Day 1073– Goodbye Denmark, Hello Norway

I think I have some sort of special status with airlines which dictates that I must always be seated either at the very back of the plane or directly over a wing. It’s like there are no other seats on the plane. Just an observation. Once again SAS (Shite and Shite) Airlines outdid themselves with a free glass of water on the flight. I tried to tell them it was too too generous and that, really, they shouldn’t but they did insist and so I took them up on it.

I was able to see a little bit of the land as we made our approach into Gardemoen airport in Oslo, which is, by the way, the best airport ever. There’s more room than needed, large walls planted  with Reindeer moss all over the place, cool public art is everywhere and the Norwegians are so very friendly and helpful. Copenhagen airport, on the other hand, is none of these things and best avoided if possible.

I spotted this plane while waiting for the second coming of Jesus, and for the plane to dock or get to the gate or whatever it is they claim they are doing on planes between landing and letting everyone off. While I like the fact that Norwegian Air puts famous Norwegian artists on their planes, having a reminder of The Scream on my plane wouldn’t be my first choice.

After picking up our rental car, we hit the road on our way to the town of Rjuken, and drove straight into what looked like anywhere in BC or on Vancouver Island.

The area around Oslo was so familiar to us we wondered where we had ended up, like we were back home but everything had shifted slightly.

We stopped for a bathroom break at  roadside truck stop/restaurant. There must have been 15 Tesla charging stations lined up around the place and most of them in use.

You could also charge yourself up at the Hamburger charging stations located in the parking lot as well. So convenient.

Our drive was four hours west into Norway to a mountainous area in the province of Telemark popular for outdoor pursuits like skiing, hiking and ice climbing, but also with a very interesting war history as well, which right there makes it very different from BC, even if it did look like this:

That mountain in the distance is called Gaustatoppen and is another reason for our visit here.  We are booked into a lodge, with a view of the mountain, for three nights and plan on hiking to the top. It also has an underground funicular railway built in the 1950s for use by NATO that goes right to the summit (the mountain, not the lodge…)

After a long day of travel, we were thrilled when we arrived at the lodge.

We arrived just in time for dinner, which was delicious. I was especially thrilled that all our meals are included here! No more $90 lunches. After dinner we walked down to the lake and lay on our backs on the dock with our feet in the water and looked for pictures in the clouds.

Green roofs are all the thing here and I am trying to work out how to bring one of these fantastic little cottages home with me. They look a bit troll-like with their grassy tufts on the roof that look just like shocks of hair.
Norwegians seem to think their country is overrun with trolls, and there are references everywhere to various piles of rocks that used to be trolls before they were struck by sunlight, just like Tom, William, and Bert from The Hobbit. And then of course there are the Norse Gods who, I think, walk amongst us mere mortals here on the ground…

At the 60th parallel here, it never really gets dark at night. It’s still bright out at 10:30pm, and still light at midnight. Once again I fell asleep to birdsong.

Quanks for tweeting,

Cheers,

Jane