Pre-trip food, culture and a great playlist

Looking back on it, the things we did before the trip were almost as much fun as the trip itself.

We got all kinds of books out of the public library and supplemented those with online resources, like TripAdvisor and Yelp. We bought a few of the traditional travel guides but really didn't use them.

Ordering promotional materials through tourist web sites for the various countries took quite a bit of time and yielded mixed results. We got better info through TripAdvisor reviews on things like which caves would be full of tourists and which were likely to be less busy.

Seeking out and cooking food from these countries made the months before the trip very enjoyable. The flavours were familiar but had a twist. Especially delightful were Icelandic skyr, Alsatian Baeckeoffe, Belgian beer, Dutch Stamppot with Rookworst and Danish Smørrebrød. Trying the food once in Europe, in the villages where it originated, was fantastic.

We tried to watch movies that would get us ready for the trip, but didn't find much that the whole family could watch. Ben Stiller's The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was fun (especially the longboarding in Iceland). The Swedish/Danish crime drama The Bridge was excellent to get a sense of Copenhagen and Malmö (not for kids). The original Swedish Wallander, set in Ystad in the south if Sweden, was also terrific (also not for kids).

We watched a bunch of travel-related YouTube videos for places we would be visiting. Most of the time, the videos were for people focused on just walking around cities and visiting castles or were for people with really young kids. Not that helpful for our planning.

We listened to audiobooks set in Europe. We particularly liked Marina by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. We did a bit of library book reading on Van Gogh and other artists whose works we were hoping to see in the Rijksmuseum.

I started reading Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See before the trip and finished it during the flight home. It was a fantastic read for travelling across Europe.

What turned out to be a favourite thing was the playlist we built with artists from the countries that we planned to visit. So many great artists that never get played here or suggested through online sources. None of them were playing live where we were, but I would try to arrange for that next time.

To save you having to dig up these songs, have a listen to the Team Chapman Travels 2016 Playlist.

Last, but definitely not least, we need to mention Washed Out's fabulous song, Amor Fati. The video for this song is a delightful teenage travel adventure, shot in Iceland.