a very late start. Got to the beach around noon and it was HOT ☀🔥! We rented some beach umbrellas and proceeded to claim as much real estate as possible. Meera and Swathi took the opportunity to nap while Soren got into the sand.

We somehow don’t have photographic evidence, but this was also Soren’s first time in the ocean. He LOVED it. We do have photographic evidence that Meera’s first beach visit resulted in many naps. The day ended with us heading home for order-in sushi while T/R/A got dinner at a renowned paella place in Barcelonetta.

July 15: Churros, Park Güell and Gracia
After a failed attempt at a Mercat de la Boqueria breakfast (closed Sunday) we stumbled upon a classic Barcelona breakfast: churros and hot chocolate 😋! We spent the remainder of the morning wandering around the Gothic Quarter before splitting with T/R/A while they went shopping for gifts. Soren enjoyed running the automobile-free alleys of the Gothic Quarter:

We then regrouped with T/R/A and headed to Park Güell. You pretty much have to visit the park if you are in the city. We had to box out some V aggressive tourists but we got the mandatory photo along with some other good ones of the park.

After that, I took the crew on a classic stroll (maybe a death march) through the Gracia neighborhood of the city. It is a really nice residential area with lots of quiet squares, shady avenues and parks. From there we got tapas that won a big award for a foie gras tapas last year. I can confirm that it was delicious.

July 16: Science Center and Gracia again
T/R/A parted ways with us first thing in the morning. Soren was a bit confused and was asking about Tony after they left😢😢. To make up for the loss, I took Soren to the Barcelona Science Center:

We then went back to Gracia and bought Meera some European toys. Came back and kept our tapas kick at a nice local place nearby.

July 17: Pool day (after a failed Modernism tour)
Started the day off super ambitious with a planned walk of some of the famous spots showing off the modernism architecture of the city. We got lazy after about 45 minutes and hopped on a bus to a fancy hotel with a nice pool. Meera loves the water almost as much as Soren!

Nothing much else to report here as we pretty much just lazed about for the whole day. The kids finished swimming and got cozy with their towels:

Soren promptly proceeded to pass out in his towel. We went out after the pool for more tapas. Tapas is a theme now. A very good theme.

All righty, until next time!!

Apologies dear readers for the delayed updates! We’ve been progressing our adventure at velocidad máxima for the past week and haven’t had a minute to sit and write. For this post we’ll pick up in Porto, where we last left our intrepid protagonists, and follow along until they depart for Barcelona…

I got my first impression of Porto right after returning our beloved Mini Clubman at the Europcar station near of the the Pont da Arrabida. I walked out of the station and right onto an esplanade viewing the Ribeira:

Quite dramatic. I soon got my second impression of the city: Porto is very hilly as I learned in attempting to walk home from the station

Another important piece of context is that we were joined on our second day in Porto by our wonderful friends Roby, Ashley and little Tony. Roby was Swathi’s co-fellow in at UPMC in Pittsburgh and we have become good friends over the past three years. They will be with us through Porto and into the first five days of Barcelona:

On to our itinerary in Porto!

July 8: Road trip from Guimarães to Porto
Our final day with our trusted Mini Clubman 😢. Spent the morning packing our bags and completing the 45 minute drive to Porto. We passed the time listening to You’re Welcome from the Moana soundtrack on repeat.

Upon arrival, we stopped by the Castelo do Queijo and the Parque da Cidade do Porto before checking into our AirBnB apartment. The apartment was HUGE! It turned out to be a penthouse with a long hallway for Soren to zoom around at top speed.

The final important development of the day was discovering Churrasqueira Icarai on our evening walk. This was a little grilled meats spot that had the best roast chicken and hot sauce. It was so good we went back for all three nights of our stay:

July 9: Porto
Spent most of the morning going back to the Europcar to convince them not be silly about our car (Mini Clubman) return. I spent a good portion of the time with Meera strapped in the baby carrier glaring at the poor attendant. Sorry Europcar attendant. You turned out to be all right in the end.

After that we walked the Villa Nova de Gaia side of the Douro river. This is where all of the Port Wine  export houses set up shop. It also has a nice riverside walkway:

From there we took a cable car up to the Jardim do Morro to go exploring the playground. After the park, we had a quick lunch before taking the Funicular dos Guindais home. After lunch Swathi and Meera went home while the boys rode a historic tram and the subways in circles for two hours. Soren was very amused.

Final part of the day was spent at home hosting Roby, Ashley and Tony in our apartment for dinner. We got to watch the boys reunite after a few weeks apart since Pittsburgh. It was heartwarming until they figured out that they could increase their destructive powers as a team. Still, good times.

July 9: Porto
Got off to a bit of a late start. I led everyone on a 25 minute tram trip to a historic part of town with the “worlds most beautiful bookstore” and some historic churches. Little did I know these sites were actually a 5 minute walk from our apartments. Not sure how I missed that one 🤷‍♂️

From there we wandered around some nice alleys and plazas  before heading down to the Ribeira  for lunch. We took a “Six Bridges Cruise” to see some more of the city. Soren and I were counting and we only saw five bridges, so something might have been off. Cruise was nice though.

