From Iceland to Norway

Gail and Cathy went to downtown Reykjavík the day before we left Iceland, Friday, July 11.

Gail and I parted ways with Ken and Cathy at Keflavík Airport on Saturday, July 12. They headed home. We headed to Oslo, Norway. Ken was not looking well. It turns out, Ken was not well, and went into St. Vincent’s Hospital the morning after arrival. He’s doing better now, but is still in the hospital as of Monday, July 14.

Our plane was delayed for 3 hours. We sat around the airport watching unusual planes depart.

Finally, we departed Iceland

And after a 2 and a half hour flight, we saw Norway.

We landed, picked up our luggage (we’ve abandoned carry on only for this trip due to Gail’s hip), took a train into Oslo, and arrived at the National Theater where we found a statue of a famous twentieth-century Norwegian actress, Wenche Foss, who starred in over 50 movies and TV shows.

There was also an interesting fountain

And of course, wherever you go around the world…

We decided, well actually I decided, to walk to our new Airbnb. “Only a 15 minute walk”, our host declared and Google confirmed. Not my best decision. It was Saturday night. We were in a hip section of Oslo (Sentrum). So there were many people around. We had to go slow, but we saw a lot of interesting sights like:

and

Finally, we found

So what’s so important about the Joker? It’s a convenience store that has a machine where you enter a code given to you by the host that gives you a key and a fob, which you take to the Airbnb. Before we got to the Airbnb, we found

The sea monster didn’t stop us from getting to the Airbnb, but the stairs did. We backtracked and found a way that didn’t need stairs. We got to the front door of the apartment house that housed our Airbnb. We struggled with the front door lock until a nice young woman came by and showed us how to get in. We took the elevator to the 4th floor, went to the end of the hall, and used the key to get inside. We had finally solved the puzzle! From the apartment, we saw:

It was late, but still light. Sunset is at 22:30, so earlier than in Iceland, but still later than Portland.