French Finale

My final train ride in France went without error. After leaving Alpe d’Huez at 7:30am, I arrived in Paris at around 1pm.

I was again CouchSurfing, but as it was a Friday my hosts had to work so we had arranged to meet at the Hoche metro station at 6:30. This gave me five and a half hours to kill and after wandering lost around the complex Gare du Lyon for about half an hour, I finally found the luggage check which turned out to be incredibly expensive. Welcome to Paris.

I checked my bags, checked the tourist information centre, then checked my new map. After ripping the map in half by mistake, I grabbed another which showed the routes which the tour busses take. I figured that I’d leave the main sites ’till the next day and so set off to find the French National Library. This, I gathered, is supposed to be a modern architectural centrepiece, and it was very cool. Four seperate buildings in L shapes donned the corners of the structure (in the middle was great public space and a large cluster of treess), the passage between them underground.

French National Library

After the library, I ventured back over the river via a bridge which I guess was specifically added when the library was built. On the otherside, opposite the library, was some kind of sports centre – a crazy geometric building covered in grass, skylights, and bright blue metal framing.

Sports Centre

This also appeared to be a popular youth hangout as it was crawling with teenagers who I thought should have been in school. I passed these kids and began to walk back towards the train station. I was walking along thhe river, under a bridge, when I spotted a very nice homeless set-up complete with tents, tables, chars, appliances (I’m not sure how they got power for them) and even a christmas tree!

Homeless setup

When I got back to the station I still had a lot of time until I had to head west on the metro so I began to walk towards Bastille, a very large and famous round-about.

Bastille

Now I had to make the decision. What to see. I decided on making a brief appearance at Notre Dame but trying not see too much of it. And after walking down a street which I thought was the right one for a while, getting lost, and then getting reorientated, I spotted the small island on which the cathedral was located.

Notre Dame

I then crossed on to the island, but kinda tried not to see too much of Notre Dame itself – I wanted to keep it until I had more time – so just passed by and went on my way. About an hour later I was back at the train station and ready to take the metro to Hoche.

This was crazy, it was rush hour and here I was trying to take the busiest metro in the world with two bags full of junk! I even had to change lines. But it was OK, I made it to Hoche faster than I thought (with enough time to take a little walk around) and soon met my CouchSurfing hosts, Clair and Francis (who was actually from a French owned island off the south-east coast of Madagascar called Reunion). We walked back to their place, had dinner, talked about all sorts of things and had a pretty good evening. Both Clair and Francis were amazingly hospitable and were offering me things left, right, and centre. It turned out that I was the first person that they had hosted!

From this point of my time in Paris, I must be honest, I was a bit lazy! I think I was just tired from all the partying I did in the alps. But I made sure I saw all the big sites. the next morning I got my self out of bed and headed back to Notre Dame to get a proper look. And after all the cathedrals that I had seen in this trip, I have to say I was a little disappointed. This one gets talked up by everyone, but in some ways it dosen’t even compare to many of the others I’ve seen, especially the Italian ones. Here is a picture of it anway:

Notre Dame

From here I headed towards the famous gallery, the Louvre. Again I was lazy, I decided not to go inside. Partly because of time (two days to see the whole thing!) and partly because of money. It’s becoming rather skint and I can’t afford 9 Euros to go to an art gallery, as much as I would have liked to. The buildings and the glass pyramid were especially impressive though! I hadn’t realised that it was so big.

The Louvre

From the Louvre I headed through the massive gardens which extend in front of it. At the other end of them was a small christmas fair with a pretty large ferris wheel. It was here that I caught my first glimpse of the famous Eiffel Tower, and it was then that I though “yeah, I’m really in Paris”.

It was beginning to get dark so I decided to head back. I was supposed to text Clair when I returned to the apartment block so that she could let me in. I was late and my phone had decided to run out of money and not let me top up the credit. So I headed to the apartment and snuck inside with another resident. I got up to level 7 and realised that it was the wrong building! So back down I went and over to the other building. There was no one to let me in so I just skulked around the entrance until a group of people opened it, not thinking twice about who I could be or what I was doing there. I then headed up to the right level 7 and Francis let me in. That night we were going to go out but in the end decided against it as Francis was sick, Clair was getting sick, none of their friends could make it and I was tired.

