"Les soldes" come to Denmark

Like Santa on double-duty, les soldes (the sales) come but twice a year. Any Parisienne can tell you that these are the times to hit the stores without breaking the bank: January-early February, and July-early August. So what's a displaced Parisian with a thing for shoes to do in a city with a disappointingly drab sense of fashion? Let me introduce you to my new favorite way to lose (at least) a half hour: spartoo.com.

This French shoe site sells every sort of shoe you can imagine, from bargain basement to runway fashion. The deals come January/July (or better yet, tail-end super mark-downs in early February/August) are unbeatable when it comes to massive selection and bang for your buck (or euro, or kroner, or whatever your preferred currency). This site became my favorite way to blow off steam (and spare euros) when I discovered it while writing my doctoral thesis. What really did me in this year was my recent discovery of spartoo.dk. (And don't think you're immune, dear non-French non-Dane reader: there's spartoo.co.uk, .de, .es, .it, etc, but if you're still not covered, spartoo.net offers free delivery to over 150 countries.) With over 1000 brands, free returns, free exchanges, and customer advice on sizing of each individual shoe model, what's not to love?

An assortment of Spartoo goodies to have greeted me in Denmark

And now that I'm gearing up to become a businesswoman, scouring this site has become a gleeful obligation! This season's July "soldes" have officially launched this week, and I was all over them. From the confines of my damp and chilly Scandinavian country, I just had to share the joy that came with these little parcels of Parisian pleasure. I might not be able to step foot in Paris these days, but my feet have Paris all over them.

The Michelin tour of Aarhus, Part 3

Having tested Aarhus's Michelin Bib restaurants in March and April, we readied ourselves for the big league. Aarhus's Nordisk Spisehus is one-of-a-kind, a restaurant that collaborates with Michelin starred restaurants around the world to craft new themed menus every two months. I'd first been introduced to the concept during my university job interview at the start of last year, and had been itching to take Nicolas here ever since.

I've been hanging on to the cards that came with each course of the tasting menu during my interview dinner, until the day I could finally make it to Nordisk Spisehus.

Finally, the time had come. With lunch menus literally half the cost of dinner, we decided to bump our dining time slot up to early afternoon. We arrived with just a light breakfast in our stomachs, ready to dig in. Today's menu theme: Copenhagen.

The meal began exquisitely with delicious dark bread to rival the likes of that in Tallinn, accompanied by a whipped butter-yogurt blend that was light in texture but rich in flavor. For starters, I had a shrimp and asparagus dish, and Nicolas a salad with ham and fresh cheese. We followed this up with fish and chips for me (much to my surprise to see this on such a fancy menu), complete with lemon, estragon, and cucumber dipping sauces, and a chicken dish with peas and garlic for Nicolas. Finally, we both enjoyed a light dessert of rhubarb and anis covered in almond ice cream, topped with thin sheets of rhubarb- and anis-flavored candies. (My Danish server did not pronounce "anis" correctly and I had to fight to hold in my laughter. I am not yet a grown-up.)

Lunch at Nordisk Spisehus, Copenhagen theme

The ingredients were high quality, the flavors balanced well, and overall we were very pleased with the meal, perhaps our best in Aarhus to date. The visit served as a delicious way to start to say goodbye to this city, revisiting the first restaurant that welcomed me in.

Brexit and me

Well, that's it, guys. Britain is out. As a proud resident of the EU since 2008, losing one of our biggest players hurts. But shaking my head should be where this all ends for me, but for what I just did earlier this week.

I got a job in England.

And still, everything should be fine, right? I'm an American. My visa requirements don't change when the UK jumps ship.

The thing is, I've been living in Denmark for a year, a country for which I acquired a visa to go with my job, and then my French boyfriend followed. He was able to freely move here, to job hunt with equal rights to the Danes, as an EU citizen. But language barriers can be a big hurdle, so the past year hasn't offered many opportunities to him. And then this UK-based job appeared. Suddenly (well, less than suddenly—the interview process took five months), we had a chance for a fresh start in an EU country where he spoke the local language. My job guaranteed my visa, and as an EU citizen, he could follow freely for his own job hunt, just like any other English local.

Today I'm left with a sensation half way between a punch in the gut and the feeling of teetering on the brink of an abyss. I have no idea what comes next. The UK will still be EU when we arrive, but the cogs of Brexit will be in motion. England and France are so close that there's sure to be some good terms negotiated. For goodness sake, there's a tunnel that connects the two countries! But how will English employers react? With an economy in crisis and the future rights of EU workers unknown, how many Englishmen will jump to hire a Frenchman?

