Oslo

We arrived in Oslo yesterday after the worst day of our trip so far. I’m writing about it now, the day after because I was too fed up to do it yesterday! The day started out ok, more torrential rain which you would think we’d be getting used to by now but, no, it’s starting to get me down. Shortly after setting off we were high up in the mountains and the rain turned briefly to snow and I had a little frosty sign lit up on the instrument panel. This was not a problem because as soon as we started to go down again the snow disappeared and the rain took over again! I’m not sure how long we’d been driving when we decided to pull in at a supermarket, or what passes for one in the middle of nowhere, and get a few things we needed. We might have been in there 10 minutes at the most and when we came out we found someone had hit the motorhome. I don’t know how you don’t see a big thing like that, but someone or something had presumably reversed into it and decided not to hang about. So, long story short. We now have one broken bumper and a smashed to bits fog light which also seems to have stopped one brake light working. There was no one around and even while we were in the shop there were only a handful of people in there and I couldn’t see any sign of cctv anywhere outside (this is the back of beyond remember) so we had no choice but to carry on with our journey.

Needless to say this put a considerable damper on the day. The biggest worry is the brake light not working. When we got to Heddal which was where we wanted to look at the Stave Church which I think I spoke about in my last blog, I popped into the local Ford dealership to see if they could help with getting the brake light working again. They didn’t want to know! Not helpful at all. Friday afternoon, finishing in an hour, no capacity! Well thank you for nothing Olav or whatever your stupid name is! Yes, by now I was properly pissed off.

So, we went to look at the church, which was very impressive but closed, so we couldn’t see inside. It actually stopped raining long enough to take a few photos none of which I had much enthusiasm for. To top off a horrible day we drove into Oslo, which, like any big city, is a nightmare to drive around. Having said that, we did manage to find the marina where we had planned to stay for the night relatively easily. The only problem was, it too was closed. There was a group of people sat talking just inside the entrance and they informed us that it had been closed since last week. There is now only one place you can stay and that is 7 kilometres away in Bogstad. So we set off again for another horrible but shortish drive to the campsite at Bogstad.  It’s got a nice ring to it hasn’t it, Bogstad! Sounds nice. Well It wasn’t! We had no choice but to stay there even though it was by far the most expensive site we’ve found yet. It cost 370 NOK for one night. Thats almost £37! Once we were set up in our spot we just sat miserably contemplating what a shit day it had been. The camp wifi was as good as nonexistent from where we were and then Lynne read in the brochure that it was most effective in and around the reception building. So later that evening we had a walk up there with one device to see if the wifi was any better up there. Where’s this going I bet you’re thinking. Well, the upshot was that at 8.30pm we decided to up sticks and move up by the reception where the signal was quite strong. This meant unplugging the electric, rolling off the levelling chocks, and filling up with water (which we’d forgotten to do on the way in). This was all done in pitch blackness and pouring rain! By rain, I mean bucketing it down. I drove round to the new spot and we ran around getting set up again and by now we were both soaked! This better be worth it I’m thinking. Back in the van I got my wet boots off, changed into dry shoes, about to settle down when Lynne sheepishly informed me “the toilet’s full”. Dry shoes off, wet boots back on, out into the pissing rain again to perform my favourite job of all. It was near enough 9.30pm by the time we sat down again to watch a couple of episodes of Sneaky Pete on Amazon prime. Thankfully the wifi proved to be up to the job so it was all worthwhile in the end.

A day later and I’m in a better frame of mind, thankfully. Also, the rain has stopped. It’s like a miracle, there’s actually blue sky! We decided to stay another night at Bogstad camp so that we could get the bus into the city. So that’s exactly what we did this morning. Oslo is a typical big city and we spent about three hours walking around. What I think must have been the main shopping street was packed with people and not very nice really. Absolutely teeming with people so much so that it was difficult to walk properly amongst them. Not my idea of fun. We walked up to the Royal Palace, strange that you could walk almost up to the front entrance with hardly any obvious security about. One sentry on guard which I couldn’t help comparing to the one’s at Buckingham Palace. They stand still as statues for what seems like hours on end where-as this guy was moving all the time, scratching his nose, rubbing his eye. He was all over the place! Not very impressive. Before leaving the city we had dinner in a restaurant called Mamma Pizza, bet you can’t guess what we had. It was very nice but I had to go to the counter to order. That would have been ok, but I was behind a table of seven girls who all ordered and paid individually, made even worse by a couple of them questioning some of the ingredients in the pizzas. Is there milk? because I’m lactose intolerant, can I have it without cheese because I’m vegan, blah blah blah. All this took getting on for 15 minutes while I’m stood there waiting like a spare part! in the end though, it was a nice meal and probably the cheapest we’ve had so far in Norway at 328 NOK. (£30.70)

Oslo was ok, it has a lot of very interesting modern architecture, and there were things going on everywhere we went. The Norwegians are obviously a wealthy people judging by the number of expensive looking boats in the many harbours dotted around the coastal areas. We were reading the other day about tipping in restaurants, apparently it’s not generally expected as they make enough not to have to rely on tips. We’ve found grocery shopping to be roughly three times what we would pay at home. While we were in a Ford dealership recently we looked at the price of cars and for instance, there was a Mustang which I imagine would be about £40,000 at home was nearer the equivalent of £75,000! But I digress, Oslo was nice but not somewhere I could imagine going out of my way to go back to. Just looking back at what I’ve written here and the phrase ‘Oslo was ok’ doesn’t really suggest an abundance of enthusiasm does it? Maybe that tells it’s own story. Just one last footnote, the weather today was mostly wall to wall blue sky sunshine! Yippee!!