Things you see everywhere in Norway

Oslo

• green hills
• pine trees
• blondes
• harbour
• lakes

Day 4 25/8/08 - Norway

Bergen -> Oslo -> London

Highlight

• The weather started to turn bad, it was cloudy windy and raining. We didn’t even get some brief periods of sunshine.
• Brygen lived up to its reputation. Lots of lovely coloured crooked houses.
• Explored the few surviving winding streets and visited the quirky but touristy shops.
• Then walked along the foreshore to <> Tower, hall and castle.
• Tried to visit <> church but it ws closed, so back toe the fish market, which was now in full swing. I was still too full from breakfast, and as it wasn’t time to stock up yet, we decided to split up, so Danny and Cathy could go up to Funicular.
• Started to browse a few shops. Pretty soon though, we decided that we couldn’t afford anything, so only did some brief window shopping before stopping.
• Went to Baker Brun and Gord Brod to try the skillingbolle (cinnamon ball). The Gord Brod one was better in my opinion, although both had their good points.
• Ran out of things to do, so just wandered the streets, looked in <> church, went to the Botanical Gardens.
• Finally went to stock up at the supermarket and the fish market. Got to try everything at the fish market before we bought. The whale meat didn’t taste too bad, but definitely didn’t taste nice enough to be killing all those whales for, so I didn’t buy any.
• Got on the very crowded bus to the airport, then some excitement happened.
• It turned out that SAS had overbooked their flight, and offered us to be bumped off for a €300 travel voucher each. We decided that our time wasn’t worth that much so we took it, and spent time in Oslo and landed at Heathrow.
• Everything actually went smoothly. The planes were not crowded and we were given pretty good seats. We were about 2 hours delayed for our trouble, but of course as soon as we got to Heathrow, everything went wrong. We had to taxi for abges before we could land, they couldn’t connect to our plane so we had to wait about 15 minutes for some stairs, there were lots of people at customs (which we would’ve avoided if we were early as they were all from the last plane from some Arab country, so everything there got questioned for extra long. Those customs officers are definitely prejudiced), there were 6 people working only, we got shoved in the wrong line.
• For a flight that was suppose to arrive at 9:20, we got out of there at 11pm, so once again, UK inefficiencies ruins another holiday.

Food

• Incity breakfast:
  • bread with 7 cold cuts, cheese, herring, salad, pate, tuna, smoked salmon and sardine
  • muesli and rice puffs with grapes
  • apple juice
• skillingbolle (cinnamon bun) x2
• skillingbolle with custard
• skollenbolle (coconut and custard)
• taste test: smoked fish, gravalaz, wild and farmed salmon, whale meat, clavier, smoked moose, smoked reindeer
• apple juice

Day 3 24/8/08 - Norway

Bergen -> Myrdal -> Flam -> Gudvangen -> Voss -. Bergen

Highlight

• A very long day ahead of travelling, and as our tour started very early and breakfast started late on a Sunday, we had to quickly wolf down our breakfast, like everyone else.
• Amazingly, we chose the right side of the Myrdal train to sit on (which was incidentally, the right side), so we were able to enjoy the spectacular scenery.
• Unfortunately, we didn’t do the same with the Flam railway (which was the left side this time), and as it was extremely crowded with tourists, we couldn’t actually run to a spare window to take any pictures. What annoyed me though, were all the tourists who reserved the right seats, but were too busy talking to even look out the window!!
• Watched a cheesy performance on our 5 minute stop to view a waterfall, where some woman comes out and dances to some eerie music. The performance lasted 3 minutes, after which time we all piled back onto the train again.
• Flam was very beautiful. We hired a bike from the very trusty tourist info, where they don’t even lock up their bikes. For 50NOK for an hour, it was well worth it, as we covered a lot more ground, although if you just took the bikes, they wouldn’t know anyway. But we were honest.
• We managed to ride to the Marina, a waterfall and a stave church, which was coolly painted on the inside.
• It was thrilling to ride through the mountain and water, and the weather was perfect.
• Had a look at the not very interesting Flam Museum, before fighting it out with everyone to get on the boat.
• Passed through some very nice scenery but it was too crowded to really enjoy it. We found relieve on the bottom deck, where there were no chairs and no speakers to hear the commentary, but you could see the scenery and there were no people.
• Another day of beautiful warm weather, but slightly cloudy at times. For Bergen and surrounds, this is excellent, considering they have like 260 days of rainfall a year.
• We actually bumped into Franklin and Danny on the cruise, what a small world. Because of the crowd though, we couldn’t really hang around together.
• We hung around Gudvangen instead of trying to rush for the bus when the cruise docked…bad mistake. They had miscalculated the number of people that were on the cruise and as a result, they weren’t enough buses, so we had to fight with everyone else to get on, and we didn’t end up getting a window seat on the bus.
• That was good and bad in a way, good because we got to take pictures from both sides of the bus, but bad because we weren’t in the best position.
• And the scenery were spectacular too. Went through Naeroydalen and up Stalheimskleiva (Stalhein Road), which climbs up the mountain between the Stalheim (126m) and Sivle (146m) waterfalls, with 13 hairpin bends and 20o slope.
• Even more amazing, we saw all these people running UP this road, apparently there was a race on the next weekend and everyone was training for it.
• The views once you reached the top of this mountain was absolutely spectacular, overlooking the Naeroy Valley.
• Had a brief stop at Voss, the “Adventure Town”, before we had to get back on the train, but of course we didn’t’ have the time to do any adventure activities.
• We did manage to see the lake, Olav’s Cross dating from 1023, the Bergslien monument, the Mosafinn Memorial and Vangskyrkja (Voss church).
• Then back on the last connection, an extremely crowded train, back to Bergen.
• Had dinner at what looked like a uni hangout, serving café fare with a focus on soup. The reindeer soup was very gamey but you couldn’t really taste reindeer as much as the mushrooms.

