Hey, guys. It’s Shauna, the correspondent from Without Bags. I wanted to share with you guys where I’m at today. I’m so, so happy to be here. I am in Bergen, Norway. It is a lovely day out, probably 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Let me show you where I’m at.
Right now I am on top of a mountain. I think you guys are really going to enjoy this, so I had to share. Look at my view here. This is the City of Bergen below us. I took the cable car up here to come and enjoy the view. It is the perfect spring day.
Yeah, I just had to absolutely share with you guys and let you see all of the beauty that is Bergen, Norway. I’ll be bringing you guys videos as I’m out roaming about today, but I hope you guys are having fun. I can’t wait to have adventures here in Bergen. Talk to you guys later. Bye.
Good morning, everyone, it is Shauna, correspondent for Without Bags, and I am here live today actually from the MS Herald Cong, which is a postal ship that travels up the coast of Norway, delivering postage from all … you know going in and out of all the little different cities around the fjords of Norway. So first, I want to say I am so, so happy that I have signals, even live chat with guys, yesterday when they were doing the orientation for the ship, they were talking about the signal being absolutely zilch the entire trip for a week, and you know, I’m so connected to you guys, and I would feel so sad if I couldn’t share with you guys what’s going on, so this morning I woke up and I have three whole bars, I’m so, so happy, so we get to share, which is so exciting.
So, first thing I wanted to share with you guys was the fact that I am actually in a cabin, well, of course I’m in a cabin, but I will be in this cabin for a week. I have never been on a cruise before. Ever. And I’m not quite so sure that I can call this a cruise, you know, many, many people think about a cruise as the huge ships with pools and bars and restaurants. This is a working postal ship. There are only 200 people on board this ship, and so in a way, it’s very private from that standpoint. But of course the other side of that is that it’s very small, compared to you know, normally, when I’m out traveling for Without Bags, I am roaming around land, and there’s buildings, and space and you know, I’m originally from Arizona, which means I live in a desert, where there’s lots of space. So this is very new for me and yesterday, when I first got on the boat, I actually think I had a little bit of claustrophobia. I have never experienced that before.
So very long story short, you know got into my cabin, and literally, actually kind of felt a little bit short of breath, and I was starting to panic just a little bit. So you know, traveling is all about new experiences, right? So this was certainly a new experience for me.
After I had some water, walked around on some of the outside patio decks and stuff … there’s three decks that have external patios … so I walked around on some of those patios and felt better, couldn’t fall asleep, till about 1:45 in the morning, and of course, woke up due to the waves and the motion of the boat this morning at about 6:45. So I’m sure that means I will crash tonight, but maybe that’s good. You know, this is all about new experiences. And anybody who has never been on a cruise before, I maybe would recommend doing like a two or three day, cruise. This is a five or six days on the boat. But I am feeling much better this morning, so no concerns anybody, everything is just fine.
Anyway, so I’m very excited about this trip. I’m going in and out of these tiny cities, so basically there are cities along the way that we’re going to stop at, so for example, today, the city we’re going to stop at, and of course, I’m going to butcher all of the names, so I will have the Without Bags administrative team post a full list of everywhere that I’m stopping, and I’ll try to check in at the cities with pictures and stuff, so you guys can check the Facebook feed and check the blog, you know Without Bags, anyway, so we get to stop in all these little cities and we get to do activities in the cities, so one of the things I was so, so excited about was at the end of the trip I was supposed to go on an ATV through the snow, up to the Russian border, but apparently there has been so much snow, yay climate change, there has been so much snow that that has been canceled. And one of the other options was to go dog sledding, and that has also been canceled.
So, you know, we will find lots of other awesome things to do, so today one of the things I’m doing instead of my original trips there, was to go to, there’s an aquarium and a famous mountain range or something, All Staff I think it’s called.
Hey guys, it’s Shauna from Without Bags. I am currently sitting in the airport in Stockholm headed for Helsinki. I wanted to give you guys my recap of Stockholm.
First of all, awesome, awesome city. Was staying very near to the main old shopping district, so was able to walk to a lot of places. It’s very much a walkable city. They do have Uber, which is awesome, but it’s actually quite nice to be out walking. Of course today, there was hail, so definitely didn’t walk today. Yeah, very much liked the city. People are very, very friendly, super helpful. Definitely want to help you with whatever your problem is.
