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.