Greens and Blues; Norway Photo Diary 1

21:54

Just when the domestic plane from Oslo was about to land on Trondheim Airport, I was super excited. Norwegian scenery was so humble and pretty at the same time. The green mountains and blue sky were the typical scene that could be seen in any country, but this time, they reminded me that I was finally on a vacation, away from the crowd in Bangkok.

There were ten of us on the trip, however, the size of the coach we were to be on everyday could fit about thirty people in. The local driver drove us around Trondheim for awhile, and we soon concluded that this city was like a ghost town. I didn't mean it in a bad way, but it was just that we barely saw people walking around downtown area, and a lot of the shops weren't even opened. What surprised me the most was when the driver took the underground route from the airport to the inner city, he told us that the tunnel was recently built to reduce traffic jam on the main road during working day. Judging from the amount of local people I saw on that day, I could tell that the driver had seen nothing like Bangkok traffic yet.

Trondheim was indeed a very beautiful city, but being an active person, two nights in the town were more than enough. There weren't that many tourist attractions except from Nidaros Cathedral and the Gate of Fortune. To alleviate our boredom, my brother and I went for a bike around the hotel area, as the weather perfect for outdoor activity. In Norway, the sun set at 10 pm and rise at 4 am. The daytime was so long that during the trip, I felt like time passed too slow.

The next short stop was in a town called Kristiansund where we had lunch at a Thai restaurant. We were all looking forward to this meal especially because all we had since the day we arrived in Norway was Western food. To be precise, we had a three course meal for lunch and dinner consisting of a soup or salad as an entree, following by salmon or cod with mash potato for main course,and finally some kind of dessert with berries. The Norwegian fish was really tasty but it was just that we had too many of it.

Afterwards, we headed for Alesund, a town with its unique concentration of Art Nouveau architecture. On the way though, we passed the Atlantic Road, which runs from island to island right out at the ocean's edge. The road and the scenery weren't as grande as I imagined, but taking a short walk near the bridge was certainly nice, except that the wind was really strong and that I was wearing a summer gear.

My brother and my father kayaking in Alesund

We also went to the Atlantic Sea-Park just at the outskirt area of Alesund. The aquarium was located in the area I least expected. The ones I've been to were either in the city or in the mall. Here in Norway, it was surrounded by mountains and was built next to real body of water for us to get the sense of a real nature. The highlight animal in Norway or Scandinavia was probably fish since anywhere we went, we passed some kind of body of water whether they were lake, ocean, sea, or waterfall that I got pretty confused which was saltwater or freshwater. In the end, I didn't even care which was which anymore.