by Roz
I can’t quite remember how we chose Oslo as
the destination for the final weekend of our five week holiday extravaganza,
also known as #wivesontour #thelonggoodbye to our life in America – and hello
to London. But I do know that we had
some anxiety about how this weekend would work out – there’s nothing like the
end of a holiday and the imminent start of a whole new chapter to produce some
stressful moments. But a few months back
we came up with the novel (for us) plan of inviting our friends, Lee and Alan,
to join us in Oslo as a distraction technique (and of course because they are
fun company!) and so here begins the first Travelling Wives blog where the
wives are not alone…
We arrived at the hotel to find Lee and
Alan awaiting us (keen!). Having deposited our bags, we all walked in the
sunshine to the nearby modern art museum.
This entailed walking down to the harbour and along the waterfront in
the beautiful sunshine, and Layla and I began to muse that perhaps we ought to
move to Oslo. We’re so fickle… The museum contained the art collection of a
former explorer (who’d been to the North and South Poles and up Everest) and
was not exactly to my taste but quite good anyway. We spent quite a while musing whether a
discarded banana peel was the work of a reprobate child or was art (and later
established it was art) and that probably gives you a reasonable vision of the
museum. But it was fun to see some
Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin out of their natural habitats and, with a
delightful stop in the middle for a cup of afternoon tea and a cake on the
museum’s stylish patio overlooking an urban beach, we deemed this a good start
to the weekend…
We returned to the hotel to acquire
cardigans and the like before our evening walk to Vulkan and Grunelokka, two adjacent
cool areas of Oslo filled with hip shops with an array of enticing things,
including furniture (Layla and I are particularly alive to the allure of nice
furniture, given that we are currently furnishing our new London flat from
scratch). But our actual destination was
the Mathallen Hall food market (a la Union Market for those who know DC). This proved to be all high ceilings, steam
punk lighting, exposed brick work and delicious food. We meandered around
before settling on dinner from a terrific Asian place where you could customise
your meal in a delightful fashion.
Noodled up, we headed deeper into the area in search of mini-golf. Many of you will know that Layla and I are
avid (if not especially talented) mini-golfers.
But Lee and Alan hadn’t played since childhood. I felt internally gleeful and looked forward
to victory (or at least coming only second to Layla, who always seems to
win). But this course was somewhat
different from that which we were used to.
It was very definitely not for tourists, not least since the course was
very home-made in what seemed to have once been a children’s playground. Nonetheless, I was confident that Layla and I
would be victorious…and then suddenly we were defeated by a couple of tricky
holes at the end. I took 15 strokes on
one insanely hard hole (which Alan did in 1).
And Layla went on a crazed rampage to try and batter her golf ball into
the hole through a weird construction on the last hole after she started to
fail (this didn’t work out well). And so,
Layla came last, and I came second. But
any smugness that I might have hoped to feel was entirely tempered by the fact
that it shouldn’t have been thus…
We meandered home through the streets
afterwards and then went to bed. Next
morning, we had a nice breakfast in a nearby café before heading back to the
marina – but this time, to get a ferry to an Oslo fjord island called Hovedoya.
Alas for Layla (who loves a boat ride) it was a brief trip – only ten minutes
or so. But it felt delightfully local with
very few other tourists in sight (we were, in fact, surrounded by Norwegians
who’d all clearly thought through their plan for the day very well since they
all carried very large picnic baskets, blankets and the like). After admiring the view back to Oslo, we
hopped off and found ourselves on a clearly well worn path that took us to the
ruins of an old monastery (and past a delightful café) and then onto a path
round the island. We set off
enthusiastically. We sat in the sun on
rocks at the water’s edge, watching the tide lap the shore and musing on rock
formations. After a while though, once we started walking again, my enthusiasm
turned to envy when I suddenly realised that our trip had become a hike and my
Birkenstocks were really not absolutely up to the task – in contrast to the
hardcore hiking shoes that Alan was wearing.
It’s always disappointing to find that someone else has read your plans
for the weekend – and then planned / dressed appropriately when you
haven’t! Nonetheless, we had a very cheery
time scrambling over rocks with beautiful views of Oslo and the surrounding
islands and only getting a bit lost. We
eventually made it back to where we started (which was harder than it should
have been) and then settled down in the delightful café for a very tasty lunch
(including waffles) and then a read of our books on the grass. Eventually, we felt the need to continue on
with our sightseeing and we caught the ferry back to the mainland and then
hopped on a tram to Vigeland Park.
The park is famous for having numerous
sculptures, including one of a small London child stamping its foot in a temper
tantrum. But I loved the park even before
I saw its sculptures for its European feel: it was big, but it felt organised
if you know what I mean. The sculptures
themselves turned out to be more fun than I’d have guessed, including the
highlight (for Layla and me) of a couple of lesbian statues (which we decided
we’d happily have in our garden in Tokyo when we move there… if only the
Norwegians fancy lending them to us). We
pottered around for a while and then resolved that it was time for tea and so
headed back to a cool area of town we’d seen on the tram as we’d gone
past. We settled ourselves happily in another
stylish café, the type of which Oslo is obviously adept at producing, and then
presented Lee and Alan with their options for the evening. We did a blind vote (I was in a minority of
one – humph) and so then made our way back to the hotel for a short rest before
our evening’s delights began.