I think one of the biggest things that I’m noticing … In Ireland and Scotland, the look on people’s faces started off, even just walking down the street, everybody looked upset. Here and in Denmark, everybody has a very picturesque, actually, look on their face. Everybody here is quite pretty, generally, very tall, and slender, and beautiful. Anyway, very picturesque look on their face. If you look lost or look confused, they don’t really stop to help you, but if you reach out to ask for help, absolutely. They’re super friendly and definitely want to try and help you, so that’s really nice. That’s really helpful. Everybody speaks English basically, so it makes traveling here really, really easy.
Sorry, there is a very large cart going by. It’s kind of loud.
Hey everyone, so it’s Shauna from Without Bags and today we went on a little bit of an adventure. Woke up this morning and my powder bank was no longer working, so decided to roam the streets to try and find a place to find power. So luckily enough I found a place called, let’s see Class Ohlson and it is basically a giant Ikea on the inside but the most interesting bit was trying to find the proper adapters to fit both my U.S. plugs and a USB and all the rest of it. So what does this tell us? The tip for today is to always carry a backup power source. The problem with not having any way to charge laptops and cell phones and all the other fun stuff, battery backup packs and all the rest of it. Anyway this is, since I’m here, this is the main shopping street in Stockholm. So basically where all the stores are, all the clothes are, all the rest of it. I found a really cute skirt, so I’m so excited to wear that at a party that I’m gonna have then I get back.
So I figured I would give you guys a little bit of a view. Let me see what I can do here. So what you’re looking at is the main shopping street. You can see, I was way up at the top of that hill and then you see the grass all the way down there in the background. That’s an observatory and so we’ll be going there later today. And in the meantime I’m just roaming around, checking out all the stores. A lot of this feels very much again like the U.S. You know definitely they have a much higher sense of fashion, I would call it than we do. People keep coming up to me in my pink jacket, I was afraid that I was going to be a little too colorful. As you can see a lot of the people here are in blacks and grays. I am seeing some colors but I’ve literally had people coming up to me like touching my jacket. Like “Ohh, what a pretty color.” You know very, very excited about that.
Anyway it’s been an interesting morning. I’m definitely enjoying the … You know, I’ve had fresh tea this morning, like loose leaf tea and love the European breakfasts, you know the spreads are amazing. Cheese, and meats, and eggs and bacon, I mean it’s a full breakfast. No one of this Danish, first thing in the morning. So anyway just wanted to say Hi and one of the things that I’m finding, I am literally one of the shortest people around here. I’m five foot nine. I’m not exactly super short but many, many people here, the locals are easily, the women, the men, everything easily six foot. Lots of blonds, lots of very pretty people here. So anyway, so far so good. Loving Stockholm and loving Sweden and hope you guys are having a great day and I’ll talk to you guys later. Okay, bye.
Hey guys, I think I, completely by accident, just found the tower for Tycho Brahe. Which, if you don’t know who Tycho Brahe is, he was the most badass astronomer of all of them. If you know me at all, I’m an ex-astrophysicist, before I went on to travel the world and be a CPA and be awesome. But Tycho Brahe is so much more awesome than I could ever be. Tycho Brahe was a badass. He actually got into a fight at one point and had his nose chopped off and so they replaced his nose with a gold nose. So, this is really really awesome and so I wanted to share it, and film it, and hopefully we don’t get cut off. We’re going to go up a tower right now, to go see the observation platform, where Tycho worked. So, this is so cool. All right, let’s go.
So, as you can see we came in through the front entrance and we’re going to go up the spiral staircase here. This is so awesome. Apparently attached to quite a lovely church, as you can see here. Absolutely lovely, look at those candelabras there. Absolutely lovely, I love churches. Just especially in Europe, they’re just so different than anything they have in the states. Of course, so much older. I love, you can see the bricks here and it’s completely a platform. I’m not quite sure why. I’ve never actually seen a building like this, but you can tell the floor is completely worn in different spots. This is so cool. I’ve got a big ole smile on my face as we go up and up and up the tower. I’ll have to see if I can find some information as to why the tower was built this way, with the flat circular kind of driveway thing. I’m not sure what’s going on.
