back again

came back from oslo on friday afternoon, said my goodbyes to the guests at the luggage belt (my backpack came out quickly this time) and then took the train...home!
had a lovely relaxed weekend again...something you really need after this job...slept a LOT too :)

after my last blog we travelled from stavanger to kristiansand, a wonderful route along the south coast of norway...one moment we saw sand strands and little dunes, they then changed into rocks and before we knew it we were in the middle of some fjords again!
the road was kind of narrow there at some points...which is no problem until there's cars from the other side coming...svein had to work hard to get us and the bus safely over all these fjords, which resulted in a big aplause for him in the end of the day when we arrived in kristiansand. in kristiansand i took the guests for an hour walk through town before my day was officially over, it's a lovely town though not as nice as stavanger.
from kristiansand we continued to oslo on thursday, we visited some lovely towns along the coast in the morning (grimstad & arendal) and then went to porsgrunn where we visited the porcelain fabric. to be honest i'm not much of a porcelain girl but it was an interesting guided tour we got there, cool to see how they make everything & hand paint some of the stuff.

late in the afternoon we arrived in oslo, same hotel as week before so that was easy. on my last night in oesloe i met up with jiska again...first plan had been to party...hard :P but that was a bit too much for me, so we just went for another drink instead...was lovely again, we had a good laugh about...everything actually haha! takk jis, det var greitt! ;)

and then it was friday morning and i packed my bag for the last time for this trip!

and here are some pix of my last 2 weeks in the north:















stockholm!














gamla stan & me in my new dress!














with linda in stocktown














with jiska in oesloe



















the karl johan in oslo














vigelandsparken














lovely fence














view on oslo from holmenkollen ski-jump














telemark kanal














heddal stavkirke














lunchtime in sand














THE view, from my room in stavanger














stavanger harbour



















preikestolen



















a troll in stavanger














me at lindesnes, NO's most southern point (over 2500 km from the northcape!)

my colleague svein

from rauland

so here i am again...

new group who i've been with since wednesday is lovely! so is my colleague, driver svein :)
on my day off in stockholm on tuesday my dear linda came to ' visit' or rather spend the day together with me there....we had a great time, needed to catch up on a lot of things so we just wandered around town all day talking :D

wednesday and thursday was still spent in stockholm, showed this group gamla stan and vasamuseet, nothing new for me haha!
friday we drove from stockholm to oslo and had a few stops on the way. at night after dinner i took the bus to town to meet another friend for some catching up, jiska! we had some cider downtown in a place called ' saras telt' lol!
saturday i showed the guests oesloe, including nasjonalgalleriet and after this we also went to the vigelandpark (lovely as always!) and oslo's ski jump holmenkollen (went up in the tower!). after this we drove to skien where svein and me spent the night in a sports bar watching the germany - portugal game together with some norwegian people. today it was telemark-canal time, which meant 2 hours on a boat going through a lot of sluises, pretty cool! in the afternoon we went to the heddal stavkirke, at which point it actually started to rain, first bad weather in more than 10 days for me!

we're now staying the ight in a hotel up on a mountain in rauland, weather still sucks...so i'd better get back to the final game in germany!

tomorrow we'll leave for stavanger, cruise on the lysefjord on tuesday!

p.s. of course the 91-year old is, in her own way as she is blind in one eye, one of the fittest in the group!

feeling hot hot hot...

...as my room in my second hotel here is pretty warm! :P
can only open the window a little bit and when i do there's an awful lot of noice from the road coming in, so definitely not the best room ever, oh well...

sunday was anothere lovely day in the sun during which i took them too skansen and visited the biologiska museet myself afterwards.
yesterday i delivered my guests to arlanda airport safely and then i began my journey to this hotel south of stockholm. i wanted to do it the cheap way so, first i took the bus from arlanda to märsta station, from there i took the pendeltåg to stockholm C and from there i took the T-bana (tube) to skärholmen where this hotel is. from the t-station to here it's actually not that far but it is when you don't know exactly how to go and try out different directions first. in the end i asked a random guy on the street if he knew where the hotel was, he was almost going to ' give' me a ride with his (illegal) taxi (' my car will be here in a minute just wait ok?!') as it was 'very far away' but i told him it had to be close and i'd continue look for it myself then...walked another 15 metres and there it was just on the other side of the road! :O