Final part of the day was spent returning to the “worlds most beautiful bookstore” (store was at capacity earlier), the Porto Catherdral, and the beautiful Sao Bento train station:

Final item of the day was, of course, churrasqueira chicken and packing up for next adventure in Spain!

More Porto photos here

 

Olá a todos! What an action packed past few days it has been. We pretty much walked all of Lisbon in 2 days, gorged on pastis da nata and drove half-way across Portugal in a fancy new Mini Clubman. And we are still going strong!

The REAL highlight of the past few days though has been witnessing the friendship of Soren and little Arya. Since we started sharing an apartment with Rehka, Adi and Arya in Lisbon, the two little ones pretty much spend all their time playing and chasing each other around. They seem to like all the same games and somehow don’t fight at all. Amazing.

I’ll get into the details of Lisbon in a minute, but before I do I would like to emphasize that we covered a LOT of ground with the young’uns (in tow) during our two Lisbon days. Highlights:

July 3 Lisbon
Morning Swathi was in the throws of her illness and had to spend the morning at home resting up. The rest of us (Adi, Rehka et al) took the historic Tram 28 from through the Alfama to the end of the line at Martim Moniz. It was…crowded:

After a quick Uber ride back to the Castello S. Jorge, we wandered the narrow alleys and vertiginous staircases back to our AirBnB to collect Swathi.

Took a 15 minute walk to the TimeOut market for a taste of Lisbon. The food was delicious, but he young’uns only wanted to eat french fries and strawberry ice cream 🤦. From there we explored the Belem neighborhood. Saw the Jeronimos Monestary and of course the Tour de Belem. It was impressive, but bright:

July 4 Lisbon
Time has been really flying and I honestly forgot that it was the 4th of July. After our marathon day on July 3, we took the morning off lazed about the apartment. By lazed I mean, spent 2 hours eating breakfast and then watching helplessly as the toddlers dismantled the apartment. RIP Lisbon apartment. RIP.

Around noon, we headed out on our trusty Tram 28 to the Campo de Ourique Market for lunch. From there it was off on another marathon hike from to the Jardim de Estrella, Avenida de Liberdade, Acensor de Gloria, Barrio Alto, and the Elevador de Santa Justa. We were a little tired at the end and to reward ourselves by having dinner at an Indian restaurant. I’ll admit, we were a little tired at the end of the day. Morale was high though:

July 5 Lisbon –> Guimarães
Rented a car, threw our bags in the back and bid our dear travel companions adieu. Headed north out of Lisbon making towards our destination of Guimarães. Stopped at Conimbraga along the way for a terrace lunch and some roman ruins. Soren emphasized that he does NOT like romans.

At the end of the day we made it to our destination: a monastery that now serves as a hotel. It is incredibly well preserved and feels like we stepped back in time a few hundred years.

July 6 Guimarães
After a leisurely breakfast, we spent some time exploring the monastery grounds. The property is quite extensive and includes some nice cloisters, azulejos, grottos and wooded trails. One of our favorite places was an overlook of the city:

We headed to the historic city center for lunch and then the ladies headed home for a rest. Swathi is still recovering from illness after all. The boys headed up to the top of the mountain overlooking the city via cable car. At the top there is a park with trails, caves and most importantly a trolley!

More photos of our adventures from the past few days here.

Greeting from Cascais! Or should I say Saudação de Cascais.  Cascais is a little beach-side resort town outside of Lisbon. We’ve been told Lisboetas have been escaping city life to camp our here for centuries. We decided that after the move and Denmark blitz it would make sense to take it easy for a few days. So far, Cascais has more than delivered in the relaxation department.

First off, our resort has been outstanding. Swathi found a resort that caters to families, so they have all sorts of amenities for children: three different children’s pools, plentiful of playgrounds/toy rooms, a man in a fox costume that makes the rounds at breakfast.

There is also a Kids Club where where kids can play games and do activities sans parents, but Soren unsurprisingly found that a bit scary. The first day he cried until he got a bloody nose. The next day he relaxed a bit and ended up having a great time. On to the rundown of the past couple days…

June 28…arrival
Got into the resort around 5 and headed straight to the pool. Soren learned about hot tubs, saunas and steam rooms. After a quick bath we had a very mediocre dinner at the hotel resturant. Mediocre for adults that is. They somehow nailed the kids buffet with plain pasta and over-steamed broccoli that Soren wolfed down on his own. Even Meera was eyeing the food enviously:

June 29…City of Cascais
After a failed attempt at introducing Soren to Kids club (i.e. bloody nose incident), we escaped as a family to the city of Cascais to explore. It is a tiny and one might even say “quaint”.

After a lovely afternoon of strolling the cobbled streets, we found ourselves stranded in the rain tying in vain to hail an Uber. In our distressed state, we forgot to take a photo of the four of us standing pathetically under an inadequate awning trying to avoid the rain. We listened to Disney songs to maintain morale.