Let’s see if we can get a view out of one of these windows, maybe down on one of the streets or something. We’re in the main, kind of the old district. Been out roaming around shopping and having danish hot dogs in the meantime, but very very good. So, thank you for whoever’s watching this as we are on a tour of Tycho Brahe’s observatory, which is awesome. It’s a four story tower, I’m not quite sure how else to describe it, but as you can see there’s kind of this walkway that goes up and up and up and around in circles. Hopefully here when we get to the top, we’re going to see what Tycho Brahe saw. He’s my favorite astronomer from back in the day. Let’s go take a look outside, these windows are awesome.
Let’s see, what are we coming up on here? Cafe’, always have to have a cafe’. Round tower privy. One of the only two privy’s you can see in the little diagram here. Everything just flows straight to the ground, all the good stuff. Down to a 12 cubic meter latrine pit below the tower, how exciting. Let’s not go into the privy. This is lovely, just some of these views from up here are amazing.
Sorry guys, about that. I guess I lots some signal on the tower here. Let’s see what this is, the bell loft. The bells of trinity church. You can see some of the historical information. Oh, there’s a cool little model. So, we’re in the tower over here on the left-hand side. They’re really well know here for their jewelry, their silver and gold art work. And this must be where, Mr Brahe was, how exciting. Do you guys see that? This place is massive up here. It’s really cool.
Actually, I want to get you guys a picture of this thing. Tycho Brahe was famous for his observatory. This is the round tower university observatory. In use in 1650 to 1861. Anyway, the round tower was the main building for the observatory, so let me see if I can get you an image of that, off this lady’s shoulder here. There’s little tiny Tycho Brahe, he’s kind of a badass. He’s pretty cool, Mr Brahe. I love how they did the ceiling here with the stars. It’s really kind of cool. So, let’s go see, let’s go continue up the tower. This is pretty awesome, pretty exciting, for a science nerd like me. I am really really happy about being here, if you didn’t catch the beginning of my little thing, Tycho Brahe is awesome. So, it’s T-Y-C-H-O B-R-A-H-E, if you want to go read about him on Google. If I remember right, he liked to get drunk and get into fights. Tycho was a little bit crazy and always lots of fun.
Denmark here is just lovely, absolutely enjoying all the views of the city, and all the towers. We still have windows, we still have windows, still going up the tower here. Let’s see, where are we at here? We got to some stairs. This is so exciting. Let’s go see what’s up the stairs. You can see all the roof lines, before we go up the stairs, and see all the rough lines. They look gorgeous, I mean the city is just lovely. All right guys, let’s climb some stairs. If you hear me huffing and puffing, that’s clearly, I need to get some more work out. All this walking isn’t cutting it. Apparently it’s not just me.
God, look at that. You know, we see the whole city, so cool. Okay guys, platform, we’re going outside, upstairs. The platform, look at those stairs carved out of stone. That’s awesome. Okay, up we go. Little tiny tiny stairs. Going going going, coming up to the observatory platform. Oh my god guys, check this out. I am so so happy that I ran into this. I hope you guys are seeing this. Oh my god. No wonder this was the perfect place to observe the heavens. Absolutely breath taking. As you can tell, there are clock towers everywhere. Pretty much every single one of these big towers has a clock on it. I’m not quite sure who’s in charge of all the clocks, but they all seem to say the right time. They all seem to say the exact same time, so pretty impressive.
Absolutely amazingly beautiful. It’s kind of cool, they have all these little signs to tell you what you’re looking at in the distance here. So, you can kind of tell when you’re looking, there’s that tower, and whatever it is it’s telling you what’s up here. I’m almost all the way around to where we came up. Looks like there’s a huge park ground or something. All right guys, well this has been amazing, I’m going to stay up here and hang out for awhile and I hope you guys are enjoying Denmark. God, look at the wind turbines way off there in the distance. That’s really cool. Absolutely breath taking, breath taking. All right guys, thanks for joining me at Tycho Brahe’s observatory tower. This is probably one of the coolest things, so far, in Denmark. Especially for a science nerd like me. So, I’ll talk to you guys later. Bye.
