Monthly Archives: May 2013

As I sit here now, the weather outside is currently snowing, but the forecast is for sunny weather tomorrow and the rest of the week, unfortunately, we’re flying out of Tromsø tomorrow so will miss the nice weather. This has pretty much been the case for most of our Norway leg of the trip so far, with cloudy/rainy weather in Bergen, overcast and rainy in Oslo and windy/cloudy/snowing/raining in Tromsø.

If you decide to visit Tromsø, make sure you visit during the winter or summer season, as during the shoulder periods (like now) a lot of activities/attractions are closed. eg We wanted to go dog sledding but the winter season finished at the end of April, so now they’re doing the summer activities yet it’s still snowing, the mountains are covered in snow and it’s abut 4*c.

Apart from all the above, I had a good time in Tromsø. It’s my first time inside the Arctic Circle and I would love to come back again in the future, not sure if I’d do the winter or summer season yet.

We visited Polaria (which is an aquarium of polar animals, fish crabs etc) and saw some very playful and intelligent seals, as well as a crab that kept trying to escape from it’s tank.
We payed a visit to the Arctic Cathedral (the name for their local church) and ate some very yummy custard pastries from a local bakery (they were very reasonably priced).

One afternoon we took a short trip to the Tromsø Alpine Botanic Garden which is open all year round, except at this time of the year it was completely covered in snow so everything was pretty much dead. Still I managed to find some deep snowdrifts and got my jeans and shoes completely wet (a visit to our hotel’s laundry was required later that day) and also managed to get some good photos and a 360 below –

It also snowed here in Tromsø and I managed to get a short video of it, plus a couple of pictures (I included one below)

For those who are interested here’s a little bit of info about Tromsø – Tromsø itself is situated on an island with the airport on one side and the city on the other. There is a road tunnel across the island, but halfway through the tunnel there is a roundabout, where four tunnels connect underground. Further on there is another roundabout and to the left is the entrance to Tunnel Parking, where you literally park you car in a tunnel and walk out into the city. It’s not cheap though at 100NOK per day.
Tromsø is located 350kms north of the Arctic Circle but is warmer than most other places located on the same latitude, due to the warming effect of the Gulf Stream. It also has Norway’s only all wooden church and hosts a lot of festivals and concerts during the summer. The city is also home to the world’s most northerly university, and botanical garden.

I’ve also included a picture below (IMG_1176) which is the view outside my hotel window at 11:30pm at night. As you can see it’s still quite light as the sun has only just set, but not to worry cause it will be rising again in a couple of hours time, so it was never really that dark while we were here.

We’re off to Sweden tomorrow and one step closer to Eurovision. Can’t wait…

Farvel

Oslo, capital of Norway, country of only 5 million and the land of expensive food and accommodation. For dinner in Oslo, we’ve had cuppa soup, cuppa couscous and fruit/bread. To eat out would cost between 250 – 500 NOK ($45 – $86AUD) per night whereas I can spend about 300NOK at the supermarket and get food for several days worth of meals.

Oslo has been interesting, it’s quite different to Iceland, London and Australia. It seems that people are late starters here as no-one appears to be up and about before about 9:30 – 10ish. Everyone is really nice and most have good English skills which has been really helpful as I’ve tried pronouncing some Norwegian phrases but they don’t sound right and are difficult to say. Google Translate has been very helpful. Oslo is noticeable different to Bergen and Reykjavik in one main way, anywhere outside the main transport hubs/tourist areas, the city seems very quiet and lonely. Not sure if this is because of the time of year?? Also most of the buildings are quite modern and office-like, where as Bergen/Reykjavik had older style buildings with bright colours and lots of people wandering around.

Anyway, we finally found a place in Oslo that offers Self Service Laundry as we were running out of clean clothes, so spent one morning in here for a couple of hours (There was another family in here whilst we were waiting, Freya suspects they were Irish gypsies, and they used 5 wash machines and 3 dryers all at the same time. It was like they were washing their entire households worth of clothing, towels, tablecloths, sheets, quilts etc and their kids were so noisy.)

We visited the Royal Palace gardens, Akershus Fortress, the Museum of Cultural History and Viking Ship Museum, where there is a complete Viking ship that was excuvated from a viking burial mound and is probably from around 800AD. The ship is enourmous (as you’ll see from the picture) and would have taken weeks to bury (and excuvate).

Akershus Fortress is a medieval castle that was built to protect Oslo and is still used by the Norwegian Military today, as well as for Royal and official state visits/events. It is also where all the Norwegian Royalty are buried. It was an interesting place to wander around and was different to most other castles I’ve seen so far.
Here’s a 360 I took from the castle walls –

Lastly we visited a sculpture park just outside Oslo called Vigeland Sculpture Park which is a park full of sculptures designed by Gustav Vigeland –

There was a funny picture I took of a lady and her dog in this park which copied every move she made. In the picture I’ve included the lady was looking out over the railing, so the dog decided it wanted to do the same thing.