The following day Clair and Francis had said they would take me out to Versailles so around lunchtime (after a good sleep in) we got in the car and drove out there. The main attraction in Versailles is the palace which has been home to many a French king and queen.

Palace at Versailles

Inside the palace’s grounds and also inside the palace itself were a number of sculptural works from American artist Jeff Koons. The first one which I saw made for a pretty cool photo with the palace refelected in it.

Royal Reflection

The inside of the palace was pretty cool, but to be honest, for the price that you pay it was definitely not as good as the palace in Brussels which was free. There were many dark rooms with large numbers of paintings of past residents, historical beds and furniture, and a terrible audio guide which really didn’t tell you anything you couldn’t read on the signs. The highlight of this palace was the gardens which I hear are very popular and much more beautiful in the summer.

Gardens at Versailles

That evening was another quiet one. Apart from a trip to a street which houses a huge amount of electronics stores to get some things for Clair, we spent most of the night trying to get the French television system to allow us to watch a French film with English subtitles. This  did not end up working, so we began to watch 300 but soon all of us were pretty sleepy and we ended up turning it off and headed off to bed.

The next day was a Monday and Francis and Clair had to go off to work. It was time again for me to see some sights, so mid-morning I set off to make sure I didn’t miss the sights that Paris is known for. My first stop was the Arch de Triomphe, set in the middle of a huge round-about and extremely expensive to visit the inside of. I took a few photos  and then started to make my way towards the Eiffel Tower.

Arch de Triomphe

The Eiffel Tower is big. It was even bigger than I thought it was and it was very cool to finally see it in all it’s glory.

Eiffel Tower

I then headed down towards it. The metal framework is amazing and it made for some pretty cool silhouette photos.

Eiffel silhouette

After a little bit of decision making (time was running short), I decided to ascend the tower. The line took about 25 mintues which was a pretty good amount of time considering people queue for hours in the summer. I chose on of the legs which only offers the stairs and just under 400 stairs later I had made it to the first level. Over 200 stair more I was at the second level. The view was pretty cool from here although the day was rather overcast. This low cloud prevented me from spending further money and taking the lift all the way to the top (which was in fact in the clouds).

View from the Eiffel Tower

By the time I got back down it had started to rain so I got on the metro and began to head back to Hoche. That evening was an interesting dinner. I had told Francis that I had neve eated escargot before, so in no time he had whipped up an appertiser and I was eating some sort of pesto roasted snails – not bad at all really but I found it a bit hard to stomach them, something most probably psychological. After this we had hotdogs with salad and “French” dijon mustard which actaully almost killed me. I put way too much on thinking it was like American mustard and it felt like I was drinking vodka infused with chili peppers – I was crying and sniffing annd Francis thought it was funny!

The next morning I was off again. An early train to the airport and a flight for just over an hour saw me land in London. It was Christmas time!

Berning Down the House!

From Zurich I made my way to Bern. I had intially planned to take the Luzern-Interluken route but since I had already done this the day before, it was just a one hour trip. I arrived in Bern at about midday to find my next host, Regula wandering around the station looking for me just as I was doing for her. Lucky for me that we found each other at that time, as my train was late and she was about to leave.

In an old house near the train staion which usually had a bar, cafe, womens area, theatre and holds frequent parties, a once a month flea market was being held. Here you could by almost everything you could think of from scooters and bikes to console games, candlesticks and tea. I had to hold myself back as I saw so much stuff that I would have liked to buy but unfortunately can’t carry around with me. We spent a few hours looking around the markets and then decided to head back to her place.

Crazy bicycle for sale

Regula lived in a very old house which was situated inside an industrial area in a town about half an hour out of Bern called Oberburg. This industrial area has a building right next to the house which begins some sort of extreme hammering each morning at seven o’clock which shakes the entire house, continuing until five in the evening. Asides from Regula living there, there was also Nicole and Dino, a suitably hippy couple, another girl whoes name I never found out, and one more guy and another couple who were away at the time. For me this was great as I was given my own room which included its own fireplace to keep me toasty warm in the freezing nights. That night Regula, Nicole, Dino and I just hung out, ate some amazing food cooked by Nicole (who should be a chef), and listened to music. I spent half the evening dashing up and down the stairs to keep my little fire going.

