Home again

After a long day getting home (the first leg from Oslo to Philly was on time, but the flight from Philly to SFO was delayed), I'm back home, unpacking, and looking through the 900+ photos I took. There is so much that I witnessed and experienced in Scandinavia over the last 2 weeks that I know I won't remember and 10 times as much that I will. But I'd go back to Scandinavia tomorrow (on another airline though). :-)

It was an amazing experience and I met a lot of new people. Many I hope to stay in contact with and/or visit in their native countries. Some are coming to the US and even California in the near future whom I'm looking forward to seeing and showing them around my area. While it's so nice to see my family, friends, and sleep in my own bed, I miss my new friends but thanks to the digital age, I can stay in constant communication with them.

There is so much in the world to see and I look forward to continuing my travels.

But here are some odd bits of things I noticed over there... There are others scattered throughout all of my posts and some of these are obvious duplicates. I know I'll keep thinking of more so I'll add as they come up.

- Donald Duck is VERY popular in Norway. They sell his comics, his likeness is all over and they even show old Donald Duck cartoons.

- Starbucks has NOT conquered Scandinavia but their coffee isn't very good. It's very watered down.

- McDonald's and 7/11 HAVE conquered Scandinavia. McDonald's is not a surprise, but I was surprised to see so many 7/11s.

- There were TGIFs (Thank God It's Friday) restaurants in every city we visited. Same with The Hard Rock Cafe.

- Norway has a population of 4.5 million people so there are a lot of jobs and they pay well. Because of this we encountered a lot of people from Sweden working in Norway.

- Norwegians are BLONDE BLONDE BLONDE. But some are fair skinned and some are tan.

- Swedish are the best looking, followed by Norwegian, followed by Danish. But the Danish are the tallest.

- Their food is ehhhh. Swedish meatballs weren't bad, but I didn't taste anything else that really stood out.

- Pickled herring is salty and fishy.

- They LOVE salty licorice and it's horrible.

- Ice cream is a meal.

- So is beer.

- Their dark chocolate is better than their milk chocolate.

- Scandinavia's transit system is phenominal.

- So is their tap water.

- It ain't cheap.

- If you've got a long walk ahead of you. Play "6 degrees of Kevin Bacon".

- If you've got a long ride ahead of you. Play "Scrabble" on the iPhone.

- In Copenhagen, 1 bike bell "ching" means "Look out! I'm coming!".

- 2 bike bell "chings" means "GET THE F OUT OF THE WAY!!!"

- 3 or more bike bell "chings" means "I warned you. You're SOL. Rest in peace."

- Stockholm and Copenhagen ride bikes as a primary mode of transportation. Oslo, not so much.

- Don't fly US Airways

- They love Britney Spears

- You can get pizza or a calzone in EVERY restaurant.

Erika's off! Or is she?....

After getting a great night's sleep at the Radisson SAS, we woke up knowing it was Erika's last morning in Scandinavia. I know... you're probably wondering why she and I wouldn't be returning together. Well... despite coordinating our flights over IM and phone, we still managed to book return flights on separate days. Yup. We're retarded. Anyway, we headed down for our last "super breakfast"together then went back up to the room to get her belongings and get her off to the train station to catch the "Flytoget" - the express train directly to the airport. There was a little time before she had to leave so she decided to check her flight status on my laptop. I was brushing my teeth when I hear "You've GOT to be kidding me..." I poked my head out of the bathroom to see what's up and hear "Scheduled departure - 1:00, Actual departure - 6:55. Status. DELAYED". I say "maybe it's a mistake, check again later" so she checked again after a bit and now it reads "Scheduled departure - 1:00. Actual Departure - 9:05. Status - DELAYED". LOL!!!! She calls US Airways (have I mentioned NEVER fly with them?) and tells them there is no way that will work since she'll miss her connecting flight to SFO. The US Airways CSR tells her they'd put her up in a hotel in Philly so I whisper over "ask them if they'll book you on tomorrow's flight (my flight)?" After the initial booking screw up, she had looked into changing return flight days and it would have cost her $250 + the difference in cost of the ticket so I thought this might be a good way of getting to stay that extra day. She asked the CSR and he put her on hold temporarily to check. A minute later he came back and said that sure enough, he could book her on the next day's flight for no extra charge! And THAT is how Erika got to spend an extra 24 hours in Norway. Truly crazy, but based on all of the good luck with weather and such that we've had this entire trip, I shouldn't be too surprised.

