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Oslo to home - Day18

Good morning! Well, I’m at the airport in Oslo and wasn’t going to type up anything today, but just wanted to make a note to ourselves or for those who might be traveling from the Oslo train station to the airport. The Thon Hotel by the train station is just a short walk and easy to do, even with bags. When at the train station there is a fast train to the airport that is super easy to catch. Just look for the signs that say airport. To purchase a ticket all you had to do is swipe your credit card (a different machine for each person if using the same credit card) and then hop on the train. No physical ticket. It is a fast train, getting to the airport in under 30 minutes. Once you exit, you swipe your credit card again to get out of the gate. I went through a different gate with Guy’s credit card just in case it again needed to be on a separate kiosk/machine. Super easy. We had 3 different areas of passport control since we are going nonstop to the US. At the passport control going ...
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Oslo, Norway - Day 17

About midnight I’m awakened by thumping. The dance party has once again reared its ugly head and I’m now wide awake. I locate my one ear plug, but since I have two ears it didn’t work out well. I called down to the front desk about 1:30 to see if they had earplugs, but after looking through his drawer all he found was chocolate. I told him I didn’t think that would work, but thanked him for his efforts anyway. So now that I’m 100% awake, I pulled out a bag of Oreos, grabbed my ipad and snacked while watching the movie Brooklyn. It’s one of my favorites and it passed the time. At 3:30 when the movie was over, so was the dance party (it ended some time after 3pm) and I snuggled down and fell asleep for the rest of the night. It actually wasn’t that big of a deal. We had gone to bed early and all in all, I got plenty of rest. We are in room 227. It’s actually a pretty good spot in a corner with no one passing by your room, easy walk up nice stairs, and really close to the food, coffee and...
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Oslo, Norway - Day 16

Last night was a repeat of our first night in Iceland. Loud music coming from somewhere other than our non-air conditioned room, which means opened windows are now closed and the iphone is set to loop my Zen-rain sounds. Even with the artificial rain coming down in our room, and the little USB fan on high, there was still thumping. Not sure how long it took me to fall asleep (even after searching - and not finding - the one earplug I have...lost the other one on the flight over), but eventually I did. We got a pretty restful night otherwise. Breakfast did not disappoint. I forgot to take a photo of my plate, but took several of the different food areas. Guy had his “best egg of the trip” along with some bacon, a roll with strawberry jam and some potatoes. I had a tiny taste of berry flavored cold oats, yogurt with granola, toast with homemade jelly and some honeydew melon. All very good. We sat at the breakfast table and read for a bit as it was still early and we weren’t ready to he...
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Bergen to Oslo - Day 15

Well, shoot. This morning we said goodbye to our cruise friends and temporary home away from home. I got one last morning of French toast with strawberries and bananas. It was so good, even after eating it every morning. We ate a pretty good breakfast because we were not sure what would be on the train or train station. When we exited the boat, all the luggage was in a holding area and we had black tags with the #1 on them. Mine is somewhat east to spot because it’s red. Guy’s is black and looks like 90% of all bags in the room. We looked through all the bags and my red luggage was missing. Of course your first thought is that someone picked it up by accident. The workers went to get the supervisor, but in the mean time Guy found his. I know the black tag was on both bags because I put them on myself. After looking up and down each isle, mine definitely wasn’t there. So as we headed to the next section of bags I spotted it by itself by the wall with a yellow #3 tag. How that happened, ...
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Bergen, Norway - Day 14

Last night after dinner I sat up on the top deck at the front of the ship to watch as we exited the fjord. I knew it would be my last time to see such majestic beauty (for awhile anyway). I have been infinitely impressed with Norway’s fjords. I stayed up past midnight just watching it go by. As we exited the fjord, the mountains became little islands, many with homes on them that were lit up...apparently those inside were awake as well. Then the little islands became little dots of rock sticking out of the water. Then there were none. This morning we woke up as the ship was docking in Bergen. At first glance I see a big city with a huge port, lots of ships, tall buildings and moderate charm. We had a 9am excursion for a scenic bus ride around the city. It was one of the included excursions, and we had previously cancelled our hike up/funicular down excursion as we just thought we could do that one on our own. So since we were just booked to do the “free” excursion we decided to see i...
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Flam, Norway -Day 13

Flam Norway is in no relation to Flamm’s orchard (I checked with Carly). It is pronounced more like Flahm and is a small little town off one of the longest fjords in Norway. It takes 8 hours to cruise from the opening of the Aurlandsfjord until reaching the town. The landscape around Flam is so dramatically steep that the roads, like many other places, are inaccessible in winter.    Some of the farms are isolated for nearly 8 months of the year. It’s a tiny town of just over 300 people and the fjord is spectacular. Today we woke up to cloudy skies with the treat of rain hanging in the air. After breakfast we packed our backpacks with optional layers and headed to tender into the town. There we met our guides that took us on the train ride up the mountain. The ride was slow, but the climb was steep and speed was not an option. There is no reason you’d want to be rushed with this scenery. The guide told us it was easy to remember facts about the train. 20, 20, 20. It took 2...
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Alesund, Norway - Day 12

Alesund ... Sounds like O-le-sund. Heavy on the “O”. We actually entered the port last night around 10pm and so we slept peacefully all cozied up to the dock. Heavy clouds loomed over the mountains this morning, but Neal, our tour guide, said it was “sea fog” and would burn off quickly. Our tour started at 8:30 and we were on the bus shortly after 8. Guy actually booked this tour through Trip Advisor because this particular excursion was sold out and we wanted to do it. It was much cheaper than booking it though Viking and our guide was amazing (he and the bus driver were both in their 70s and he has lived here for 40+ years). So needless to say we knew after about the first 5 minutes it was going to be a great day. And he was funny...Bonus! Today we covered a 200 mile circle looping around the fjords with our main attraction being the Troll Road (Trollstigen), however we saw multiple fjords, the strawberry fields (4 weeks early - BOO!) The Stigfossen waterfall, the Troll Wall (Trol...
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