The old house

The next day I was to meet up with a girl called Flurina who has contacted me the previous night on CouchSurfing, asking if I’d like to be shown around Bern. So at around midday, I met her in the Bern station and we set out on our mission. The first place to visit was the house where I had been at the flea market the previous day. I had wanted to get a betting picture of  it.

Flea market location

Next we wandered down to one of Bern’s many bridges. Following this we made our way to the highest tower in Bern at the XXXXXXX church. It was many more stairs that I had predicted and after we fought our way up with a number of stops, we found the the view was totally worth it. Unfortunately over half of the tower was closed to it was next to impossible to get a decent view from the other side.

View from tower

After we headed back down, Flurina suggested that next on the agenda should be “bears and fountains”, so we went for a walk towards the Bern bears. For some reason or another, there is a pit in the middle of the city which for numerous years has held a number of bears. It’s a horrible concrete pit and many people oppose it. The bears look so sad in there, just sitting around waiting for food and most probably wishing that the winter would become cold enough to hibernate.

Bern's Bear

Next were the fountains. Not as amazing as many of the other fountains which I have seen on this trip, but pretty cool as a number of them (which run up the middle of the main pedestrian streets) are statues of folktales. The one which is the best and I think every one agrees with is this one of a man eating small (bad mannered) children – a tale parents would often tell to their kids to keep them in line!

Child eater!

A walk down the riverside followed lunch, and when we were about ten minutes down stream (which was 6.66 degrees by the way!) I spotted the zoo on the otherside of the river which Flurina seemed to think was free. So back we headed and over a bridge which we had passed. Then we just walked in! Past some ponies and mules, fluffy rabbits and then… RACOOONS! My god I just keep having child-like exciting moments! So mischevious looking and so cute at the same time.

Racooooooon :)

Onward we walked up the hill to find a pond full of pink flamingos. I find these birds hilarious, especially the way the walk around in the water. They would move around to find the sun in flocks, flapping their wings to gain all the sun they could get.

Flamingos

Our trip to the zoo was our last activity for the day, and as the sun was setting we headed back to the train station where I thanked Flurina for showing me around and then set off back to Oberburg for another evening of music and hanging out.

The following day Nicole had no work and so decided to come with me on a trip to Gruyères to visit the H.R. Giger museum. This is the guy who invented the alien from the film Alien. It was lucky that she came along as it involved 3 trains and a bus, plus numerous amounts of German and French speaking. On arrival we had about an hour to spare so we decided to have a look around Gruyères, a very quaint little medival town set on the edge of the Swiss Alps.

Gruyères

At 1pm the museum opened. This place was crazy, the mind of this man insane. There were so many amazing pictures of creatures that I could never dream of. Very dark and for some reason, also very erotic. They had this little “adults only” section which seemed pretty pointless as almost all of his work had some weird alien sexuality to it. Unfortunately you were not alowed to take photos inside, but this was on the outside:

Babies in a gun

And there was even a bar which he designed, indeed also crazy:

Giger bar

And soon it was time to make the long trek back to Oberburg. We were not back for long when Regula came in from work, covered in snow! “It’s snowing!” she called, and looking out the window, it definitely was. So after another beautiful dinner made by Nicole, she, Dino and I headed outside into the already 4-5″ snow to play around. Snow fights were not an option of choice, and I was amazed to find that you actaully can roll snow into huge balls, resulting in by far the best snowman I have ever built.

Snowman!

This went on for a few hours and by then we were all tired and soaked and ready to sleep, but not after more music and hanging out, though!

I had initially planned to leave the following day, but it took me a while to find a place to stay so I spent one more day in Bern. This day I used for doing nothing. I headed into Bern to get a train ticket and then just spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and watching the snow out the window. A quiet evening and my time in Bern was over, again going so fast!

The next morning I was off to Cannes!

An Italian List

I’m am around three or more places behind now, and I reckon that it’ll take far too long to catch up if I write a 1500 word essay for each one, so I’m swapping back to the list format to deal with all these Italian towns that I’ve visited over the past two weeks.

The morning after I arrived in Rome, I got up earlier than ever to go and meet Sarah at the airport. She’d come over from NZ to visit me and travel around Italy, have some fun and see the sights. We checked out Rome, Venice and Florence with a few trips on the side – so here we go!

