Last time she flew over was for the skiing trip to Geilo end of January. End of April now she planned again a short break in the North.
So she had booked a flight on Friday 29/04 from Dusseldorf.
(Dusseldorf was hosting the 2011 the Eurovision Songcontest - after German Lena won 2010 in Oslo)
She landed while I was still working. Thus she just came by my office and dropped off her luggage before discovering again - as usual with her camera in the hands - new parts of Oslo which she hasn't seen yet.
Due to her many visits, Sarah knows Oslo now pretty well. So we decided to make an excursion to some place she doesn't know yet. I proposed her Fredrikstad where also I hadn't been before. Audrey, Jana and I already made in attempt in winter to go there, but in the end Jana and I didn't make it so that Audrey went alone with some friends that time.
So on Saturday's programme was now Fredrikstad, a city in Østfold county, on the east side of the Oslofjord, about 100km from Oslo southwards in direction to the Swedish border.
Fredrikstad is the best preserved fortress town in the Nordic countries consists of buildings from the 18th century and and a fortification with walls and moats from the 17th century.
After a good relaxed breakfast Sarah and I proceeded to Oslo central station, picked up our tickets and took the train at 10:00 to Fredrikstad.
Very famous and beautiful is actually the historic Old Town, a dynamic quarter of the city. In addition to the historic buildings, you will find several small shops with designer goods, arts and crafts, furniture, food and curiosities. It is also home to many galleries and a number of cosy restaurants and cafés.
We wanted to see this, that's why we came. So we sat over with the little boat, as the Old Town lies on the other side of the water.
The flea market on the town square - taking place every Saturday.
Santa Claus? On the 30th of April???
After enjoying the stroll around the Old Town, some lunch, a glimps here and there into the various shops and relaxing in the sun, we wanted to visit the fortress. We believed the below to be the fortress, but had to figure out after our visit that we have never visited the fortress as this it is not.
But whatever else it was, it was nice for some pictures.
Here were made excessive use of a function of Sarah's camera: self-timer taking 3 pictures at a time with 10 seconds in between - to change position. Of course I didn't put all results on here now :-)
On the way back to the new part of town...
... stopping in the small park waiting for our train to come at around 17:30.
When back in Oslo we didn't have to much time for dinner. Just enough time to put a frozen pizza in the oven before heading towards the "Dubliners" Irish pub. On Tuesdays and Saturdays they have those Irish live music session going on which I usually like a lot. We decided to go there for a drink together with Jana and her boyfriend Helder.
Though the session was over pretty soon and the live music band on stage later on not the best, we had a nice evening.
On Sunday I was nearly the whole day alone. Sarah was still in Oslo, but I didn't see her until the evening as Tim had made plans for taking her somewhere out of town... *no comment* :-)
In the evening though we met at Tim's place to play some "Siedler" (the "Settlers of Catan"), a pretty great board game - I'm loving it!
Also Eric joined us. He's a French tour guide working for us at Terra Nova. Every year in the summer season he comes up to Norway for accompanying some of our French groups. That evening he had just come back from a tour and - also being a big fan of this game - was eager and happy to join us.
And so we ended up having a great evening playing actually three rounds of "Siedler".
Since a round can be actually fairly long, it became quite late. So upon arrival back home, Sarah and I went straight to bed.
I had to work the next day, and Sarah had her flight back to Dusseldorf very early in the morning.
Thanks for coming, Sarah! It was again so nice to have you here. Always such a great time with you :-)
See you soon :-)
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