For my vacation this year I went on a 11 day hiking trip to Norway. Like all the other trips I've done, this was a great trip in many ways. I left home June 14 and got home again June 28. I had flights from Indy to Newark to Oslo, Norway and returned by the same route. In Norway we visited the south, middle and northern parts of the country with great hikes and other activities at each point along the way.
One concern going into this trip was that my hiking boots had had a complete meltdown 3 weeks before departure. There was a slit along one side of one heal and slits along both sides of the other heal. I made an emergency trip to the hiking store in Bloomington where I buy most of my hiking gear. I found a great pair of new boots and wore them all day for 4 days to start breaking them in. I then did 2 successful training hikes with them. Whew! Everything worked out fine on the trip - no issues at all.
On the last day of the trip we flew out of Lofoton in the northern part of the country where we'd been for two days. The airport is pretty small with only one check-in desk which was right next to the metal detector for the security check. When I went through the metal detector it went off which was a surprise since I knew I'd put anything metal in my pack which went through the x-ray scanner. It turns out I'd been randomly selected for a complete security check. This included a full pat-down front and back, remove shoes which got x-rayed and the bottoms of my feet patted down. Of course this was in full view of everyone. We decided that it must have been the beard which set off the random selection.
However the next day I decided that it had to be the name. On going into the boarding area for my flight from Oslo to Newark, I had to show my passport again even though I'd already been through passport control. It turns out I'd been randomly selected again for a complete security check. This time there was a small room where it took place. I mentioned to the security person that I'd done this the previous day. So we did the pat-down and then I asked "Shoes?". He replied "Yes." I then replied "Experience."
Norway has a lot of hills and mountains, most of them pretty steep. This can make getting around by road difficult. I was impressed at the number of tunnels and how long they could be. On one road, and not necessarily a major one, there was a tunnel which was 8 kilometers long. There are road signs indicating the distance. For example in the 8 km. tunnel the first sign had a 1 and an up-arrow and below that a 7 and a down arrow, indicating that you've gone 1 km. and had 7 to go. There are also pull-over points, lots of lights and emergency phones, so the long tunnels never caused me any concern.
We saw quite a few places with grass roofs. There's a basic roof then on top of that a layer of dirt for the grass. The roof creates very inexpensive addition insulation. But any trees which try to start need to be removed since the roots can cause issues. But the most impressive thing is how long they can last. We asked about one roof and were told that it wasn't very old, only 30 years or so. Some of these roofs can last a hundred years.
This trip included a number of internal transfers making for a bit more complex trip than most. But everything went like clockwork. The original itinerary had us flying from Oslo to Bergen, sailing from Bergen to Geirangerfjord, picking up cars and driving to Oppdal, taking a train from there to Bodo, renting a car and driving from there to a ferry to Lofoton where we would then fly back to Oslo. The train ride was going to be in sleeping compartments. But we knew before hand that there were no sleeping cars scheduled on our travel date. So we had 2 more internal flights, to Bodo and from there to Lofoton. That's why there's an "oops" in the heading above. A train was originally planned but didn't work out.
"Hagar the Horrible" and the Minnesota Vikings not withstanding, Viking helmets do not have horns on them. This was the first thing we learned about Vikings.
While in Lofoton we visited the Viking Museum. First, the audio system was interesting. We were given head phones and a cylinder you could easily hold in your hand. You plugged the cylinder into the head phones. The cylinder had a button so when you pointed your cylinder at a circle next to a display and clicked a button you could hear the audio description for the display. Different cylinders supported different languages.
The museum was interesting with artifacts discovered at that site. But more interesting, at least to me, was a reproduction of a Viking long house. There were basically 3 rooms, a dormitory for people, a fiest hall for dining and a room for animals. While there had to be some guess work this was as faithful a reproduction as possible. The one thing I think they fudged on a little was the height of the doors between sections. No one had to worry about banging their heads which I doubt would have been the case with authentic door heights.
We knew we were going to have lunch at the museum. What we didn't realize was that it would be in the long house's feast hall. We had mead to drink and what I would describe as vegetable soup with small lamb cubes to eat. Glen tried on the chain mail, helmet, sword and shield, sat in the rulers chain and of course got his picture taken. This was ok since we had been told that this was a reproduction and we could go anywhere and try on anything we wanted.
In general I don't like big cites but I liked Oslo, the capital of Norway. For one thing Norway is very pedestrian friendly, not just Oslo. We only had about one day there, the afternoon of the first day of the trip and the morning of the second. The first day was slightly complicated by the fact that John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State, was there for a good will visit. So some streets were closed which normally would have been open.
Our hotel was about 5 blocks from the American embassy, most of that down a side street. Across the street from the embassy there was a memorial with colored, stripped flags and flowers for the Orlando shooting victims which had happened a few days earlier. Immediately behind this was the palace for the royal family when they're in Oslo.