June 30…Our friends arrive
Our dear friends Rheka and Adi, plus their adorable daughter Arya (short for Aishwarya), arrived today! As we awaited their arrival, we took a short hike to a seaside restaurant for lunch:

Once they arrived, the fun really began! After some initial shyness (from Soren), they kids got the party started with trampolines, pool time and mac & cheese. We headed to dinner soon after:

 

Cascais photos here

 

This is Swathi playing rapid catch-up. Of course we are already behind blogging!!

June 24 Copenhagen
We explored more of Copenhagen with our resident friends. First we went to a fun park so the kids could play, then we went to the main cemetary in the city. Cemeteries are social spaces in Denmark. So we hung out with H.C. Andersen and Soren Kierkegaard’s graves. Meera was so excited to be at the other Soren’s grave that she had a major blowout (not pictured).

We then  headed over to see the Rosenborg Castle and gardens, attending an interesting puppet show there, and visiting the crown jewels.

 This is not the typical puppet show of couse..it featured a man dressed like an old woman who is the premier figure in electronic music in the 1970s Denmark. Musical history and entertainment for all! See below:

Meera playing on the castle grounds..1st time she sat independently! and for a whole minute!

Sadly, by Sunday night, Ditte had to depart to Scotland to attend an academic meeting.

June 25 Copenhagen/Veijle
On Monday we were officially on our own as Pedja and kids resumed their usual weekday routine. We visited Tivoli and then hopped on a train to begin our journey deep into the flat grassy lands of Denmark. Tivoli is a blend of permanent amusement park/carnival/gardens, including several toddler friendly rides we all enjoyed. It is just lovely to walk around and look at. Soren got himself some strawberry flavored popcorn…(yuck!) he likes all things red.

Soren on a car ride at Tivoli:

The above photo at Tivoli illuminates our packing for the 2 day trip to Vejle – 2 backpacks, 1 of which is a diaper bag, and it all fits (sort of) on our stroller.

We then went to a small town Vejle which is located relatively close to Legoland in Billund. This is our walk around Vejle:

Our hotel set us up with a king sized bed for us, a toddler bed for soren, and a pack-n-play for Meera. There was also a nice-sized kid play room with tons of toys for Soren to amuse himself with.

June 26 Veijle & LEGOLAND!!!!!!!
We settled in and the next day Soren and Clark headed off to Legoland, where they reportedly had the best time ever. Soren got to go on a lot of rides, play with Legos, and even eat lego-shaped french fries!! He also was a perfect toddler all day. Meera and I had a relaxing day in Vejle, enjoyed nice walks around town and a lovely outdoor lunch, and copious napping.

Soren of course had a blast. He ran around for 8 hours in 80F heat and then came home only to sprint around our hotel room while eating dinner. What energy!!

Goood thing we napped back home because here is where the children really go nuts. Meera developed a fever overnight and refused to sleep or be awake (tough spot!) then Soren vomited around 1am, Meera just whined constantly waking up Soren, who would then cough and threaten another vomiting episode. This is Meera’s first illness, poor little sweet baby. Finally Clark Meera and I finally slept around 4am. Only to be woken up around 7:00 by a whiny Meera who sort of settled but not quite settled down around 7:30 when Soren woke up with a bloody nose and blood all over the sheets and pillow which he found emotionally traumatizing. Meera started having constant nose snot or watery eyes. We finally all settled into our buffet breakfast and things calmed down in time to catch our train back to Copenhagen…where I am currently blogging!

FYI catch-up post:

Hey all, what a crazy past few days it has been! Just last week we were lazing about our beloved Pittsburgh apartment moving and now we’ve moved out, flown to another continent and been given a fabulous whirlwind tour of Copenhagen. Or København as they write it around here. Danish spelling is very intuitive to me.

Before I jump into the blog I need to shout out some BIG thanks to a couple of our recent heroes. First to William Weiner (Snapchat handle wdubdubw) for driving us to the airport. We got him a Rick Flair shirt for his efforts:

Next, to our wonderful and gracious hosts Pedja, Ditte, little Oskar and little, little Inge. They welcomed us into their home, gave us a first-class city tour and provided abundant of frøsnapper. 🙏🙏🙏

Now, onto the past few days…

June 19 Pittsburgh…packing day

Mover’s came and put all out stuff in boxes. Won’t be seeing that stuff again for 2 months. Soren was just a little confused:

Also, we got a surprise visit from my good buddy Drew at the last minute! Glad to have him here just as our Pittsburgh adventure is coming to an end.

June 20..loading day
They put all our stuff in boxes and shipped it away. Soren and I went swimming in the rain.

June 21…fly out 

After dropping Soren off for daycare, Swathi and I did final re-pack to get down to our final travel bags. Final invetory 2 big bags, and 2 backpacks, plus a stroller/carseat (unpictured):

After a quick Chick-Fil-A dinner, we hopped on our 6:45 flight to Denmark (via Iceland). Soren got a new pair of fuzzy ipad headphones for the trip:

The kids were perfect for both flights. Soren didn’t sleep much and Meera put Swathi’s arm to sleep by sleeping on it funny, but really no complaints.

June 22…stumbling off the plane into Copenhagen

After our big trip, Ditte picked heroically whisked us away from the airport and introduced us to frøsnapper. Per the intro, we are duly grateful.

Other highlights photos here.

More København to come soon!