after a well deserved shower, walking around stockholm with your backpack in 30 degrees surely makes you sweat, i made my way back into town. was gonna buy a nice necklace from this store i have wanted for ages but it was sold out! have another chance in august though.
spend the rest of the afternoon & early evening in the sun enjoying stockholm :D

in the evening i prepared myself a bit more for tomorrow and the days after that as i won't be able (or willing) to do that today. after this i'm heading to town again, picking up a dear friend from stockholm C who's been in the train since very early this morning! :D

mind the gap

came to think about the following last night when i took the tube back to my hotel; swedes are usually not the people that use a lot of words but they do in the tube, but 'tänk på avståndet mellan vag och platform när du stiger av' is much longer than ' mind the gap'!

sun is shining...weather is good....i'm here for another 15 minutes (sarah's opening hours in the lobby hehe!) and then i'm out in the sun!!!

from hot stocktown!

yes, some people at home never quite believe me but they have hot summer weather here too!
guessing it's just as sunny and warm as back home...sun-sun-sun all day an at least 25 degrees....me like!

arrived here in stockholm yesterday. finding my 15 guests proved to be a challenge this time, when holding up my sign at the luggage belt only one guest came up to me...walking around there with my sign didn't help very much either. better chance when i'm out there in the arrival hall was my guess then...only my luggage was one of the last ones to come out so most people had already left. when i came out there were no guests waiting nor a driver....after 3 minutes i had found 4 guests wandering around but that was it. had a look outside if i saw the bus somewhere but nope...
so i called the agent in norway who called the driver for me and then called me back...turned out the driver had stood there waiting and collected the other 11 guests...and took them to the bus already! what he was thinking i don't know but he didn't come back to the arrivals until the agent called him....
so when we finally found each other we went to the bus (which stood quite a bit away so now wonder i had missed it) and i could introduce myself to the other guests and check if this really was the whole group.

we drove to town then, i had some smalltalk with this weird but nice driver and told the guests some things about stockholm and the programme for the next 5 days here. not that there's too much of a programme, as this is a city trip people have quite a lots of free time and i only have an official programme for them for 1 1/2 days.
we arrived at our hotel just before 15:00 and even though not all the rooms were cleaned when i checked us in everyone still got their keys within like 20 minutes...except me! my room was the last one to be cleaned...but after more than half an hour waiting they finally gave me another room which was cleaned already. think that the room i have now is actually better as it's on the 5th floor and not the ground floor like the one meant for me first.
already in the bus i announced to the group that even though there wasn't a programme for today i was going to walk to stadshuset (city hall) later in the afternoon to enjoy the sun & lovely view from there and that everyone was welcome to come along. in the end 4 guests did so we had a nice 40 minute walk there. from there we went separate ways again. i went to buy myself a 7 day card for public transport and later on i had dinner in my favourite cheap place here in stockholm at hötorget *mjam*

had a good night sleep and then prepared myself for today, meaning checking some final things about gamla stan because that's where i took the guests today. according to the programme i was going to show them the oldest part of town (= gamla stan) and so i did! planned a nice route along the nicest spots and loveliest streets and ended the tour at stora torget where i just had to tell them about the best chocolate cake in the world you can get there of course! during the coffee break a couple of the guests and me got ourselves this mjummy kladkaka after which most of the guests went to see the changing of the guards at the royal palace. i went to play tourist in some of the small streets instead :P

met up with the group again after the changing of the gards and we then went to catch the ferry to djurgården where we were going to the vasamuseum. had been to this museum once some years ago but actually quite liked to see it again. we also saw the movie about how they got the ship out of the water after 300 years, cool to see!
after this the guests were free to do what they wanted...so was i! had a nice lunch at the museum's terace and then went back to town to do some shopping...well more like window shopping as i didn't buy anything hehe!

after this i'm going to check out how germany-argentina is going and then it's out to find a nice restaurant for dinner!

tomorrow it's a ' free' day for the guests, will be in the lobby in the morning to help them plan their day and then i'm planning to visit some museums (Cornelis Vreeswijk museum for example, finally!) and enjoy the sun...because the sun is going to stay here for the rest of the week they say!!! :D