Moving On

Today is our last day on Oslo. This afternoon we are catching a flight to Tromsø which takes almost 2 hours flying north.

A couple of days ago I had gone slightly over on my ankle. I thought nothing of it at the time but yesterday it was becoming quite painful so I was kinda glad that Stu wasn't up to much yesterday, giving it a chance to heal. 

Unfortunately this morning the pain had got worse. I was hoping it was just a simple twist but it now feels like it might be a sprain :-(

I've also now come down fully with Stu's bug which I was hoping to avoid. Stu on the other hand is much chirpier today. An interesting, although slightly annoying fact we learned is that you can't buy cold and flu pills in Norway, just an ethanol-glycyerol drop solution that didn't seem to do a huge amount.

This morning we decided to go to the  National Art Gallery which was now open and had plenty seats for me make use of!

It had a good mixture of art from ancient Greece to much more modern works, including some from Munch, Picasso and Dahl.

We were not particularly impressed with Munch's early work which seemed a little childish in nature, but I guess it just shows how much art changes with time; one era's breakthrough is another era's primary school project. Comparable perhaps to the fact that Einstein's one Nobel winning equations are taught at first year university and at a basic level in secondary schools.

At 1pm it was time to catch our train back to the airport. By 5pm, having flown over beautiful snowy mountain tops we had arrived in Tromsø.

We picked up our hire car, drove to the nearest supermarket to pick up dinner for tonight and lunch for the rest the week then drove directly to our cabin in Ersfjordbotn where we were greeted by Henry.

The first thing to note is that it is beautifully (and dangerously) snowy in the Troms region. The second thing to note is the view from our cabin over the fjord and mountains is absolutely amazing!

Ersfjordborn is a small fishing village about 20km from Tromsø and should be spectacular for viewing the northern lights if the weather (both on Earth and on the Sun) is right. Tonight the kp rating (essentially the likelihood of seeing the auroras) is quite low, 1-2 and the moon is bright, but sky was forecast be clear.

We waited up until midnight, supposedly the best chance of viewing the aurora. The sky remained clear but no sign of the lights :-(

At 1am, we stepped outside on our balcony and looked up. We weren't greeted by the lights but did see a shooting star - a perfect start to our 3rd wedding anniversary :-)

Exhausted, we decided to call it a night and went to bed. Fingers crossed for tomorrow night.