Adventure of the month

The good:  I had a day to kick around in Trondheim, Norway and a self-guided walking tour I had printed from the Fodor's website to steer me in the right direction.  I was off to a good start, seeing as we were staying right in the heart of downtown and the sun was making a valiant effort to come out and greet us. The bad:  One day was not enough.  To compound matters, this one and only day started rather late due to a delayed arrival and was cut short by a very early departure.  Also, that sun could have tried a little harder.  Norway in mid-June is not exactly balmy. The trying to find a silver lining in our shortened stay:  Had I stayed any longer, I would have had to look into selling an organ to cover costs and I fear that the blue book value on my original parts is not as high as I would hope.  Norway is the second most expensive country in the world to live in (after Switzerland).  Just getting through the day requires lot o...

One last day in Oslo (technically just an afternoon, really, since I had a 5pm flight back to Amsterdam) but I had saved the best, or at least the most scenic, for last. On this, my final hours, I had made a reservation for a lunch cruise around the fjords. For the past two days, I had watched families cruise by, enjoying the gorgeous summer weather and the majestic panorama offered up by the fjords. Now it was my turn. So why was I waking up to the sound of rain on the windowpanes accompanied by loud claps of thunder. I convinced myself for a brief moment that it was noise coming from the air conditioner. A noise that I just had never noticed before. I even shared this fleeting fantasy with my hot roommate, the one who had just finished hiking through Pakistan and is currently working on a guide to outdoor adventures. Curiously, he did not share my delusion. With the reservation already made and the $65 cruise included for free with my $68 Oslo Card, I decided I could brave the elemen...

My second day in Oslo was devoted to two things: art and exploring the city itself; or one could say artfully exploring the city. I started off with a self-guided walking tour around the comfortably compact downtown area. The city was as clean and tidy as one would expect, but what I found a bit disconcerting was the number of junkies I encountered throughout my walk. I had noticed them the previous day at the train station, but I had chalked it up to the sad fact that oftentimes, that is where those living on the fringes of society tend to congregate. I should quickly point out that at no point did I feel threatened or in any kind of danger, it just struck me as such an odd dichotomy between the stereo-type of the hale and hearty Viking and those sunken-eyed lost souls that seemed to be simply everywhere. My walking tour lead me to The National Gallery, where I had my first chance to see Edvard Munch's iconic painting, The Scream. I say it was my first chance, because Munch, being...

When discussing Norway, there are two things which are invariably mentioned by all who have visited. First is the natural beauty of the fjords and second the exorbitant amount of money the visitor paid for a pizza/ soda/ beer or some other implied gauge as to how expensive this city is. Actually, I think if a highly scientific poll were to be done, the order of those two would probably would have to be reversed. So to address the elephant in the fjords, yes, it is a very vast and beautiful landscape and yes, this allure has caused them all to lose their ever-loving minds when faced with a price gun. My plans for visiting this, my 80th country, were to stay in Oslo for three days and see about a half-dozen museums, preferably without having to resort to selling a kidney or other organ that I may someday want back to pay for it all. That is where the Oslo Card came in very handy. For one price (approximately $68), I had unlimited access to the city's museums and very efficient publ...