On our last night before flying out to Tromso, we decided to visit the Oslo IceBar, which is a bar made completly of Ice. Yes, even the cups are made of Ice. I’ve included a couple of pictures below.

Farvel

P.S. For those wondering what the picture of Oslo SpareBank is, when we first arrived in Oslo, I saw a sign on a building saying Oslo SpareBank, and I thought – I know the Norwegians have had issues with buildings and fires in the past, but building a ‘spare’ bank is a bit weird. Turns out ‘spare’ in Norwegian translates as ‘save’ which means it’s actually saying “Oslo Savings Bank” 🙂

I’ll start by sayings a job well done to Slartibartfast. It really is a very magnificent landscape and a pleasant cruise from Bergen to Flam and the answer is still 42.

Anyway, we left Bergen early in the morning for our cruise to Flam up the fjords. It was overcast and raining as usual but the weather forecast had promised some clearer weather. After a couple of hours, we finally reached the mouth of the Sognefjord with it’s high mountain peaks on each side covered with snow and the weather had cleared up slightly, although the wind was freezing. We then spent the next few hours cruising up this fjord through the rainy, misty landscape before turning into Aurlandsfjord which was nicely covered in mist as well to continue on our way to Flam.

Upon arrival in Flam, it was nice and sunny which made it perfect for some picture taking and 360 action –

As quickly as the sun had come, it was gone, replaced by rain and then what appeared to be half melted snow. It was in this weather that we boarded the Flam Railway for our 20km journey to Mydral Station. The Flam Railway climbs from Flam 2m above sea level to Myrdal 866m above sea level, which makes its one of the world’s steepest unassisted climb railway lines.
As we started to climb, it started to rain then we entered a tunnel. Upon exiting, we had risen another 100m or so and the landscape was covered in snow and the rain had turned to snow. It was actually SNOWING! We then stopped near the top of the line at what would have been a very spectacular waterfall except it was still almost completely frozen. Whilst looking at our frozen waterfall it started to lightly snow which I found very exciting. As you’ll be able to see from the picture included, when we reached Mydral station it was covered in snow along with the rest of the surrounding landscape.

After waiting about an hour at Mydral, our train to Oslo arrived and we spent the next 3 hours travelling through a snow covered landscape before entering a tunnel and emerging to a lush green landscape with a beautiful lake (as pictured below). This trip was said to be one of the most spectacular rail journeys in the world and I would agree with this statement. Riding through the snow covered landscape at speeds over 100kms/h is pretty spectacular and it gives you an idea of how nice the area would be in summer with the many waterfalls and valleys to see. Next time I come to Norway, I’ll take the train from Oslo all the way to Bergen as you’re suppose to get some spectacular views of the fjords from the train.

Once we arrived in Oslo, we were keen to get to our hotel as we’d spent the whole day travelling from Bergen and were very tired. Sleep was required to enjoy another new city the following day.

Farvel

Bergen, the first stop on the Scandinavian leg of our journey. We had a delicious meal at a restaurant in Bergen called Pygmalion. This is where we got a taste for how expensive Norway (and the rest of Scandinavia will be). We had a slice of lasagna each and two glasses of apple juice plus a toasted cheese/tomato bread slice, all of which cost 515NOK (90AUD). This was to be our first and last dinner out in Norway. Whilst the food was delicious, we would quickly be broke if we kept expending money at such a rate, therefore dinner for the following nights were premade sandwiches, drinks and desert from Deli Da Luca (it’s like Pret in London/Gloria Jeans in Aus) costing a grand total of about $30AUD.

The weather in Bergen wasn’t great, it was raining when we landed and continued to be overcast/drizzly for the rest of the day and the rest of our time in Bergen. Nevertheless, we still managed to get a bit of a look around Bergen. We’d didn’t have any activities planned for Bergen as it was intended as a stopover point before our cruise up the fjord on our way to Oslo.

We went up the Fløibanen Funicular to the top of Fløyen mountain where we had a good view over the city of Bergen –

At the top of the mountain there is also a large network of hiking/cycling trails with some leading back down the mountain to the city. As it was cold, windy and raining, we took a quick walk to a little lake which was still semi-frozen, before getting the railway back down the mountain where we caught a sightseeing bus around Bergen and learnt that Norway only has 5 million people, Bergen in particular has an issue with fire and buildings burning down (Norway as a whole seems to have this issue as well), Bergen has houses known as Chimney Stacks due to their construction which is wooden on the inside encased by an external concrete wall, thus when the house caught on fire, the concrete wall acted as a chimney for the fire. After our short bus trip, we stopped off for supplies at Deli Da Luca, spent the rest of the day catching up on sleep, repacking our suitcases, surfing the Internet etc as it was still raining outside and cold. Hoping for some clear weather for our cruise up the fjord tomorrow, as well as train trip down to Oslo.

Farvel

P.S. Yes, that is a sheet of Ice I’m holding in my hands in the picture below. This was taken from the semi-frozen lake pictured. As I was walking around the lake you could hear the ice cracking and grinding against itself. Very eerie…