The afternoon tour included the Opera / Ballet House which was amazing. It was fairly new and was the pride of the country, not just of Oslo. We got a tour which included getting behind the scenes - also impressive. The building was designed so that part of the roof started at ground level near the main entrance and slanted up. It was possible to walk up this part of the roof to the top of the building to get good views of downtown Oslo.
The next morning we walked to Vigeland Park which contains around 200 bronze sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. (Correction: Wikipedia says the park name is Frogner Park and it contains the Vigeland installation / sculptures.) This is a public park which local people use like any public park. But it also has bus loads of tourists a day to see the sculptures. Generally the tourists get off a bus on one side of the park, walk past all of the sculptures and get on their bus which drove around to the other side of the park. Our tour guide was surprised to find we'd walked to the park and were going to walk back to our hotel.
There was a long bridge with a series of sculptures on each side. Further along there here was a fountain with a series of sculptures. After that a monoligh with a serices of sculptures around it. Then yet one more sculpture after that. All of these in one way or another illustrated "the circle of life," from birth through death, a running theme for Vigeland.
Twenty years ago I had a chance to fly business class round-trip between Seattle and Bangkok. It was clearly an improvement over economy class. I flew business class on this trip too and was REALLY impressed at how much better it was than even my previous experience. The airline was SAS so I only have this one current data point. I'll have to work on getting a larger sample size before I know how typical this experience was.
First, the seat was large and comfortable unlike the seats in economy class which turn into boards after just an hour or two. Second, there was plenty of leg room - I could stretch my legs out to full extension with no problem and I could cross my legs without any contortions. Third, there was a console to my right where there were a number of controls, over half of which I didn't bother trying to figure out. Fourth, there was a button on the side of the console which just had a straight line figure below it. Pressing this extended the seat until you could fully lie down. The seat in front of me had it's console on the left and the seat on the right so my legs extended under that seat's console - pretty efficient use of space.
Besides the seating the service stood out. The nuts we had with the first beverage service were warned. When I asked for apple juice I was shown a bottle as if it were a wine bottle being offered for approval. Finally the lunch/dinner on the way back had 3 forks and 3 knives for the various courses. This is the way to travel (if you can afford it).
The first meeting of our group was at 2 p.m. the first day of the trip. However due to flight issues Jay and Franky weren't there. We didn't get to meet them until 7 p.m. that evening when the group met to go out to dinner. After chatting for a short while Franky made the comment "It seems like all of you already know each other." The answer was "Yes since 2 p.m. this afternoon." This is one of the great things about these trips, how quickly a group comes together and becomes friends. And Frankie and Jay were part of the group about as quickly as the rest of us connected. Of course there is a certain amount of pre-selectiong going on. How many people want to go across the ocean to go hiking in a foreign country? The people that do generally have a number of things in common to begin with.
We were far north at the time of the summer solstice. This means that there was very little actual night and north of the Arctic circle, none at all. While we were still in the southern part of the country taking an overnight cruise there was a posting with the sunset and sunrise times. Sunset was at 11:35 p.m. and sunrise at 3:37 a.m. Once we were at Lofoton in the northern part of the country, above the Arctic circle, there was no sunset or sunrise. While I didn't try to stay up to watch this, every time I woke up overnight I'd look out the window and see shadows. I was able to deal with this because I took along a really good sleep mask so lots of light overnight wasn't an issue for me.
One of the foods we saw in Norway was waffles. However they weren't quite like American waffles, these were much thinner but otherwise tasted the same. Also, they were generally eaten with jam, sour cream or brown cheese, another Norwegian favorite food. So these were generally eaten by hand rather than with a knife and fork and with syrup like here in the U.S.
After our first hike we were walking through town back to our hotel when we saw a sidewalk side in front of a restraunt. It said "Mexican food so authentic that Donald Trump will want to build a wall around us."
This was mainly a hiking trip. But I've hardly mentioned anything about it so far. The problem is that you can only say "It was a great hike" and "The scenery was wonderful" so many times. We hiking up a huge hill over Bergen and beyond. We hiking to a great vantage point over a fjord. We hiked to a beautiful water fall. We hiked past a beautiful lake. We hiked overlooking a great beach.
In a later update to this report I'll be getting images and adding links so you can see what I mean. Words don't really work for this part of the report.
The title of this trip comes from the fact that we were inside the Arctic circle which Norwegians refer to as the polar circle. On my Antarctic trip we got inside the Antarctic circle. So I think of it was covering the world from top to bottom.
Also I've been to Nepal a couple times. The first time I got there flying east, the other times by flying west. This might count as circling the global. So, top to bottom, east to west.