Hey guys. I am in Denmark. I landed in Denmark and I am so, so, so, so happy with my hotel. I am in the Ascot Apartment Hotels. I’m going to give you guys a little glimpse, a little tour. If you guys saw one of the rooms we were staying in, in Dublin, it was literally the size of like … You know, up against a wall, and there was just barely passing room and all that kind of stuff. This place is a little bit different, so let me give you a little bit of a view. This is standing at the front entryway, heading in, and then later tonight I’ll show you the main entry to the whole building. Denmark is amazing. I’m in such a good mood right now. Anyway, let me show you guys where I’m staying.
When you first walk in the door, this is what you’re seeing. There’s like a little mudroom, with a little restroom. It opens up into this lovely … I have an entire living room all to myself. Spare bed, so hey, I’m here for four days, if anybody wants to come join me. Anyway, a little kitchen, a full kitchen all to myself. Out here, we can see … Down this way is the oldest part of town, the oldest part of the whole city. I’ll be going down there later today or tomorrow. This part, that direction, that’s a movie theater right there. The big colorful things. That direction is all the new city and the new stuff that one can do in this city, in this area. We’ll definitely be going that direction as well. I am about a block, walking distance, from Tivoli Gardens, which is the number one attraction in Denmark. Apparently it’s an amusement park, so I don’t know if we’re going to try that or not, we’ll see. We’ll have to see how that goes, but continuing with the tour.
We come into the master bedroom. I’m just happy to have so much space. Guys, I haven’t had this much space in like a month. I’m so, so, so happy. I have an entire bathroom. Look at this, so much space. I can actually get in, walk around, take a shower. I’m so, so happy. You know, I can always tell when I come to Europe because, generally, everything is so, so, so small but this has just been such a pleasant surprise. So yeah, I’m going to go find some food. Got off the plane, I am starving and, yeah, I will take you guys on a tour of the city when I get out there. All right, bye.
Hey guys; it’s Shauna from Without Bags and I just landed in Stockholm today. Of course, the first thing that I do anytime I get to a new city is see if I can find some groceries, especially if I have a little mini fridge. Always good to have some snacks and some stuff so you don’t have to spend quite as much money in restaurants. Although here, it’s really actually kinda cool. Even though the city seems, not seems it is, extremely modern, lots of high rises. Let me see if I can give you a little view out my hotel window here.
You can see, I’m in a hotel and completely surrounded by other buildings, other hotels. There’s a beautiful courtyard, they have some really nice spaces but definitely very modern. All the stores, everything is very up to date. I do feel like if you’re from Arizona and walking through Paradise Valley or Scottsdale, all high-end type shops, that kind of thing. Definitely, one of the first things that I always, always do is stop and see if I can find some groceries. I was very lucky this time, my hotel room, which I am in is awesome if you guys can see it.
Let me give you a little round-about tour here. There’s the look outside the window. Very nice and simple, which I really like, clean, really cute, right in the center of everything, I’m literally walking distance to all of the different historical sites and all the different museums and that kind of thing, which is fantastic. Sorry, kind of getting off a little off on tangent. Yes, always love going to a local grocery store to get some food just to have in the room, be able to carry with you. Today I actually had a lot of fun going to the grocery store, got quite a haul so I figured I would share some of the interesting things I found in the grocery store today. So, let’s see what we can find here.
Wanted to start off with, I normally love cider so salt and vinegar chips and this one is sea salt and cider vinegar, which I can’t wait to try, I’m super excited about that. If you know me, you know that I love me some meat so, Iberian ham flavored chips, have to try them. Got some candies, I love black licorice so ended up with some straight black licorice, maybe some green black licorice, I don’t know what’s in there so I’m gonna try it, looks like maybe strawberry flavored black licorice and some other little candies. Then picked up some basics like some carrots, some tomatoes, and cucumbers and things that you can kinda cut up and eat and just snack on, a little more healthy than potato chips and black licorice.
In the bottom of my hotel, there is apparently one of the cities most famous restaurants for mussels. Very exciting, so I’m thinking wine and mussels are on the dinner menu tonight. I’ll let you guys know how it goes. I hope you guys are having a wonderful day and it’s lovely here in Stockholm. I’ll get back on whenever I have something interesting to say. If you haven’t subscribed, definitely subscribe to Facebook, youtube, all those other things and share with your friends. Always looking for more family for Without Bags, I’d love to get your guys feedback. Has anybody been here to Stockholm, anything that I absolutely have to see while I’m here? Let me know. I’ve got three days, three and a half days here so definitely let me know. Thanks guys, bye.