Rome

• Rome is a very walkable city. We  just began to wander and ended up in many interesting places. On the first day, this is all we did. Just walked around and tried to organise ourselves for the coming fornight, figuring what we wanted to see and where we wanted to go. This popped out of nowhere though
  

  One Colosseum please!

• On that first day, we also saw glimpses of the Roman Forum and Palatino (which unfortunately we never made it into). Along with many, many, many churches, there was the Arch of Constintine.
  

  Arch of Constintine

• One amusing thing which we saw was the Running of the Nigerians. In all of the cities which we visited (and also in Athens) you can find shady Africans trying to procure you fake Gucci and Prada bags, sungasses and various other things you don’t really want. This is obviously not legal, as you can see them on the constant look out. Popular tourist spots are a haven for these guys, and there must have been no less than 50 or 60 of them at the Colosseum. They stand around, harrassing you as you pass: “Hello, hello, hello, cheap bag, hello, hello, half price, hello”, etc. Then one spots the police, and it’s the oddest situation I’ve ever seen. Sixty men carrying white sheetss and big blue plastic bags full of merchandise are sprinting through the crowds of tourists, swarming for a place to hide. Very crazy to see, I recommend it if you are in Rome.
• We ate way, way, way too much pizza. I don’t think I could handle one for at least a few months now. Pasta is a bit easier to stomach, but I’m almost over Italian food. A proper breakfast would be nice too.
• We did go inside the Colosseum:
  

  Inside the Colosseum

• Outside there were guys dressed up as ancient Romans trying to get you to pose with them for photos all the while trying to stay out of photos from the public. Must be a very stressful job.
• Ruins are all over and everywhere with in the city. Amazing!
• We took a tour through varioous crypts and catacombs of Rome. This was very interesting. The first place we went to, the Capucian Crypt, was 5 or 6 rooms decorated with the bones of thousands of human bodies. There were chandalliers made of bones, patterns all over the walls, hourglasses with wings made of pelvis bones, the full skeleton with a scithe representing death, and horrifying of all was the numberous mummified bodies of monks set around in positions, one who still had a beard on his face. Also in the tour was the Catacombs of Domitella; 11 miles of underground burial passageways which delve 100ft below the surface. Most graves had been removed, but some were still intact.
• We walked the poo gauntlett. A beautiful riverside walk under huge trees, chriping with the sound of birds. Beautiful until we realised there was poo dropping all around us!
• From Rome we took a day trip to the ruins of Pompeii. This was amazing! I was amazed at how large and intact they are. There was hardly anyone there and you could just walk around, getting lost inside houses and temples. This place is so big you need a map to figure out just where you are.
  

  Pompeii

• On the Wednesday we went to the Vatican and happened to see my good old friend, The Pope.
  

  Mr Pope

• While we were there, we also spent a huge amount of time walking around and getting lost in the Vatican Museums which hold an exceptional amount of paintings, sculptures, and other amazing works including my favourite, and entire gallery of ancient maps, some even made out of tapastries. Also part of this is everyone’s favourite Sistine Chapel which holds the ceiling fresco God creates Adam by Michelangelo. To be honest, after walking  around all this art and through numerous decorated churches and chapels, I found this famous work to be rather underwhelming and no way near as large as I had pictured.
• In Rome, the food was really not that great at most of the places we visited. The Italian style pizza is very bland in most regards, and I felt that the lasagnes that I had in The Netherlands and Germany were much better than the ones which I had in Italy. I wanted it cooked in a little pot damnit!
• We also saw such sites as the Spanish Steps which were covered in people, and Trivi Foutain which was pretty impressive. People throw money over their shoulders once to ensure a return to Rome and twice for a wish. Sarah got hit by flying money from above!

Trivi Fountain by night

Venice

• Venice is made up of 400 little islands separated by canals and connected by bridges. It’s located in the north of the Italy. What a maze this place is! At pretty much all times you can’t look straight down a street for more than 100m without it turning a corner. Most of the streets are about 2 meters wide and you just keep going around in circles or off on wild tangents of incorrect direction. If there was a place to get lost, that is what we did in Venice. Just look at a map to see what I mean.
• The canals were everywhere and awesome. It was impressive to see a city which has it’s main transport by water and absolutely no cars. Even the police , fire and ambulance come by water!
  

