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vre rdal - Oslo - Skarnes

We feel the end of this holiday is getting closer and that makes us feel tired. Funny how that works, we have heard this from many people. We are glad we have an extra day in Denmark, but today we go to Oslo, and it is our last whole day in Norway. It all feels like goodbye. We also said goodbye to our Dutch neighbours who also go to Oslo, and then stay one night extra there, before going back to Denmark by boat.

The first 200 km. lead us through desolate plateaus and sometimes through more of these unlit U-shaped tunnels. The weather is gloomy and now and then we think we are back in the polar circle region (but no, the weather was much better there). The landscape is impressive by its desolation. Slowly we descend from these mountains and again the road and the views are sometimes spectacular. Beautiful is a wrong word to describe it, impressive, that is a better word for the loneliness of this place, although a lot of building is done in this area. On the way we encounter some more stave churches. We have seen 7 now, of the existing 32.

The mountains turn into hills and we miss the mountains already. Fortunately there are many other and new things we get to see.

Leaving the mountains, the weather brightens up. We pass a few more imposing fjords and have an extensive picnic in a nice and densely forested area.

But before we realise it, we are in Oslo, a city with half a million inhabitants. We park our car outside the centre and then walk back toward it.

Of course, we see a lot of nice builings, like churches we can visit, but we also see a mosque, which we had never expected to see this far north.

The city is small enough to walk through it and we walk from the train station to the harbour along an avenue with old impressive buildings, to end in an outdoor café, from where we have a nice view on the old town. Today we don't want to visit museums or buildings, we just want to taste the atmosphere of the town and get an impression of it.

Oslo is a quiet, but also vivid city and we have a good time there. After a walk of three hours, we go back to the car and leave Oslo, searching for our last log cabin in Norway.

Within an hour we are near Skarnes, northeast of Oslo where we will spend the night. It turns out to be the most luxurious cabin on the trip: we have running water, a toilet and even a microwave. The weather is pleasant enough to sit outside for hours, but the environment is boring: the landscape is flat, like in Holland, and we can't imagine why all these Norwegians are here with their site caravans. They have such a beautiful country, so what are they doing in this place?... For us it is incomprehensible.

Elisabeth studies the map for the last long drive to Denmark, tomorrow. Until now, we had no idea how far the drive to Denmark would be and for a moment we were afraid it would be more than 1100 kilometers. But after some calculations we see it is only about 900, that's much better. And after that another day off, a real holiday-day!

Travel through Europe and Africa

with Elisabeth and Teije