Good news people – according to Norwegian newspapers, Avinor will introduce free wi-fi on Norwegian airports very soon. The rumor says that the free wi-fi will be available already in May/June 2011 on the larger airports in Norway.  I was just at Geneva airport and I was happy and surprised to see that they had a free wi-fi network and hopefully the setup will be as easy on the Norwegian airports as well. But I guess time will tell

The Airbus A380 is not that uncommon anymore as a few airlines have now got it in service. But it seems like there is still quite an attraction connected to this giant plane and there is still interest for the plane in Norway (well, at least amongst the plane-geeks and in the press. Anyway, Lufthansa has announced that their Airbus A380 is coming on a visit to Norway (Oslo) on September 15th at 5 PM. I’m not sure that average Joe will be able to get a glimpse inside but at least you can see it land I had the pleasure of flying Emirates A380 last year and this year and here is a summary of the trip last year. This year I used it when flying from Dubai to Sydney so I got to spend many, many hours on the plane. But I wouldn’t mind trying out the Lufthansa A380 to see how that compares

24 hours timelapse of the Pulpit rock (Preikestolen) near Stavanger in Norway. I have been there many times as you can see here: http://gardkarlsen.com/preikestolen.htm . Thanks to O-fagspatruljen for posting this on Youtube

I’m a big fan of the Google maps but the main problem when it comes to my hometown Stavanger has been that the downtown area has been very blurry when checking out the satelite image. But a few weeks back this was fixed and now you can finally check out how Stavanger looks from above. This combines with Google Streetview will now give you an idea of what to expect when you visit Stavanger

In Bergen you can take the cable railway known as Fløibanen to the top of the 320 meter high Fløyen mountain. From there you get an amazing view of the city of Bergen and the surrounding area. Check out http://www.floibanen.no/ for more information. If you are coming to Bergen it is well worth the 70 kroner (about 12 USD) for the round trip ticket to enjoy the view.

A few years back Google introduced the service known as Street View. They basically take  car and drive through the city strrets and they take photos. This is linked up to Google Maps and this means that you can take virtual walks in cities like London, New York, Paris etc. But now the turn has finally come to my beloved hometown Stavanger It seems like the photos have been taken on a pretty nice autumn day last year and you can walk around a lot of the streets in downtown Stavanger. So the only thing missing now Google is a good satellite image of the city center itself!! So start by a walk from the Norwegian Petroleum museum, Or maybe walk past the iron age farm, check out the beach at Sola, check out the view of the city from the bridge leading over to Hundvåg etc.  Welcome to Stavanger…both virtually and in real life

My wife and I went to Tromsø in the end of Janauary 2010 and I have made a trip report with some photos and you can find it on this page.  We had a great dinner at Emma’s Drømmekjøkken, we did some snowmobile driving with Lyngsfjord Adventure to see northern lights, we took the cable car Fjellheisen up to the mountain top Storsteinen, visited Polaria and Polar museum etc. I hope that the trip report can be of some use to others that are going there. Get in touch on gardkarlsen@hotmail.com if you have any questions or comments.

Regards
Gard
http://gardkarlsen.com – trip reports and pictures

We went to Tromsø in the north of Norway for a weekend and we took Fjellheisen (see http://www.fjellheisen.no/) to the mountain top Storsteinen. You get a lovely view from the 421 meter peak. It costs 99 kroner for an adult to take the cable car to the top. Here is a short video to show a bit of the experience – with commentary from yours truly

I came to Tromsø at night and the hotel is only about 10 minutes from the airport by taxi and it was about 135 kroner (about 23 US dollars at the moment). There is also a bus service but it is not the frequent.

We had room 453 located on the 4th floor and it was a pretty big room and it cost 1170 kroner per night (200 US dollars) for two including taxes and breakfast. The entire room had a rust red carpet, 2 windows but not with much of a of a view as we looked over to another section of the hotel. The room had a two seat black leather sofa and a similar style chair and a low table. There was also a low table, a desk with a chair and a flat screen TV mounted on the wall. The TV was facing the leather chair and it was not possible to twist the TV towards the bed – I think this would have been a great feature. When lying in bed it was hard to see the TV image and it was also hard to use the remote control to change channels (maybe due to the angle?).