For a week that had begun so upbeat, this really throws a wrench in the works. Why, England, why?

Home away from home: accommodations on a budget

Unless you're lucky enough to have friends or family conveniently located, planning a trip means sorting out where to stay. For a budget traveler, there are a few good places to start:

Hostels
As a solo traveler, hosteling can be the way to go. If you don't mind sharing a room, you'll likely land the cheapest bed and might even make some friends. Hostelbookers and Hostelworld are my two favorite sites. Both offer user reviews of hostels based on a variety of criteria, including atmosphere, location, security, and cleanliness. Choose your priorities, run a search, and generally don't stray below 70-80% overall ratings. I've had a lot of good experiences this way.

Couchsurfing

For the brave of heart, and ideally, the budget-traveling duo. Couchsurfing is a concept where people offer to open their homes to you totally free of cost. (Nice mannered guests should think to bring a small host(ess) gift.) As a traveler, finding a host can be a big time sink, what with searching through lots of host profiles and writing individualized request messages, but it can result in a really personal experience and a chance to get the most "insider" perspective on the town. You can't be too picky, though, so you may end up in a less-than-central part of town and you might sleep on the floor. It's easiest to find accommodations in lower-requested locations, not major cities where hosts can be overwhelmed with requests. Not recommended for those with some extra cash nor for female solo travelers (sadly, in my experience).

Airbnb
This is undoubtedly my new favorite way to travel in a couple or with a group of friends. It can even be a solution for off-the-map destinations with few (if any) hotel or hostel options. With Airbnb, locals open up their homes—sometimes just a spare room, sometimes the whole place. Users, both hosts and travelers, are vetted through the site's security system, to which they must submit some form of state ID. People who host or are hosted by users have the opportunity to leave a review, so you can get a feel for who the person is and what their home is really like. Airbnb homes range from young couples or empty nesters with a spare bedroom to the lucky ones who have a second home that's not always in use. Personally, when I'm exploring a new city with just one other person, I love to go the spare room route in hopes of getting to hear an insider's perspective from my hosts. I've also taken advantage of full homes to enjoy a get-away weekend with a group of friends. The experiences are always unique and often much more charming than your standard hotel.

Hotels are always an option, and can even be called for in the world of budget traveling under certain conditions, say in remote places, for last minute bookings, or when someone else is footing the bill (say, when your airline goes on strike and they cover accommodations due to canceled flights). Loads of search engines exist for this. I have tested Kayak and Hotels.com, but hotel travel has never become my area of expertise.

Whatever your tastes, as Ray Bradbury wrote in Fahrenheit 451,

'Stuff your eyes with wonder,' [...] 'live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.'

Getting from point A to wherever B may be

It's no secret that I'm a travel junkie. Since I began earning a living wage, nearly every spare penny has gone to travel. And, mostly on a student stipend, I've made my way through 35+ countries. There isn't one secret to hitting the road (or the skies) on a shoestring, but here are a few pointers to book that killer deal.

Rome2rio is a fantastic starting point. If you've ever wondered how you might venture from point A to B, this site will break down all the different modes of transport and their price ranges. It's a great way to figure out if plane, train, boat, or car/car-share (or some combination of these) is your best bet.

Skyscanner.net has been my long-time favorite for its search capabilities. This site is limited to air travel, but its incredibly flexible search algorithm lets you run searches like

• Destination "Anywhere": figure out what destinations are most financially accessible from your starting point.
• Don't care when you fly? You can ask this search engine to check out flight prices across an entire calendar month, which is great if you want to take a vacation sometime in July or August, and you just want to find a good deal. 
• Need some budget-travel inspiration? Skyscanner even allows you to leave the travel dates unspecified, pulling up cheapest options regardless of date. This combined with destination: anywhere has been the starting point of many a fantastic adventure.

Kayak is a search engine of travel websites. It scans all your standard air carriers (including budget lines like Easyjet and Ryanair) as well as travel sites like expedia, booking.com, opodo, etc. After finding my inspiration on skyscanner.net, I always run my selected travel destination and time window through kayak to find the most competitive prices. (Tip: Once I've selected my flight, I always go straight to that airline's website to double check that fares aren't cheapest when booked directly through the carrier. It's not often the case, but can offer some savings.) I've also seen Momondo floated around on traveler forums as a very popular search engine.

For the students and under-26-year-old travelers, Student Universe and STA travel do offer the occasional killer deal.