Emerging from the hotel, we headed to the
nearby metro (which is delightfully efficient) to have dinner before going to
see a 3D version of the film Inside Out at Europe’s largest cinema. Dinner – Indian food – was very nice indeed
(though Alan and Lee showed themselves not up to our levels of greediness and
shared a meal…). We then headed to the
largest cinema in Europe to print out our tickets. The machine only communicated in Norwegian
(not unreasonably) but seemed very clear it didn’t want to give us
tickets. We eventually asked for help
from the kindly kiosk girl. She
pityingly pointed out we were at the wrong cinema. It turned out that the cinema we were
actually booked to see the film at was not Europe’s largest cinema at all, but
instead was a somewhat smaller affair 100 feet from our hotel… Ah well, you win
some you lose some! We headed to the
other cinema, grateful for the efficient metro and then settled ourselves down
for the film (which was very good, though Layla and I were both upset that
there were no Norwegian subtitles – is everyone in the rest of the world other
than us really that good at languages?!).
And then, to bed.
Next morning was Sunday. In other words, our very last day of
holiday. It’s an odd feeling after
thirty seven days. I feel sad not to be
on holiday any longer (and also sad at the realisation that this must mean we
definitely aren’t from Washington any more), excited about our new life in
London (and our home) and scared of learning Japanese (my course starts
tomorrow). Fortunately, having Lee and
Alan around, Layla and I weren’t able to indulge in any unhelpful agonies on
this combination of feelings – all the more so since we’d persuaded them into
booking a 3 hour kayaking trip (for which we got the last laugh as they hadn’t
been warned in advance so couldn’t dress 100% appropriately). So we all had a brief breakfast in our room
with rather good options foraged from the foyer before getting the train to the
marina.
The marina was entirely deserted when we
arrived. This was – we assured ourselves
nervously – because we were ridiculously early.
So we retreated to a hipster bakery for tea and such like (this means we
ate more food but are a little shamefaced about it). When we returned, there was more life around
and we found the kayaking place without difficulty. The owner and tour guide was a nice German
lady who gave us the best instruction I’ve ever received on how to be good at
kayaking (and for once I implemented it) and we soon we were in the beautifully
clear waters of the Oslo fjord. We
passed by a number of houseboats and I enjoyed imagining the lives of those
living on them (surely the lives of the beautiful contents of the flowerpots
could only be brief?!) before heading into the fjord properly. It was just beautiful to pass by swimmers,
naked sunbathers (ah Scandinavia, so liberal!), one hardcore paddleboarder (who
was impressive in her ability to stay upright notwithstanding some alarming
waves) and the like. We stopped for
strawberries and water on a beach and I mused that it seemed exceptionally
unlikely that at that very moment 24 hours hence I would be having a Japanese
lesson in rainy London… Alan challenged
me to a race at the end of our trip.
This would have worked out better if either of us had absolutely known
where we’d been meant to be docking… But
I don’t think I shall ever recover from his suggestion we consider it a draw
(I’m not that kind of a girl). But just
in case I’d had any worries that he might have won the race, I was amused to
see him managing to fall completely into the water as he tried to get out of
his kayak at the end (nothing to do with me, honest!). Slightly dripping, we headed back to the area
where our hotel is – for Alan to change and for lunch in yet another delightful
and stylish café.
And that’s it. The end of #thelonggoodbye and
#wivesontour. After lunch we went straight
to the airport, and I’m typing this from our plane. Our plane home, I guess I should say. Odd to think that this doesn’t mean I’ll be
landing in Dulles. Five weeks of holiday
has been glorious. It has gone by in a
flash…
Time to book our next holiday, I think –
don’t you?
BOOKS READ ON HOLIDAY
ROZ: Life as we knew it (Susan Beth
Pfeffer), The Dead and the Gone (Susan Beth Pfeffer), The World We Live In
(Susan Beth Pfeffer), The Shade of the Moon (Susan Beth Pfeffer), Wonder (RJ
Palacio), The Book of Strange New Things (Michael Faber), Landfall (Nevil
Shute), Auggie and Me (RJ Palacio), Ruined City (Nevil Shute), The Mirror World
of Melody Black (Gavin Extence), The Crimson Petal and the White (Michael
Faber), Landline (Rainbow Rowell), A Possible Life (Sebastian Faulks), A Man
Called Ove (Frederik Backman), The Revolving Door of Life (Alexander McCall
Smith), Some Luck (Jane Smiley), Early Warning (Jane Smiley), and some of Great
Expectations (Charles Dickens).
LAYLA: The Fever (Megan Abbot), The House
of the Scorpion (Nancy Farmer), Fudgeamania (Judy Blume), Family Life (Akhil Sharma),
An Abundance of Katherines (John Green), My Salinger Year (Joanna Rakoff),
Belzhar (Mog Wolitzer), Auggie and Me (RJ Palacio), An Old-Fashioned Girl
(Louisa May Alcott), Great Expectations (Charles Dickens), The Affinities
(Robert Charles Wilson), The Storied Life of AJ Fikry (Gabrielle Zevin),
Seveneves (Neal Stephenson) and Landline (Rainbow Rowell).
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