Our 5-year wedding anniversary was coming up and for some time we thought about spending that day at the Northern Cape. But since we had adjusted our travel itinerary a bit we decided to stay at Lyngen Fjord instead.

We’re not exactly in the habit of spending our wedding anniversary in style. The first year (2015) we were in Sault Saint Marie / Canada and took the Agawa Canyon Tour train. There wasn’t much view of the canyon from the train and hardly any time to go hiking when the train stopped after a 4-hour trip one direction. We couldn’t believe we rode all the way only to be ushered back to the train after 90 minutes to face another very long trip through a forest. We were clearly not the target group as everyone else was elderly, from the States and very concerned about food. They ate sandwiches on both rides and had a picknick while we were trying to do some fast hiking in-between.

At night we tried to find a nice restaurant and ended up in a Burger / Blini place. This combination should have been warning enough but we were young and hungry (we should have been following the other canyon travellers’ example – they clearly knew better!) and bound to have one of the worst dining experiences of all time that we still refer to on an irregular basis as it has left a permanent scar.

In 2016 was we were sweating through a birth-giving class for couples at 35 degrees Celsius. The temperature reminded us of the actual wedding, everything else – oh well.

A year later was very nice – we actually managed to have a lovely meal in Düsseltal because my sister was kind enough to babysit 11-month old Mats that evening.

Last year wasn’t too bad in the beginning when we were getting up very early to fly to Portugal. The trip was not about us at all, though, as we were helping to set up the wedding venue for Markus’ brother and sister-in-law at her parents’ house in Portugal.

This means Markus was helping and I was stopping almost-two-years-old-Mats from playing with tools and climbing ladders. Therefore I guess you could say I was helping, too. Anyway, after a pretty long day we tried to order some food from the room service of our hotel because we couldn’t leave sleeping Mats to go out for dinner. It took until midnight to get the food and when we were sitting crammed at the small hotel room table with our fancy chicken dish we couldn’t help but laugh at yet another odd wedding anniversary day.

To cut a long story short: there would be not restaurant this year. Instead, we booked one of the lovely Fjord Cabins with a spectacular view over Lyngen Fjord, took a camping break, sat in the sun while our kid slept in until noon, went swimming, visited the northernmost distillery, enjoyed a barbecue and even saw a dolphin swimming through the fjord under the midnight sun (and no, I’m not making that one up).