Hey, guys. It’s Shauna from Without Bags, and I just had to check in with you guys because I just ate the most delicious burrito and, if you guys know me, I’m from Arizona, where we have the land of burritos. I am in a place called the “Slice of San Francisco,” in Copenhagen. Definitely, definitely look it up. It’s on Trip Advisor. It’s very highly ranked, and the food was amazing. I had the mixed burrito, with beef and chicken. Absolutely to die for, delicious. Apparently, she makes her own black beans.
Then of course for dessert, I had a fantastic piece of cheese cake, with this blueberry-rose sauce that is to die for. So, just shout out to anybody coming to Copenhagen, you guys need to eat here at Slice of San Francisco. It’s really close to the National Museum. It’s like right across the street, and it’s kind of down stairs, like in a little basement-type thing. It’s way cute. If you can see behind me, and I’ll try and give you guys a little view here so you can see. So it’s really super-cute and the food is absolutely amazing, so: I highly recommend it. I’ll see you guys later. All right. Bye.
Hey everyone, it’s Shauna from Without Bags and today I am standing in the Glasgow Airport. I am headed on my way to Reykjavik. So we learned something really interesting the other day, if you saw the video about the movie theater. We found out that Scotland is actually massively into sugar. We didn’t understand why there were so many candy options at the movie theater. But we found out that Scotland in general is massively into sugar. Apparently this was the first stop way back then and they would process a lot of Europe’s candy from here, from Scotland. So with that being said if any of you guys know me, I absolutely love Cadbury Creme Eggs. It’s probably one of my favorite little desserts, my favorite little passions and so I was told that this is the place to get Cadbury Creme Eggs. So I will be trying this and letting you guys know if it’s even better than the ones at home.
Good morning everyone, this is Shauna, correspondence for Without Bags here in Reykjavik this morning. I wanted to do a very brief little i-Video, when I first flew in yesterday into the Reykjavik Airport. The airport is actually on an old lava field so when I was looking out across the landscape it kind of looked like this picture in the background let’s see a very modern hotel. I love it. But very, very rocky and very kind of barren and black and dark browns and that kind of thing so that was my very first impression of Reykjavik.
However, now that I am in the city I am taken. It is absolutely lovely here. The ocean, I keep looking out my hotel room, it has a few of the ocean so I’ll show you that here in a minute. But the colors of the ocean it’s almost like they’re calling to me. I want to go swim, no swimming it’s way too cold, but it’s almost like they’re calling to me that I want to go out to the ocean. It reminds me very much of Tunisia going through the Sahara desert where you see desert and it just looks like desert and then you come up on something that is absolutely amazing and beautiful. The oases in Tunisia these waterfalls come up out of nowhere.
So now I’m really, really excited about being here in Reykjavik and in Iceland. One of the things we’re going to be doing over the next few days is tonight we’re actually going to see if we can find the Aurora Borealis. I think that should be around 10:00 p.m. this evening Reykjavik time. If you’re around and you want to watch. Of course, if it’s cloudy there won’t be any Aurora or none that we can see. So hopefully we’ll actually get a chance to see it tonight which would be amazing.
Then, of course, going to be doing the Golden Circle area which is a lot of waterfalls and a lot of this majesty of nature type stuff. So really, really excited to be here in Iceland. Last night tried something called monkfish and it was delicious in a coconut curry. Without Bags just left Scotland and coming here to Iceland I was really kind of concerned because Scotland was about 45 degrees, 50 degrees and here in Reykjavik we’re at like 27. So Without Bags is based in Arizona in the United States so coming from Arizona you know gorgeous, 85-90 degree weather to 27, I was afraid that there was going to be a little bit of a shock there. But actually, it’s not that bad. Make sure you have proper equipment, right? Proper jackets and gloves and that kind of thing. It’s really not all that bad.
I’m sure everybody out in Wisconsin is laughing at me right now saying, “27 is nothing honey.” But you know there you go. What do you do when you’re an Arizona girl? So, anyway super, super excited about what’s coming this week. A lot of adventure type stuff. I may not be able to do live depending on the signal out there in the wilderness but I will be posting I’ve got my GoPro. So I will be posting GoPro video and of course letting you guys know where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, all those other lovely things. So watch out for the adventures and I’ll look forward to seeing you guys soon.