Hi everyone,
Returned Thursday night from two tours - Easy Pace Russia ( lol - misnomer - Rushed Russia) and the grand Tour of Scandinavia. (5 days in brilliant Hong Kong on the way home too)
Everything was fabulous and we would return to these places to explore some more if we could and if only they werent so far away! Loved St Petersburgh - had 5 hours in the Hermitage (sigh) and Moscow is amazing - didnt realize what the Kremlin actually contained.
We did have a few minor hiccups, and the weather when we finally got to Norway was less than great, but it didnt matter! (You do worry when the TD says in her 25 yrs of touring Scandinavia she has never seen the weather in Geiranger so bad for that time of year!)
Would love to go back to Stockholm and explore more as well as Trondheim. Wish the tour was longer so we could have had more time there.
The scenery is spectacular - loved the bleakness of the north as much as the fiords. Lene as TD for the Grand was amazing. We loved her theme for the day and very much enjoyed relaxing on the long sections of road listening to relevant music, stories of the Norse gods, WW2 history, troll stories, reindeer facts, souvenir suggestions - the list is endless and she certainly kept us in line!
Most hotels were fine with the Geiranger outstanding re room and view. Again one could be pedantic about minor things not found in the rooms as some travellers were but hotels are different everywhere. We didnt care - we were happy to be on our adventure.
So - pictures and stories? They will come as soon as I can get my act to together and type up. Am dreading starting the rush of work on Monday. Others on this site have already written comprehensive reports on the areas we visited and I know it will be difficult not to overlap too much; we'll see!
As you can see we had a great time and more info to follow. Let me know if you have specific questions before I write up and will be happy to help!
Cheers Eve
Ps Next time: Am buying and taking one of the small lightweight laptops - fit into handbag (not my heavy one). Free broadband most hotels but extremely hard to get onto the only computer in many places due to time constraints and other anxious travellers. Continued to txt family which was great too - very immediate and sent photos of scenery that way sometimes.

Welcome back Eve. I am looking forward to reading your tour tales. I am sorry to hear you had bad weather at Geiranger, it is spectacular in sunshine. I hope the weather wasn't too bad for the rest of the trip. When we were there in mid June 2004 it was overcast, I have been there years ago in sunshine.
We enjoyed our week in Stockholm but we found it too hot 28C most days so it was tiring, we prefer the low twenties. I suppose it is not very hot for Australians.

My daughter travelled with an AsusEEE laptop and communicated with us at home easily from small and cheaper hotels and BBs.

Thanks for the welcome back.
One of the reasons we picked Scandinavia was that it would not be as hot at that time of year. I think I am an Australian over really hot weather. It's hard to enjoy looking at things when it is too hot.
The weather for the trip began well but we did have a fair bit of rain as we travelled through Norway. I have a sexy snap looking like a drowned rat in Geiranger! I took a picture of North cape that is completely white!! Very low cloud and no view at all at the cape or on the way up. I will obviously have to go back again.
Fortunately we took a reasonable mighnight sun snap in Rovaniemi. It didnt matter...We were on holiday.
Tour tales..

Posting some photos of Russia but unfortunately life keeps interrupting! I have to stop to go out to dinner. Grr!
Also I am slow so it seems to time out on me. Stay tuned for more albums. I dont like it when people post too many but it is really hard to choose 100 from 1500!
OK - back from dinner and now its 12.30 am and I have work tomorrow. Will stop but only a couple more to go! Hope you enjoy looking at them.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Eve777,