Bye-bye Norway
Does it ever stop raining here? We have read some of Norwegian author Jo
Nesbo’s books and as an Oslo snob he likes to beat up Bergen over the
rain. According to Nina the Bergen
Burghers don’t care much for the Oslo folks either. It is a northern west coast city and like
Portland and Seattle it will get its share of weather. It is just dripping a little as we are down
earlier today to attack the breakfast buffet.
Mary is fully into Herring and salmon at this point and she reminds John
to leave a little for the other guests.
We drag our luggage down the hill to the bus terminal for an
8:15 Flybussen to the airport.
Everything is right on time and we get to experience rush hour traffic
from the center heading east to the airport.
Everything really moves well here even though there aren’t multi-lane
expressways. We have seen two stop signs
in Norway since our arrival and a couple traffic lights in the center
cities. Otherwise every intersection is
a round-about or a yield. Because the
flow is pretty even—no big rushes of traffic on green lights--the merging into
and out of traffic circles is very smooth.
We like it a lot.
We’re on our way to meet Sister Pat (a relative, not a nun)
in Helsinki, Finland. We have an hour to
Stockholm, and hour layover and another hour flight to Helsinki. We also lose an hour on the way which will make
it late afternoon when we reach our destination.
Since we’re now in the back of the plane where we belong
Mary grabs a little of her “flight medicine” from the duty-free in Bergen. That makes a nice addition to the in-flight
coffees on both our segments. All is
uneventful, all connections are smooth, and our luggage arrives promptly. It would have been nice to have clear skies
to catch the great views in and out of these port cities but there isn’t much
we can do about that.
We grabbed the Finnair bus from the Helsinki airport into
the city. It really looks very big and
very pleasant. Pat is waiting at the bus
terminal when we arrive. She has already
checked into our hotel for the night and sort of knows the ropes. Guess what?
It’s drizzling.
Pat guides us the 10 minute walk to the hotel and we find
check-in on the 6th floor.
The elevator holds the three of us and our two suitcases with perhaps an
inch to spare. We sacrificed room size
for budget and location on this stop but little did we know. The room is the size of a cruise ship cabin
and the bathroom is smaller. The
bathroom is one of those unique Scandinavian designs which incorporates the
sink, toilet and shower all into the space of the shower. There is a curtain you can pull across the
bathroom door and clothes hooks to keep your towel dry while you shower. We think of ways to combine all of our
activities into one which is funnier in concept than in reality.
Pat is dragging with jet lag—she arrived this morning--and
while we want to take a little walk around town she needs to get a bit of a
nap. The guy at the front desk has
recommended a couple “pub” style restaurants for dinner tonight, both about 3
blocks away. We looked into a few
windows and decide on “9” for at least a beer and to check out the menu. We still aren’t sure and then the place
starts to fill up and we see some pretty good food appearing from the kitchen.
We have another beer and Mary gets the chorizo pasta, Pat
has a chicken yellow-curry stir fry and John has a salmon stir fry with
noodles—all excellent. Once again we are
lucky to find some really good food without the effort of a dress-up
restaurant.
Still drizzling! Do
we need a spot for a nightcap on the way back to the hotel? After looking in a few spots we stop at a pub
across from the hotel and grab beers.
The two guys tending bar have very little interest in being there and as
more people come in they tend to move slower and pretty soon there is a line at
the bar. Now even slower. We have to leave before Mary gets into
supervisor mode.
We make plans to meet Pat in the morning and curl up on our
army cots for the night. Hello Finland!
What did we learn today?
You can use your phone in selfie mode as a mirror to see if you have any
spinach in your teeth.
No comments:
Post a Comment