The alarm rang at 0530 and we were out the door at 0615 for the short walk to the station. The train to Oslo left at 0648 taking 7h30 approximately. We had paid extra NOK90 for Komfort Class which gave us freeflow coffee/tea. The price was equivalent to just three drinks so that was well worth it.
The multi-stop train was pretty fast in parts as the acceleration and deceleration was quite noticeable. The side-to-side rocking made me feel rather queasy; it is the first time I’ve felt unwell from being on a train but I’m probably not 100% from my Sicily Belly which has hung around for about two weeks 🙁
Food on board was super-pricey (probably just normal Norway) and the menu was listed by priciest to cheapest! The scenery was stunning in parts with misty pine forest, mirror lakes and wooden homes painted in brick-red. Much of the landscape was rock with pine forests. There were some villages and surprisingly urban areas near Stavanger too.
Seeing local in a confined area made me aware that I was in the land of giants. Some people had to duck to get trough the internal doors of the train.
Arriving at Oslo about 40 mins late (journey of about 8h), it was a short walk to City Box hotel which had a self-service kiosk check-in. The room was similar to Tune Hotel except that it had a woven vinyl matting as flooring. The air vent was rather small and in consideration of the sunny weather, we had to open the windows (which proved noisy during the night).
As we had only had a till lunch time tomorrow in Oslo, we decided to go explore ASAP by walking to the waterfront to catch a ferry to a nearby peninsula where several museums were located. The short plus a walk took us to the Kon Tiki Museum which housed the Kon Tiki (balsa wood) and Ra II (papyrus/reed). The story of how one man’s idea translated into successive missions across the vast oceans was just amazing. Seeing their rafts made it nearly real.
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- Oslo Cathedral.
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- Ra II, the reed boat (which replaced the Ra which broke apart). Another reed boat was later built called the Tigris.
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- Kon Tiki, the balsa boat.
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- Kon Tiki, the balsa boat.
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- Around Oslo.
We had no time for the other museums in the area as it was approaching their closing time. I would have liked to visit the Arctic exploration one.
We hurried back to the hotel’s wifi to check on our meeting venue with Manuel. I had met him and his girlfriend Adriana at Panglao on the beach. We met (together with a friend of his) at a cafe for a beer. Unfortunately, Adriana couldn’t make it. They were due to fly out to Iran for a wedding the next day and she had work to do. We had plenty to talk about including travel, diving and various aspects of Norway.
We had a simple dinner of Subway as it was light and cheap.