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After spending 5 Thanksgivings in Sweden, I finally made it back to the US to have a proper one. While it’s possible to get turkey in Sweden, it’s harder, and I’m not sure it would fit in our oven.

I tried doing the direct flight between Paris and Salt Lake City, but that didn’t work as well on the way there. I’ll simply say that Charles De Gaulle is the worst and biggest airport I’ve ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Air France is not high on my list. I now know how good I had it with SAS and United with a 4~5 hour layover in Chicago. Absent a private jet or direct flight between Stockholm and Salt Lake, it seems to be the best option.

I had a good time seeing friends and family and eating a proper Thanksgiving. Though I was thrown off a bit having landed in Salt Lake 31 hours later than planned. I think I need to do a better job of planning my trips to Utah. I can survive without seeing lots of people and not visiting favorite haunts, but failing to plan makes for a less satisfying trip.

On the way there I spent a day in Paris, but after standing around in the airport trying to make my connection, and getting a hotel voucher and booked through Detroit the next day, I didn’t feel up to exploring Paris. On the way back though I had about 9 hour layover that I had planned on taking advantage of. I went in to Gare Du Nord, which seems to be the big train station on the north end of Paris. I went to Montmarte, it’s a big hill that overlooks most of the rest of Paris. I saw the cathedral there, then walked over to the cemetery. I didn’t see the Eiffel Tower, but had seen it from the plane flying in from Stockholm.

I think my plan of attack for a future trip to France would include learning some basic French, this should get more helpful results in showing that I’m at least trying, figuring out some plans on food beforehand, it was hard to choose what to have, and make any decision between the different cafés, but I feel that some basic research would’ve at least made the decision process less difficult. As for sightseeing, it would depend on how long a trip, but I think a boat tour on the Seine would be good. I feel I finally got Stockholm after a boat tour here, but maybe my familiarity helped and the tour just solidified things. Also Stockholm is an archipelago so understanding it from the water is maybe more important.

I took a few panoramic photos using an iOS app from Microsoft, you’ll need the Silverlight plugin, but it will let you see some of the sights with poor weather. My panoramas from Paris are available on my photo synth page. 

It was a bit surreal as details of the bombing in Oslo started to come out via Twitter. There weren’t many details anywhere. As the afternoon marched on details on the bomb solidified. At that time it felt wide open as to who would was responsible. Then we started to hear about Utøya.

We had two couples over for dinner. While we caught up and talked about life, Norway was not far from our thoughts. While we ate we watched a direct feed of Norway’s national television. It was hard for me to understand much of anything in Norwegian so I relied on my iPhone to check on the latest developments.

I went to bed with seven dead from the bomb in Oslo and at least ten on Utøya. This morning we awoke early and Johanna read on Twitter that at least 80 had been shot on Utøya. My stomach turned at the thought that a terrible event could be so much worse. Any death is horrible, but those youth gunned down in cold blood seem especially sickening.

As I write this that number has climbed to 92, 7 in Oslo and 85 on Utøya.

I don’t think anyone who reads this blog could have not heard the news elsewhere. On Sunday night Apple approved the iPhone app that I build for Ski Racing Magazine. It’s a free download so you won’t be out anything to check it out.