Norway Trip

Day One:

After missing our first flight (who knew we needed to be two hours early for international flights?) we finally got on a plane to Norway the next morning.  Our first stop was Seattle, Washington.  It doesn't make sense to me why we flew west to just turn around and fly east again but whatever.  We had an 8 hour layover and since I'd been to the city before we decided to head into the city for a little while to kill some time.

We didn't have a lot of time in the city because we were nervous about getting back through security and ready for our flight but we did go to Pike's Place Market for a little while and visited the first Starbucks (picture below).  I wanted to walk to the Space Needle but Lindsay and Preston were too tired (I was pretty tired too) so they decided that it was enough to see it from the metro rail on the way back to the airport.

Just by chance we happened to walk by the Hard Rock Cafe in Seattle.  We went in there for a while too.

We got back to the airport with plenty of time to spare and finally got on the plane to Amsterdam.  The ride was 10 hours long, most of which I slept through off and on.  The airplane food was pretty gross.  I wasn't expecting that.  Luckily I had a few snacks of my own and I was also able to plow through a couple of movies.

The layover in Amsterdam was blessedly short, however, the Amsterdam airport is the coolest airport I've ever been to so far.  Once we arrived in Oslo, the drama didn't stop.  I had a feeling that this would happen and low and behold, Preston's bag was left in Seattle.  Supposedly the airport will be delivering it tomorrow.

The Birkeland's gave us a warm welcome and a very comfy bed to sleep on (thanks Stephan!).  We planned to sleep in the next morning before hitting the big city after our 18 or so hours of airports.

Day Two:

We slept in today as planned and got going around 10 or 11.  We had a traditional American breakfast of corn flakes and milk.  Oslo is about an hour or so away from Sarpsborg so a few of us fell asleep on the ride over (me included).

First we met up with Sarah's parents and walked over to the beautiful opera house.  We didn't go inside, but it was fun exploring the outside of the building because you can walk straight up the side of it.  Here is a picture:

After that we did a little walking through a nice shopping district.  Street performers and old cobblestone streets made the experience fun.  We also stopped by the Hard Rock Cafe in Oslo.

Our goal at the end of the trip was the Royal Palace.

I am so glad we decided to tour the palace!  It was quite interesting and informative.  Apparently the royal family goes on vacation every summer, so we got to see a lot more of the palace than you would in the regular season.  It was very cool because it is a functional palace, used for daily official business in rooms that we actually got to view.  I also learned a lot about the history of Norway and the royal family.  Of course some of the others got bored by the end of it, but I was honestly interested the entire time.  Besides, the tour was only about 1 hour or so.

We were super hungry when we got out of the tour so we went down to eat at TGIFriday's.  Since when does a burger cost $30.00 and a coke cost $7.00?  Things cost a lot more here in Norway!

After eating we walked over to something called the Akershus Fortress.  We were too late to get into the buildings, but it was still fun to walk around and see it.  They had some real cannons there that were a couple hundred years old.  Here is the main castle building.  More pictures will come later of the rest of the fortress (it's huge!).

After the fortress we decided to walk back to our car and go home, but we stopped by the main Oslo Cathedral on the way (also closed) and stopped into a few stores.  The girls shopped forever but we did get a few cool souvenirs.  Oddly, the souvenirs weren't as overpriced as I was expecting them to be.

Day Three:

Today was a lazy day.  We stayed up way too late, slept in way too long, and watched way too much TV.  In the way of being somewhat vindicated, it was raining pretty bad all day long.  We woke up around noon and spent a lot of time just watching TV.  Sarah, Lindsay, and Preston went on a little drive down to the old part of Fredrikstad, which is the next town over.  By the time they got back Preston's luggage had finally arrived at the house and Susanne and Elizabeth (Sarah's friends) came over to hang out.  We spent a lot of time getting to know each other and saying lots of things in different languages.  We spoke a lot of English, Norwegian, Bulgarian, French, Spanish, and a little bit of German and Russian.  Elizabeth seemed like a really cool person and I wish I could have talked to her more.  She grew up in a country left behind in the wake of the Soviet Union (Bulgaria) and her boyfriend was an East Berliner before the wall fell (he was about 5 when it fell).  I got a taste of the interesting perspectives and stories that she has to tell but it would be cool to hear a little bit more about it.  We would have stayed up late again last night but the internet went down so we couldn't watch Netflix anymore and we decided to go straight to bed.  By the way, the selection of movies and tv on Netflix in the U.S. is much larger than the selection in Norway.

