Oslo, Norway and Lerum, Sweden

September 17 and 18, 2009
Oslo, Norway and Lerum, Sweden

I got so bumfuzzled yesterday that I totally forgot to do the blog!! We started out at a reasonable hour to get to the airport and we met some people at breakfast that were also going to the airport, so we all got together and climbed in a cab and went out together. I tried to get my tax free refund at the airport but they said I needed to wait until I get to Paris. When we tried to check in to the plane, we discovered that DON had made the plane reservations to the “second” airport in Oslo, which was THREE hours outside the city!! Of course, they were no change tickets so we had to decide whether to go to the far away airport and hope for good transportation into the city proper or whether to junk the tickets and buy new ones. We opted to use the tickets and take our chances. Since the airport is listed as being an Oslo airport, I figured that they would NEVER leave us stranded out in the boonies. Well, they didn’t. There were two buses at the airport that met our plane and we could take one bus to the train station to train into Oslo or we could take the other bus directly into Oslo. Since the bus to Oslo was leaving immediately and the train wasn’t leaving for another hour, we took the bus and it dumped us right in the middle of the city and we were able to hop on a tram and get delivered to a stop right near our hotel. But it was a LONG day and I was just plain glad to get settled in to our room.

We opted for a pizza for dinner and it was rather good. There was a funny little restaurant right up the street from our hotel that we had passed every day when we were in Oslo before and we decided to give it a try. You walk down about 6 steps to get into the place and it wasn’t any bigger than a minute!! They had expanded the space by building tiers inside and you climbed up to various heights to sit on these tiers. The tables were about the size of ironing boards and were shaped like an ironing board, tapered at one end!! The proprietor was hand making the pizzas and they were turning people away left and right!! After we ate we dumped all our suitcases and rearranged everything. We have definitely over purchased and I’m not at all sure how we are going to get all this stuff home but………. LOL

Then we got up early today and wanted to do some last minute sight seeing. We drove over to the Viking Museum and looked at the ships that they’ve unearthed and those darned things are REALLY impressive. They are massive and ornate and it is hard to believe that they were created over 2000 years ago. Then we wanted to see a stave church before we left Scandinavia and so we went to the Norwegian Folk Museum and toured around there. They have a perfectly lovely stave church and Don was suitably impressed!!

The rest of the day was spent driving and we got to our hotel in Lerum at 5pm.