We went to the National Gallery after Holmenkollen, and saw the legendary Scream. I didn’t know until then that there are four original versions, two painted and two pastels. This is probably a good thing because it’s a popular target for art thieves. The version in the National Gallery was stolen in [...]

In the morning, Oslo was swathed in thick fog. We sat in a cafe for a bit, compensating with coffee for another sleep-deprived night. When we came out, the fog had all but disappeared, so we headed out to the suburbs, to have a look at the ski jump at Holmenkollen. It [...]

The journey from Myrdal took us back to Oslo across the spectacular icy wasteland of the Hardangervidda plateau. In the night, on the train to Bergen, I’d looked out and seen huge expanses of snow, and the daytime crossing was awesome. Occasionally in the middle of nowhere we’d spot a couple of cross-country [...]

The amazing journey continued. We got the train from Flåm to Myrdal, a journey which takes you from sea level up to 860m above sea level in only 12 miles. We climbed through snow-covered scenery, curling around corners so tightly that often it seemed like we were looking right down on earlier sections [...]

We had a fun night out in Bergen. The streets were full of students wearing red trousers, in some kind of post-exam celebratory wackiness. Everything was lively, there were lots of pretty girls around, and we didn’t get back to the hostel until after 4am. This was a slight tactical error because [...]

We made our way to a hostel at the foot of Mount Ulrik. Our guide book said the number 4 bus would take us there, but after a long wait we decided it wasn’t coming, and got another bus. This bus only took us part of the way, and we had a long [...]

We arrived in Bergen at 7am. I’d already spent all the money I thought would last me the whole weekend, so our first point of call was a cash machine. I pressed some large numbers, tried not to think about what they meant in pounds, and we headed into town.
Bergen is supposedly the [...]

We got a boat back to Oslo, and then got a tram to the Frognerparken. The park is a spectacular open-air museum for the works of Gustav Vigeland, Norway’s most famous sculptor. We wandered through the 80 acres and 212 statues in the late evening light, eventually reaching the legendary Monolith. The [...]

This trip was my first ever with Ryanair. For just fifty pounds each, me, Eldrik and John got flights from Stansted to Sandefjord. It seemed outrageously cheap at the time, but later I’d come to see fifty pounds as about the maximum I’d ever spend on flights within Europe.
The journey started painfully slowly. [...]