Norway Bound

Works of art

The alarm went off at 4.30 - oh joy!  However, if ever there is a good time to get up early, holiday is it!

We got up, changed and were in the car and moving by 5am.  We had a good, easy run into the airport so got there in good time.  We checked in, with no problems, then had to queue to put our new bag into the hold (apparently it was too big to fit on the regular chute - but it was smaller than my backpack?!) and then we had to join the huge queue for security - which was a busy and chaotic as it has ever been.  We managed to get through without our bags being searched but it still took an age - it was as if the whole of the North West were there trying to get through.  I managed to somehow leave my boarding ticket behind - not sure how, anyhow it was sorted out quickly and easily - phew!

Sami hut

We found ourselves a cafe for coffee and a sit down straight after to recover, and then did a little bit of shopping (holiday whisky) before heading to our gate to get our plane.  There was a problem, they couldn't get the air bridge to work.  The poor passengers in the plane were stuck in it for ages, and in the end they had to move us to another gate from which we could get a bus to take us to the plane.  All this meant we left 45 minutes late!  Oh hum.  Never mind, we had an uneventful flight and arrived in Oslo in thick cloud and drizzle - oh joy.  Just the same as it was in Manchester then!

84,000 tons of cruise ship

We found ourselves a bite for lunch (3 sandwiches and a bottle of water which equalled £27 - ouch!) and then got the rather swish airport express train down to the city of Oslo.  Here it was sunny and warm - 19 degrees in fact which meant it was warmer than London,  and we were wearing the wrong clothes.  After getting our bearings we found our way to the hotel and checked in.  But we couldn't check in - something was wrong with our room, could we wait 10 minutes?  It was over half an hour before we finally got to our room.  We were very thankful, sat down, stripped off, had showers and felt ready to take on the city.

Weather reports say that tomorrow it is going to rain all day - so we thought we should see as much of the city in the dry as we could.  We started off by walking down to the waterfront.  There we found an Asian music festival in full swing.  Lots of big fabric elephants around the place, a big music stage and then we found some food tents...lots of them.  They were selling everything from kebabs, shawarma, Indian curry, Thai curry, Japanese, burgers, baked potatoes, but mainly middle eastern specialities - one stall that was very popular and pretty much impossible to get to was the Afghanistan  stand which smelt delicious.

Lounging around!

I decided on lamb shawarma, Matt went for pad Thai and Tom went for Japanese - each of us got a meal for under £10 so we felt we had done well.  The food was delicious as well.  We then decided to carry on looking around, so we walked round to the next bay which had the Opera House and a Sami hut area with yet more street food (Norwegian style here and double the price) where we found some hammocks to lounge around in and a huge sculpture in the shape of a Sami hut but with lots of shirts attached to the frame which were blowing in the wind - interesting.

We then walked round to the opera house and walked up to its roof and back down again.  Seems to be a thing, opera houses, it seems they always need to be a statement and right by water.  Was a good statement here: good view from the top.  We watched people jumping in the water - wowzers - they are brave.  However, on viewing them carefully, we noticed they were jumping in from floating pontoons, and on the pontoons were cabins and there was smoke coming from the cabin chimneys.  We reckon there was a sauna inside them.  Even so, you wouldn't get me jumping in!!!!!

Moose!

We then walked back through Sentralstation and along Karl Johans Gate back to the hotel, stopping in some shops for a mooch.  Tom got himself a huge chocolate waffle for pudding and then we explored some rather magnificent Norway souvenir shops - complete with life size moose, polar bears, brown bears etc etc.  Certainly the most popular theme was moose, followed by trolls.  I saw a dozen things that I could happily purchase - we are now getting really excited in the hope we might see some real life wild moose.

We then walked back to the hotel, dropped into the little supermarket opposite us in the hope we could get some cheap(ish) beer.  Turns out that you can't buy beer after 8pm - it was 8.05!!!!!  Oh hum, we bought some low alcohol beer and snacks and returned to the hotel room where we all thankfully kicked our shoes off and laid down on our beds.


A long day, but a good day.