Blogs from Oslo, Eastern Norway, Norway, Europe - page 35

Just can't seem to go to bed. At least not while there's still good daylight - which is at least until midnight or 1am. Then it starts getting bright again around 3am... Oh, of course, yesterday was the solstice.... About 6 pm we leave (Christer driving Trine's Golf) and head for Hemsedal where we stay in the cabin after a good evening meal. There is snow on the tops but the ski slopes are now grass.... read more

Yep, 13 airports for the trip so far. This brings us to the end of our flights. From here it is overland and sea. Anyway since it was 3 countries ago that I last did an update I have a lot of stories to tell. After leaving Essaouira we headed to Marrakesh for a couple of days before returning to Spain. The medina in Marrakesh, although not as old worldy as Fes contained some amazing sights. Snake charmers, monkeys, acrobats, fortune tellers, kids boxing fights, story tellers, musicians, bellydancers....the list goes on. It was just awesome, although we did get sick of someone asking for money everyway we looked. At the Marrakesh airport our flight was delayed 2 hours and there were families fighting and crying and generally losing it everywhere. Morocco tested my patience, but ... read more

The day was started out with the purchase of banana mango yogurt and musli which I'm beginning to really get used to and love. We then hopped on a ferry and went cruising across the ocean to Byg Doy, a peninsula with Norway's biggest museums. It wsa a beautiful out today--sun and bright blue sky and the water was gorgeous! We also saw a lighthouse in the water which I really liked because I've never seen one in real life before. Once we got there, weate our yogurt on the dock then headed for the Folk Museum. It's located in the middle of a residential area and I liked walking through there because the houses were enormous and had amazing architecture. I'm really interested in real estate so I was curious as to how much ... read more

Yesterday Kathleen and I spent SO long at the grocery store trying to find bottled water! You'd think it would be a very straightforward mission, but it was not! All of the water is sparkling mineral water. ALL of it. Even the bottles that were labeled, "Natural Spring Water." (in Norwegian, ofcourse) had "HydroKarbonat HCO3" in them. We searched and searched, shaking every candidate to test for bubbles, but we only found one bottle we could put our trust in. So I made the purchase, for our final test. This particular choice was called, "Natural," no bubbles, no reported HCO3 in the ingredients, but when the seal was broken, the sound of fizzy bubbles shattered my hopes. No water! Now don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of sparkling water and normally, I would be happy ... read more

I can't believe how much stuff I packed into one day. They say you can do Oslo in 2 days, and I just made it. This was the second of my 2 non-consecutive Oslo days and I still had most of the chapter left. I set out early to what I thought was the City Hall for a tour (sounds odd but Rick Steve gave it 2 stars out of 3). Where I actually ended up was the Parliament building. I ran inside and looked around -- they were in session but there were like 5 people. Looked just like C-span. That kind of blew my timeline, but I wandered over towards the ferry to do the museum tour. On my way, I walked by the Akerhaus fortress -- a complex that used to house ... read more