So after doing the happy dance in the room, we looked out the window and saw it was a gorgeous day out. The first time we were Oslo, for the 5 hours before heading to Bergen, it was also nice out so after returning from Bergen we were hoping we'd get to break out our warm weather clothes. This was the day. We decided to walk on over to the Oslo Opera House on the other side of the trainstation. It's a super modern building that's pretty cool looking. We wandered around then grabbed a drink on the patio and people watched for a bit. At 1:00, I wanted to check in online and see if I could upgrade my seats on our flights home so we'd be next or close to each other so we headed back to the hotel. After upgrading to "Choice" seats next to each other, we decided to walk down to the harbor and catch the ferry across the harbor to where several of the Oslo museums are. There were 4 but we figured 2 were about all we had time for. We ended up at the Norwegian Cultural Museum and the Norwegian Maritime Museum. The Cultural Museum was my favorite. They replicated homes from ancient Norway from 1200 to the 1800s. It was pretty cool. The Maritime Museum was my choice and I really screwed up that one. Quite honestly, it was boring as hell. I should have chosen the Viking Ship Museum or the Fram Museum. My bad, it was getting late anyway and we were getting hungry so we decided to head back to the Opera House to eat dinner on the back patio overlooking the harbor. It really was a gorgeous day out so we sat with the sun on our backs and faces and enjoyed our final dinner in Scandinavia. We could not have paid for a better way to end this fantastic trip.

Just Oslo Pictures

The overnight train back to Oslo and 2 very tired travellers

After spending a fabulous day on the Fjords, we had a 3 hour trip back to Bergen on the Flaggruten. We killed part of this time playing Scrabble on my iPhone. Erika beat me but I did my best with hands that looked something like this. [A, A, A, R, I, A]. Once we docked in Bergen, we had a couple hours to eat dinner before it was time to head on back to Bergen Central train station to catch our overnight train back to Oslo. One catch. It had started to rain when we got back to Bergen. Hard. We were hungry, tired, and really were looking forward to getting some sleep on the train so we looked at a few restaurants and picked a fusion Asian restaurant because it looked like it might be quick and and hoped the rain would subside while we were eating. I had a bowl of steamed mussels and some sort of sweet and sour beef dish and Erika had Thai soup. It was a perfect meal although the rain only got worse and it was POURING by the time we were done. We finished up our meal then put on our rain gear and got ready to hump the 3/4 mile to the trainstation in the pouring rain. I actually let the rain fall on my face and head. It felt refreshing to wash off some of the day's sweat and sea spray that was caked on me. It was pretty nice. When it REALLY started to come down, I did the chivalrous thing and let Erika walk point, ducking behind her and letting her take the brunt of it. I live for being a gentleman.

We got to the train station, got our luggage from the lockers, boarded the train, and got our keys to the sleeper car that we booked. Our cabin was probably 5 feet wide by 8 feet long with the beds taking up 3 feet. It was super small. But we had our own sink to brush our teeth and wash our faces and just enough storage space for our bags. We changed quickly and I hit the sack while Erika read a book for a little while. The sleeper car is surprisingly comfy. They give you 2 beds with sheets, pillows, and a nice warm comforter. They also give you 2 towels, 2 bottles of water, and 2 sets of earplugs. Each bed has it's own light as well as an overhead light in the cabin. I was pretty impressed though I would have fallen asleep on broken glass I was so tired. The train ride was 7 hours and 28 minutes long and scheduled to arrive in Oslo at 6:28am. I swear it felt like I closed my eyes and the next thing I knew, the announcement from the conductor came on saying we were pulling into Oslo Central. I guess I crashed. We got dressed, packed up, and got off the train to discover it was pouring rain in Oslo too. Thankfully, Erika had booked us a room at the Radisson SAS hotel right next to the train station so we really only were outside for a total of about 2 minutes. But we also knew that the official check in wasn't until 2pm. It was 6:30am. So we went in and told the hotel clerk, Christian, that we were checking in and we were REALLY hoping he had something for us that early. Christian was great and he got us a room right away. Christian became my new favorite person on this trip. We got to the room, dropped off our things, and went downstairs for breakfast. The Radisson serves a "super breakfast" which was pretty impressive. Probably 30 different items to choose from. They had the normal eggs, bacon, and ham with toast but they also had smoked salmon, pickled herring (FINALLY!), cereal, fruit, tons of bread, etc. We ate a hearty breakfast and with our stomachs full, waddled our way back up to our room to take long, hot showers and relax for the day. We both took showers which completely energized us. We felt even more energized once we saw that the rain had stopped so instead of taking it easy, we decided to head out and see the Vigeland sculpture park on the other side of town.

Big mistake.


We've since agreed that while the park was nice, it really wasn't something either of us wanted to see. We just went to see it since the weather had cleared up and we felt we should take advantage of it. It was a park filled with 200+ statues that quite frankly, I thought were ugly. They definitely were not my style. You can read about it here: http://www.vigeland.museum.no/en/vigeland-park. The park is quite beautiful though with many fountains throughout. It was also probably 2 miles from the hotel so 2 miles out, 2 miles back. By the time we got back, we were definitely done for the night. I took about a 40 minute nap and Erika took a 3 HOUR nap. She didn't wake up until 8pm and by then we were both fried so we ordered room service in and watched reruns of "So You Think You Can Dance". We went to bed knowing Erika would be leaving in the morning. At least so we thought...

Fjords. Simply spectacular...