A Tour of Our "Wee Little Motorhome" or "Button Down the Hatches!"

Family and friends have written wondering what our "wee little motorhome" looks like and how it compares to our beloved Lazy Daze rig back in Solvang.  It has been such a major part of our trip that I thought it deserved its own blog posting.

And actually, it will need to be covered in two postings, which was not the original plan.  I was just about to post the whole thing last night when the last part of it (the tour of the "very interesting" bathroom and then some photos of miscellaneous features that we've really enjoyed) disappeared.  I don't know if it was something I did or if the blog server was at fault or if it was the nissemen (mischievous little Danish elves) messing with us, but it was gone.  So here's the first part and I hope to post the second part in the next several days.  Fortunately, I tend to write offline, so the remainder is already written and just needs to be transferred to the blog website.  But I do have to insert all the photos all over again and that will take a bit of time.  In addition, we've been really surprised at how many campgrounds in Scandinavia do NOT offer Internet access.  Peculiar for such a high-tech region.

Ah, enough of my computer troubles...let the tour begin!


But first, a clarification...

I've been referring to our rental motorhome here as our "wee little motorhome."  But it hasn't felt all that small to us, and in truth, we recently discovered (when we needed an exact length for ferry purposes), that it is a whopping 21 feet!  That's only 5 1/2 feet shorter than our Lazy Daze, so it is not nearly as "wee" as we had thought!

Secondly, a little back story...

When Art and I decided to head to Scandinavia to explore the land of his ancestors, it didn't take us long to also decide that we would rent a motorhome from which to conduct our explorations.  A motorhome is, after all, our usual mode of travel, and we're not only comfortable with it, we love it.

After much research, we selected what might be called a Class B+ in the states (it seems to us like a slightly bigger Class B with some extra goodies).  I was delighted that it had a permanent bed as we've always been curious about how devoting that much space in the already limited space of an RV would impact our daily RVing.  And it also features a "wet bath" but not quite exactly your traditional "wet bath" where your toilet, sink, shower and shower drain all share the same space (a photographic explanation will be given later in this post).  We were curious to see how the wet bath would compare to the bathroom in our Lazy Daze (with its separate shower).

We picked up the rental rig (called a camper van here in Europe) on Tuesday, June 14th.  My first reaction upon seeing it was "Oh, that's cute!"  My reaction now, after living in it for five weeks?  "Can we take it home with us?"

Picking up the RV in Hamburg, Germany

I still LOVE our Lazy Daze motorhome, but this little home-away-from-home has been ideal for us on this trip.  Let me show you around...

Among my favorite features are the driver and passenger seats.  Not only is the passenger seat more comfortable than the one in our Lazy Daze (easier on the back AND more leg room), but both seats swivel to face the rear (at legal opportunities) and can recline quite far if one is so inclined.  They make for wonderful reading chairs.

Next up is the dinette that can seat up to six people: two in those swiveling front seats, two in the bench on the passenger side of the rig, and two in the main dinette bench:

In addition, the dinette has a 12-inch extension that pops up from the bottom of the dinette table.  Easy to  extend, easy to put away...I like that.

Now even though we may no longer refer to our European camper van as our "wee little motorhome," it does have a wee little kitchen.  If not for the sections of tempered glass that can cover the three-burner propane stove in various configurations, there would be virtually no work space.  Add in the fact that we have NO oven and NO microwave oven...well, needless to say, the kitchen has NOT been a big hit with us since we're accustomed to doing a lot of cooking in our Lazy Daze.  I humbly ask that you humor me as I bombard you with photos of the various stove top configurations...I've got to get SOME fun out of this cooktop!

As compensation, there's a tremendous amount of kitchen storage, and the lighting is very well done.  But that's small consolation when you only have three burners to work with.  I do realize that one can do plenty of cooking using just the stove top, but sometimes a gal just wants (NEEDS!) to bake some brownies.  :-D

Continuing our tour, we come to perhaps my favorite part of our European camper van:  the permanent bed.

Double bed with nice firm mattress and great reading lights.

With the less-than-happy backs that both Art and I occasionally suffer from, we know there will come a day (sooner rather than later) when we will no longer want to or be able to perform the contortions necessary to pull the two sofas in the back of our Lazy Daze together to make the bed.  Yes, we do know there are other options in the Lazy Daze for sleeping, but those options are not for us.

Another plus for the bed is that it's been so helpful to be able to go and lie down during the day when I've felt the day catching up with me.

So having a permanent bed, cozy and tucked out of the way of the daily living space of the RV, has been one of the very best things about our not-so-wee-little-motorhome.

And so ends Part I of the tour.  Coming in Part II:  the "wet bath" with a twist, the much detested shower wand and the answer to why the subtitle of these posts has been "Button Down the Hatches!"