Oslo

I flew from Glasgow to Oslo - Torp, this saved me about 10 hours... even with the two hours bus trip into Oslo!

Enisa and Trond picked me up and took me back to their place where we had a lovely dinner, catching up over a bottle of lovely wine Enisa had won in a wine lottery with her work!

The following day I headed into the city, I had a cup of tea when I arrived in town in order to plan my day, unfortunately they served me earl grey tea - I really dislike early grey tea, but this was the only flavour they had and for the privilege I paid $5!!! Wonderful... I then headed over to the royal palace. No entry into the actual palace - guess they like a little privacy, but I wondered around the gardens for a while. Norwegians love the outdoors and the palace gardens are an amazing place! I even spotted some rare fluorescent children!!! After all the greenery I headed back into the concrete jungle and headed towards "circular quay" - as Enisa called it, still dont know what Norwegians call it... So Im walking around the harbour, see the Noble Peace Prize headquarters, all the boats, some water... and of course a didgeridoo player... where am I Sydney?!!?!? Not an Aboriginal guy mind you but a white guy, could have even been Norwegian, didnt say hi! After a wonder there I over to a ancient history museum. Interesting but Im really not a museum person... did the whole place in 45 min, if the glass bead section and the depictions of Mary and Jesus as very blond Scandinavians hadnt interested me it could have been 20 min... I then headed home as we were having a dinner party that night! Dinner was at Enisa and Tronds, and hey had invited a Norwegian who had studied in Sydney and Melbourne for a year each and a Norwegian guy and his Irish wife. We had a lovely meal, one of the guys tried in vain to match my chilli eating... we also had three bottles of wine, two were Australian... and I must say the better two of the night!!! BTW I was looking at photos of Lukasz from Sydney tonight - he mentioned a Norwegian friend who studied with him in Sydney, I looked at the photo and said that looks like the guy I had dinner with the other night, he said sll Norwegians look alike... then told me the studied together before the Norwegian went to Melbourne to study film it was the same not quite so chilli tolerant guy I had dinner with!!!! Bugger the 6 degrees!!!!

The following day I again headed into the city and over to the Norsk Folkesmuseum- containing many building and artifacts from Norwegian history and the Vikingskipshuset - containing three viking ships which were used as burial ships for rich ladies and chiefs that were later excavated in Norway. Both very interesting and photos will arrive at some point (when I get my laptop back and sort through the photos....)

The next day I took a ferry to Gressholmen - an island in Oslofjorden. There were a few houses on the island and a dry dock, but it was mainly 'bushland' containing lots of tame 'wild' rabbit. Enisa had suggested I take carrots to feed the rabbits, but I forgot.... so I spent the 1:20 min between ferries walking around the island. It was such a beautiful area and of course the weather was perfect! I took a ferry back to the harbour, walked around to circular quay - the didgeridoo player was there again! and sipped a beer while writing postcards in the sunshine. Most expensive beer as I remember ever having - $12! The glass told me the beers character was 6/8 bitter, 3/8 fruity and 4/8 sweet. Good to be informed! I headed back home and out to the banks of a dam for a bbq - Norwegian style, we brought our own disposable bbq and ate chicken sausages with potato salad and mustard in a potato flat bread. It was really good!!!

The following day I said goodbye to Enisa & Trond and flew back to London.

- mose