There was also a wardrobe with regular hangers which I think is nice, a small safe where you put in your own pin code and a small mini bar. I think a soft drink like Coke was about 42 kroner (about 7 US Dollar). In the hall leading into the room there was a small ironing board and one of those cheap, horrible irons. The room was equipped with some pretty funky and modern lamps but it was hard to control the lightning individually as there was one main switch that killed all the light.

The bathroom was tiled in white and green tiles on the walls and black tiles on the floor. There were some amenities – the usual shower and shampoo and a lotion and the bathtub had a shower option with a glass panel to avoid water from splashing everywhere. I still think the bathtubs should be removed from hotel rooms as I never use it but maybe I’m different from your average hotel guest. One major flaw in the bathroom was the fact that there was no heating in the floor! At least it didn’t feel like it when we were there and hence the bathroom was quite cold and when we took a shower the water would run down from the cold walls. To compensate the ventilation suction was so strong that it felt like there was a constant breeze when we were in the shower.

When entering the room there was a sign saying “Welcome to your business class room” and there was a list of items that should be included. The problem was that several of the items were not there. It would have been great to have slippers and a bathrobe as it was quite cold in Tromsø when we were there and the heating barely seemed to keep up with the cold outside the windows. There should also have been a Nespresso coffee machine but the only thing that was left in the cupboard were some Nespresso capsules. When I mentioned this to the reception I got a water boiler instead which was nice of course but not the same as a Nespresso machine. A morning paper should also be included in the business room and we got it on a Friday but not on the following day. Pay TV was also included in this but the TV signal was pretty bad a times and when watching movies on the pay TV a piece of another film would keep on popping up in the film we were watching.

Radisson Blu has a 100% guest satisfaction which I think is just a PR stunt. I’m not 100% satisfied with our stay and guess I should have complained about more of the issues that I have mentioned above. But I think when they have listed what a room should contain it should not be up to the guest to point out all the things that are missing. And before I stop complaining: the iron is really lousy. I do understand that you have to keep the ironing board small but there should have been a proper steam iron. I assume that a lot of the people that get this room are people that are there on business and that would like to iron a shirt before going to a meeting. Getting a shirt to look nice with that iron would take no less than a miracle.

But let us focus on some of the things that were good. The location of the hotel is very good. Located right on the harbor it is within minutes from most of the attractions in Tromsø. The breakfast was very good and included scrambled eggs, bacon, sautéed mushrooms and you could also order eggs in various ways. Apart from that there was a nice selection of fruit, cereal, bread and pastry etc. And I cannot remember seeing tran at a hotel breakfast before – that is oil of cod liver that we Norwegian normally take with breakfast in the wintertime There is free wifi in the rooms and I think this is a great feature. But I did have some problems getting my iPhone online on the wifi.

All in all this is not a bad hotel at all and it clearly deserved a 4 rating in my opinion even if I was tempted to rate it three as some of the expectations were not met. I have complained to Radisson Blu before on issues and I have yet to get a proper answer in line with their 100% guest satisfaction. If you are looking for a hotel in Tromsø, Radisson Blu is not a bad option at all.

Maybe you think that travel guides are a new invention – well, think again. Books describing journeys have been around for centuries but I guess they have changed a bit as more and more people have the chance to travel. I came to think of this the other day when I heard on the news that the book “Northern Travel” by Bayard Taylor has finally been translated into Norwegian. I guess it was about time as it was written in 1857! The book is a tale of Bayard Taylor’s trip to Sweden and Norway and on his trip he gets to visit Bergen, Oslo, the fjords, see the midnight sun etc. Norway has changed a lot over the last 150 years – we have gained full independent once again, we have gone from being one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the richest nation in the world etc etc. In that respect I think all Norwegians should read this book to get a glimpse of Norway anno 1857. Taylor describes food in Bergen as being horrible, he talks to the lepers and the lack of hygiene, he describes Norwegian jealousy towards the Swedes etc. If you want to read the book you can actually do it online. Thanks to Google Books you can find it here.