You simply dont realise the days pass when you are on a vacation. That is exactly how we felt leaving Lavik. We both swore that we would come back and stay here for 2 weeks, when we wanted to get away from the city life. It was that kinda town.
We were to take the ferry across the river to reach the other side of Sognefjord and continue towards Bergen. It was our last stretch of driving. We reached Bergen railway station, dropped our luggage and then needed to return the car. Driving in the city wasnt so easy though. We got quite lost and managed to go in circles many times before we found the place.
Tired and hungry we headed to the Light Rail station. Wait, you can only buy ticket with coins or credit card and it has to have a pin! Sumit tried a few cards and the machine hung. So many of the passengers behind us couldnt get a ticket either. It was only after we had some pizza we were a little upbeat about roaming the city. It was around noon and we had till 11pm before our train.
We saw the city twice and it was only 4pm! We had walked around the city and gone up Mount Floyen, even tried to catch a snooze there. We went to the Brygge, around it. We ended up wasting the rest of the time just sitting at different parts of the city. Coming from Singapore, I am used to public washrooms everywhere, most of them free. It wasnt the case there, you could find a washroom in cafes, if you buy something you could use (they were code locked). So we ended up randomly buying things. Finally at 9pm we decided we had had enuf and went to the train station to wait for our train to Oslo. I only remember Thanking my senses for booking a sleeper cabin, cos we both jus crashed as soon as we entered.
If there had been no announcement of Oslo, we would have just slept longer. Breakfast at the railway station reminded me so much of India. Thankfully our hotel was walking distance from the station, we quickly dumped our luggage and went to get some real food = Apent Bakery ( must try on the lonely planet list). So we walk across town, cross the Royal Palace and pass thru the houses of Ambassadors, trust me you would not regret the walk to find it. Its really tucked away somewhere far from sight because I dont think they want many people to know. They have the most amazing bread and jam. Wait did I mention it was berry season and we were getting fresh jam everywhere. But this place, for the bread lover (that is moi), it was Heaven!!
After stuffing myself with hot bread, yummy jam and a nice cup of chocolate, we went to the Royal Palace. Seems like the ambassadors were visiting the royal family, so there was a parade. We stayed on till the guard changing and then left for the hotel. We had very few things we wanted to do in Oslo, sadly the Ski jump was closed for renovation so we couldnt do that. So we decided to go to the Viking Museum instead that evening. Next morning was to Vigeland park. Sadly though, the museum only opened at 12pm and we dint want to wait. We wanted to go to Hadeland glass factory because we thought it was jus 1 hour away, turns out is twice that and buses were quite infrequent. Nonetheless it was a good decision to go there.
I have never seen glass blowing, so I was super fascinated. You get to understand why wine glasses are so expensive when you see 6 people working on each glass. Its a lot of effort. The vases were beautiful, its truly an art. I was really proud to buy our first true set of wine glasses. Suddenly we realise its time for the bus, which have been so punctual up till now in our trip. We ran around finishing our purchases and getting the VAT rebates done, blah blah.
So we are now really tired from all the running around, we wait at the bus stop for 20 mins only to realise that actually the next bus is supposed to come 1 hour later! Thankfully we found some coffee and hot chilli fries (made from fresh potatoes mind you). Perfect for the weather.
We returned much later than expected and went for Indian food yet again ( Sumit is so fussy about food :P). The excited restaurant owned was all too happy to make the dishes in 'desi' style, hot and spicy. Sigh!
So the next day was Amsterdam, now that deserves a whole post to itself.
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