Besides the above advice, a couple extra tips:

• Book early. If you can deal with planning up to 6 months in advance, you can get yourself an international flight for the price of a couple of drinks in a bar downtown.
• Be flexible on dates. Traveling out on a Thursday or back on a Monday can halve the cost of your journey, or more. Whenever you have the luxury, run your searches on kayak with specified dates + or - 3 days.
• Clear browser history and cookies. If using Google Chrome, run your searches on an incognito window. I've read over and again that websites notice if you've searched a trip more than once, and will up the price on subsequent searches. Not totally sure if it's true, but why chance it when clearing your history is just a click away from potentially cheaper airfare?
• Take advantage of the sharing economy. If the last leg of your trip takes you off the beaten track and far from public transport, check for local ride share websites that can let you travel for a fraction of the cost of—and way more convenience than—a car rental. And for shorter distances, keep in mind that uber is often half the cost of a taxi.

Hope this comes in helpful the next time you start dreaming of a faraway escape. Happy travels!

A few days in Helsinki and southern Finland

Our grand return to the European Union, and the last leg of our Baltic adventure, began with a few days off from city life. I'd hoped to go further north, but the transport fees and schedules weren't in our favor, and honestly, it probably wasn't the right time of year. I'd wanted to visit the Sami people, the European Union's only indigenous people, who inhabit the Arctic Circle across Russia, Finland, Sweden, and Norway. They happily receive tourists interested in learning more about (and financially supporting) the Sami. I'd also have loved to see the Northern Lights, one of northern Finland's major draws, but they aren't generally visible after early-to-mid March. I reluctantly acknowledged that some bucket list items can afford to go unchecked.

We stayed in a home in the outskirts of the Helsinki metropolitan area alongside a lake, complete with rowboat that we took out for a spin. Literally. To be generous, we were both a bit rusty on our rowboat skills, so some spinning definitely happened. I am proud to report, however, that nobody tipped the boat, which counts as a win in my book.

Our Airbnb home on a lake came complete with our own private rowboat.

The next morning we got ourselves out to the Nuuksio National Park, probably the best nature escape near Helsinki. The birch tree forests shaded us from a surprisingly sunny day as we hiked past lakes and rugged, untouched terrain. The scenery could not provide a starker contrast from where we'd just been two days prior, and it provided a welcome balance to the trip.

Nuuksio National Park, the best nature escape in Southern Finland

After a couple of days nearly off the grid, we headed back to the world's second-most northern capital city. The prices immediately reflected that we were back in a Nordic country, where we were no longer equipped for the fancy wining (beering?) or dining of Talinn or Saint Petersburg. But Helsinki still had plenty to entertain while holding tight our purse strings.

We visited fancy churches, from the spartan Lutheran Tuomiokirkko just north of Senate Square to the Russian Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral to my personal favorite, the late-1960s Rock Church, or Temppeliaukio kirkko, whose own unique take on Nordic modesty is expressed in its guise of a giant pile of rocks.

Notable churches of Helsinki. Leftmost images: Lutheran cathedral Tuomiokirkko. Top right: Russian Orthodox Uspenski Cathedral. Bottom middle and right: Late 1960s Rock Church, a semi-underground church which appears, from the outside, like a giant pile of rocks.

We spent our time wandering along the waterfront, down the tree-lined boulevard called Esplanadi, and across the city admiring the sights.

Highlights of Helsinki.
Top row: Nicolas and me in front of the Sibelius Monument; Rauhanpatsas, or Statue of Peace, a monument to the friendship between the Finns and the Soviet Union, erected in 1968; the Three Smiths Statue, unveiled in 1932.
Middle left: the Helsinki waterfront.
Bottom row: A sideview on the Presidential Palace; a memorial on Esplanadi to Zacharias Topelius, a Swedish-speaking Finnish journalist and historian; a small German church; monument on Esplanadi to Johan Ludvig Runeberg, a Finnish-Swedish poet; the Kallion Kirkko, a church built in the Art Nouveau style that can be spotted all around Helsinki

While wandering along Esplanadi, we stumbled upon the existence of techno-opera. Who knew?

I even found some impressive consignment shop offerings—thank you, Recci!

Remarkably enough, through the wonders of Facebook, I had the chance to catch up with a friend I'd made while backpacking through Southeast Asia last year. We didn't just enjoy good company out in the town, but also back in our Airbnb home, where we had the pleasure of staying with a worldly musician and her gracious hostess of a cat.

Our feline Airbnb hostess in Helsinki graciously allowed us to share her bed, if we asked nicely.