Food

• Incity breakfast:
  • bread with 7 cold cuts, cheese, herring, salad, pate, tuna and sardine
  • muesli and rice puffs with melon yoghurt
  • apple juice
• Zuperia dinner:
  • seafood soup with baguette
  • reindeer mushroom soup with baguette
  • raspberry yoghurt soup
  • cappuccino cake

Day 2 23/8/08 - Norway

Bergen

Highlight

• Asked to swap room, room next door also did the same thing. Went from 303 to 608.
• Everything opened later than stated, but everyone came very early to breakfast. They must all want to rush off somewhere.
• Breakfast had the usual offerings. I didn’t eat as much as usual because I didn’t feel so well from not sleeping at all the night before.
• Supermarket and tourist info, before a stop at the fish market. Although it was past 8am, the stalls were still just opening. There were lots of live crab, salmon, trout and caviar, as well as whale meat.
• Walked past Korskirken Cathedral and some bread shops on the way to the Funicular.
• We were the last to get on so didn’t get the front views. You could see the same views at the top viewing point anyway.
• The weather was glorious and we spent quite some time taking snaps.
• Started on our walk. There was not much people to start with, but got busier as the day wore on.
• The walk itself was very nice. We started by the coast, moved up and down mountain ridges. Pine forests and mountains were the main views, as well as the water when we were near the coast of course.
• There was a nice breeze but the sun shone for most of the day.
• There were a few difficult sections with mud and steep climbs, but the worst had to be my shoes, which started rubbing on and bruising my toes. After about 5 hours, I couldn’t walk downhill without hurting, so the 600m descent we had to do over some very steep hills and loose rocks absolutely killed me and took about 3 times as long as normal. I was really glad to get down.
• Spent 10 am to 6pm walking, although we did have a lot of stops along the way for food and photos.
• Finally got down, found the bus and had a brief walk around the harbour. Now there were lots of people out and about, enjoying themselves, and eating ice-cream.
• Decided to have dinner at a place close to our hotel as I really couldn’t bear the walk. It was actually very good (but expensive as usual). Modern Norwegian using traditional ingredients. The only hiccup was the rice that came with the scallops, which was very hard and was too salty.
• Slokky made me mad by substituting his asparagus, which I REALLY wanted to try, for trout, even though he could’ve swapped his scallops since I was getting the same though. He claimed he didn’t hear me even though I stated various facts I wanted the scallop swapped: trying more of the menu, scallop and trout being the same price…etc etc. The fact that he thought I would even consider swapping asparagus really annoyed me, so another perfectly pleasant meal was ruined.

Food

• In City breakfast:
  • bread with 7 cold cuts, cheese, herring, salad, pate, tuna and sardine
  • muesli and rice puffs with apple
  • apple juice
  • cherry milk drink
• fish cakes
• Smayet mat og Vinhus dinner:
  • bread with garlic butter oil and vinegar, aioli
  • Aquavit cured mountain trout with crab and pistachio aoili
  • monkfish with sundried tomato
  • pan fried red fish with apple and basil puree, fish veloute
  • rack of lamb with creamed artichokes, Norwegian carrots and shallot confit demi-glaze
  • rhubarb parfait with hazelnut and strawberry
  • pan fried scallops with pumpkin risotto and balsamic vinegar
  • Entrecote with brie de meaux, mango sauce, sauteed cep mushroom and summer cabbage
  • Valhrona chocolate cake with cherry sorbet
  • rose granita

Day 1 22/8/08 - Norway

London -> Bergen

Highlight

• Plane took off ½ hour late. The airport was very busy as usual with long weekend travellers.
• Still, we managed to land only a few minutes late but had to wait ages fot the Flybus to leave anyway. At least we got to pick the best spot to sit.
• The city though, was in full swing when we arrived. People dressed in their naughtiest and sexiest outfits were wondering the streets, falling in and out of nightclubs.
• We finally got to bed at 1:30am, but couldn’t sleep the whole night because of the really really loud music in the nightclub anyway.