Day 15 Saturday 31 August

We did our final pack, of which we are very adept at, and were comfortably breakfasted and ready for our booked taxi at 10:15 to the airport. It was not cheap – nothing is in Sweden, but at least the fixed price of SEK575 was only a smidgen more than two Airport train tickets (560) and we didn’t have to haul our bags a km over rough cobbles and carry them up and down stairs. Our taxi was a new comfortable and fast Volvo station wagon which made for a splendid quick trip to the airport. Whilst we are ready for the next discovery it was sad to leave Stockholm looking her best on a morning promising another bright sunny day.

The airport is a decent distance out of town, about 46km, and we arrived in plenty of time to check in for our 1:20pm Norwegian Air international flight of 45 minutes to Oslo. We had time to grab a snack for lunch before the flight and come boarding time were frustrated to hear that we were delayed about 30 minutes to wait for another 22 other passengers to join us, who were yet to land. More like an hour later we got to leave – and here is a reminder tip. Always stay near your gate as they didn’t announce we were ready, and the departure board did not change. We were aware this could happen so kept a watchful eye – but always stick around as things can change by the minute and they don’t really care if you miss your flight.

In hindsight, we would have been better catching the 5 hour train from Stockholm – we would have got there quicker – I wondered at the time of booking as with flying you have to be there 2 hours before etc. and then delays can throw you right out. You also incur a airport city transit fee of some description. However, it was a lot cheaper to fly – less than 100 euros for both of us, so I took the punt. You live and learn.

We arrived in Oslo to a dull day, although still weak peaks of sun came through intermittently. The airport doesn’t look big from the outside, but inside its large and has oodles and oodles of duty free shopping. We took a local train which is half price of the flash advertised private one (Aeroflot) into town. The public train doesn’t go as often but we only had to wait 13 minutes. It was modern, had comfortable seats and free wifi.

The first thing we noticed in Oslo was all the immigrants – a bit like Stockholm it’s spot the Norwegian. There are black African looking types, gypsies (begging), and other dark skinned, finer featured and curly haired ones. Also some other Arabic looking people. Apparently after the horrible shooting at the church camp a few years ago, the government got PC and allowed a lot of refugee and immigrants in. This has caused a bit of dissension and a growing movement to bring back the Norwegian to Norway.

Other than the surprise of the very multicultural look, Oslo is tidy, modern, clean and more like Helsinki than Stockholm. It looks really big for a 680,000 approximately population. It was early evening on a Saturday (later of course than we had planned) and the streets were full of people out and about. We debated whether to go out or settle in – and chose the later.

It was a fairly easy elevated 1.5 km walk to our hotel from central station. We chose the Thon Rosenkrantz from a RS recommendation as it has breakfast and light evening meal included in the price. It is a really nice hotel, and feels like 5 star which is quite to my satisfaction. There are coffee machines to help yourself at reception and in the upper lounge. Shoe cleaning machines, ice machines and water outside lift on every floor. Clever design and quality furnishings in the room (including tuck away iron and ironing board) and lots of little extras like chocolate almonds with gold foil and dusted with cinnamon. Also, big thrill a face cloth in the bathroom. We have packed a thin baby style one as we know many places no longer have them – I have no idea why not – but these are nice and fluffy like the towels…. The bathroom floor is heated including the tiled shower!

We settled in, drunk lots of coffee and planned our time before heading up for the complimentary light meal in the upstairs lounge. It was very adequate – poached fresh cod with butter sauce, cannelli bean salad, beautiful breads, pastries, green mixed salad, pasta pesto salad, salami, cheese, butter and dressings.

After dinner we took a little walk to get a ‘24hr transport card’, and strolled around a couple of the city central blocks before sinking into our super sized soft bed.