Finally, on our very last night, we allowed ourselves a bit of Finnish culinary exploration at Juttutupa, a restaurant and bar that was once supposedly a favorite of Lenin. A table in the corner where Lenin and Otto-Ville Kuusinen supposedly liked to meet up is known today as the "Revolutionary table," at least according to the restaurant menus, though we couldn't figure out which corner table they meant. I sampled the fried vendace fish with mashed potatoes and lingonberries. Not bad at all, though Tallinn still topped the list for food on this Baltic trip.

Traditional Finnish food at Juttutupa, supposedly one of Lenin's favorite hang-outs.

The skies finally opened up on the morning of our departure, but we could hardly complain after Mother Nature had spent the past week and a half smiling down on us. It was time to head home.

Russia's "Window to the West"

St. Petersburg was our Paris of the East, or the Russian "window to the West," as the city's founder, Peter the Great, once called it.

Despite taking ages to pass a border guard who made it clear that Americans were not particularly welcome, I immediately felt at home in the city.

Made it to Russia! Complete with my new Cyrillic name and fresh passport stamp.

As displaced Parisians, Nicolas and I were immediately struck with a sense of familiarity thanks to Saint Petersburg's wide boulevards, the ornate bridges criss-crossing the Neva River and canals, the grandiose architecture, and the international flare.

Unfortunately, due to the boat schedules and our 72-hour time restrictions, we had to book our departure trip for the following evening, allowing us just 36 hours to see a city that could easily take a week or two. This meant we had to rapidly switch from our leisurely Tallinn pace to power tourist mode.

We were happy to take advantage of the weak ruble, but still felt a bit of a price jump compared to Tallinn, where we could dine and drink like royalty. Still, we didn't feel too pinched as we sat down for meals. Being in Russia's second largest city, it was no trouble to find a place specializing in Russian and Ukrainian dumplings, which we promptly did.

Traditional Russian food. Left: Pelmeni, meat-filled dumplings. Right: Varenyky, curd-filled dumplings with cherry sauce and sour cream. A food he happily associates with his late Ukrainian great-grandmother, Nicolas insists I note that varenyky are traditionally Ukrainian.

Our stomachs happily full, we spent our afternoon running around town trying to check off as many major monuments from the tourist list as possible. The pace of life here felt fast, busy, energetic. Everything was so big, so colorful (notably a trait not shared with Paris), so beautiful. My personal favorite was the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood. It seemed to have come to life straight out of the Candy Land board game we used to play as kids. Trying to see all of Saint Petersburg in just two days was unfair to this city. A photo collage might do a good job of capturing the whirlwind of sightseeing.

Saint Petersburg in 36 hours.
Left column, top-down: St. Isaac's Cathedral; the view down the Fontanka River from Anichkov Bridge; the Winter Palace by night.
Second column, top-down: the Smolny Cathedral convent; Dvortsovyy Bridge by night; Feodorovskoy Sobor.
Third column, top-down: me outside the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood; red carnations, the most common flower to place at Russian soldiers' graves, around an eternal flame monument. Flowers were there to mark the May 9 anniversary of the end of Soviet involvement in WWII; the Admiralty.
Right-most column, top-down: Nicolas outside the Peter and Paul Fortress; the inner courtyard of the Winter Palace (Hermitage Museum)

For once, the following morning, the weather wasn't entirely in our favor. Under heavy skies, we toured the Peter and Paul Fortress and then headed for the Winter Palace, once the official residence of the czars (pre-1917 revolution), now home to the Hermitage Museum, one of the oldest and largest museums in the world. I'm not sure exactly how it compares in size to the Louvre, but it certainly gives the Parisian gem a run for its money.

Views from inside the Hermitage Museum

And lest Saint Petersburg look merely like a sparkling monument of the past, here's just one glimpse at how modern and trendy it is, with store fronts à la New York/ London/ Paris.

I couldn't help smiling at these store front windows along Nevsky Prospekt, a major boulevard in Saint Petersburg.

And in honor of Nicolas, I'll wrap this post up with an image of just one of the many Western chains that made it to the Motherland, complete with Cyrillic sign post.

Burger King, now in Cyrillic. (For the life of me, why a Frenchman would find *this* cuisine enticing...)

Before we knew it, we were rolling our suitcases down the sidewalks, doing our best to avoid the major puddles, and wheeling back up the boarding ramps past customs and back toward the European Union. By now, I'm convinced that getting that Russian tourist visa will be worth it, one day.