Day Four:

It was rainy again today, which worked out perfectly with our plans.  Sarah's family lives close to the border so we decided to hit up the mall.  Apparently a lot of Norwegians do this because things are a little bit cheaper there (not much though!).  Preston and I broke away from the girls pretty quickly in the mall and got ourselves lost.  I'm not sure if Preston realized that I got us lost on purpose.  Anyway, finding them was trickier than I thought it would be with spotty wifi, but eventually we met up again in the candy store.  We bought a lot of Norwegian candy and some American candy too.

After our little jaunt to Sweden we came back home with out Crisco and set to work on making some snickerdoodles.  When I say "we" set to work what I mean is Sarah and Lindsay of course.  Everybody loved them.

A little bit later we went out with a bunch of Stephan's friends for bowling.  When I say a bunch, I mean we took up four lanes.  We played a few games (I bowled horribly as usual) then Lindsay got hustled by some Norwegians at pool (don't worry, no actual money was involved).  Tomorrow I think our plans are to go to the family cabin so I don't know if I will have wifi access for blogging for the next few days.

Day Five:

When we woke up this morning we packed for a few days and headed straight for the family cabin about an hour away.  It is a nice cabin, situated so that you can't just drive up to it or walk on paved paths.  You actually have to walk through wooded pathways to get up to it.

  It was pretty cold when we got to the cabin because it was windy.  It warmed up a little bit, but we are all a bit leery of Sarah's offer to go swimming later.  It was only about 60 degrees and the water was colder than that.  Preston and I decided we needed to go swimming in Norway so we decided to jump in.

After jumping in that first time (Lindsay was so gracious to film it) we jumped right back out, but then we got back in and swam around for 5-10 minutes or so.

We went back to the cabin after swimming and just chilled and ate candy.  Preston, Sarah, and I went to the store to get some stuff for dinner and when we got back Lindsay was playing guitar hero.  Sarah made tacos and we all ate a yummy dinner.  After Sarah's dad came home and ate we were going to head out on the boat.  By now it was significantly colder than before so we bundled up like it was winter.

 The boating was fun and we got to see the bridge from Sweden to Norway from a totally different angle than when we drove across it the day before.

 It started raining while we were out boating but we got back before it got very bad.  For most of us that was the end of the day.  We chilled on the couches until Stephan's guitar playing put us all to sleep and the next thing we knew we were being woken up to go get in our beds.

Day Six:

Today was another lazy day because it was raining at the cabin.  Our plans to go water skiing were foiled.  We did go down to the nearest town for pizza and there was some kind of festival going on so we got some live music in the background.  We tried to get some card games going but nobody was really interested.  The boys did their own thing while the girls headed off to Frederikstad to party.  Hopefully we will have a bit better weather today.

Day Seven:

The weather was fantastic today!  It was beautiful.  We decided to go boating to a Swedish little town called Stromstad.  We got some ice cream there and walked around a little bit before heading back. 

The boating trip was what occupied most of our time out today but when we got back to the cabin we decided to go crab fishing.  In order to do this we had to collect some clam thingies which definitely took some time.  We couldn't find any but right when we were about to give up we found some!  Unfortunately we couldn't catch any crabs.  Sarah said it is probably still too cold for them and that they usually come out later in the summer.

After crab fishing we packed up and left the cabin and we are now back home.  Tomorrow is our last full day here in Norway!

Day Eight:

This morning we woke up early (well, early for us) and headed to Tusenfryd, which is an amusement park a lot like Lagoon.

 

For a while there we thought it might rain on us but it cleared up and actually got pretty hot by the afternoon.  Luckily it wasn't very busy so we didn't have to wait in very long lines to get onto the rides.  My favorite ride (even though it made me dizzy) was called the spider wheel and I have never seen anything like it before.  It goes HIGH!

Our last ride on the way out just before we left was the Merry-Go-Round which was a double decker.  We thought that was pretty cool. 

Today was also our day to say goodbye.  Suzanne's family came over to say goodbye to us and we met another one of Sarah's friends.  Strangely enough, their foreign exchange student from France actually is leaving on the same day as we are, but not at the same time.  So there were a lot of goodbyes today.  No tears so far, we will see what happens at the airport!

Thanks to the Birkeland's for making this such an awesome trip and treating us like family and a big thanks to our own mom and dad for making the trip possible!