  Just one canal

• We saw some of the Nigerian bag dealers get chased by under cover police and caught.
• Our very own gondola adventure though the canal was schedualed and on afternoon we were paddled around the city by a man who seemed very disinterested in being a gondola driver. It was cool to see the city from the perspective of the canals, though. It gives a good insight into how the residents actually live.
  

  Gondola ride

• We went on a “ghost walk”-type tour which took us around the back alleys and what are supposed to be the scarier parts of the city where horrible crimes have been committed and ghosts like headless lovers are often seen. It was also a good way to find sights that we hadn’t found earlier, like this cool snail staircase:
  

  Snail House

• On our final day we checked out the 11th International Architecture exhibition which was amazing. Heaps of very interesting ideas were shown by at least 30 countries. One of the coolest displays was the Belgian one, which just consisted of a house with white walls, a few chairs, and confetti EVERYWHERE! It was very cool!
  

  Confetti

• On the day we were leaving, it began to snow and the water began to rise and smell. I hear that they have just had the highest floods in something like 22 years.

Florence

• We visited the Duomo church and it’s baptistry.
  

  Duomo

• We climed the 467 stairs inside the dome of the Duomo church, and came out to an amazing view over the city.
  

  View over Florence

• We spent time each day browsing the endless markets of Italian made clothing and accessories, only to buy nearly nothing.
• We took a day trip to Pisa to check out the leaning tower. It was a beautiful day and the tower was leaning just as much as it should, 4° I’m told.
  

  Leaning tower!

• We visited the Uffizi Gallery which houses Botticelli’s Birth of Venus  and numerous other amazing paintings, all overshadowed by about 5000 images of Christ. We also managed to see Michaelangelo’s statue of David which I thought was the most amazing piece of “important” art which I had seen. Very big and very well made. Truely epic!

And that was a brief summary of Sarah and I’s two weeks in Italy. I’m sorry it began to the more and more brief during the last part, but I am so far behind that I need the time to write the next three posts, let alone getting all the pictures up.

After this, I dropped Sarah off at the airport and headed back to Rome for two nights. Back to CouchSurfing. And then I was off, off to check out Cinque Terre on the recommedation of my good friends Prasna and Frankie.

Back to Sweden: Borlänge

After an excessive trip from Tromsø which saw me flying from Tromso to Bodø, then taking the night train to Trondheim, and one hour later taking another seven hour train to Oslo, sleeping the night there, getting up at 5:30am and flying to Stockholm, then taking a two and a half hour train, I arrived in Borlänge.

Borlänge is a small town of not very many people, but it is the home of my childhood au pair, Marie. I figured, and mum said I had, to visit Marie while I was in Sweden. It had been fourteen years since I had last seen her, and meeting her on the platform was interesting, she didn’t look anything like how she had all those years ago. It actaully turns out that how I remember her is the time that she had a perm! Anyway, irrellevant as that is, we, her and I and her two daughters (seven and nine) set off from the train station soon after I arrived.

Marie had decided to take me to a little river side cafe which, when we turned up, was full of Swedish bikers! They soon left and we sat down, had a coffee and talked for a while.

Riverside Cafe

She then suggested that we take a walk. And off we went. Along the road and towards the local open-air museum which contained a number of historic houses and some sort of Swedish style flag pole which is danced around during mid-summer.

Open-Air Museum

The site was set river side and the autumn coulours were amazing. Red and golden trees everywhere, with evergreens interspersed between. Amazing.

Old Rowboats and a River

After this, we took a look at the oldest church in the town (I think it may have been from the 1300s!), and its amazing bell tower.

Autumn Bell Tower

Next we visited a spring which is well-known in these parts. It’s a place where people go to have BBQs in the summer, children run around on school trips spotting birds at 4am, and in the winter they may even ice skate here.

Natural Spring Water

While we were at the spring, we took a short walk in the surrounding forest, complete with bird houses and beautiful autumn trees.

Grumpy? Walkin' the walk!

That night we had some delicous tacos made by Marie and sat around talking for hours. She even showed me her photo albums from her trips to New Zealand. The photos brought back many memories, especially of her with the crazy perm she’d got! She told me all sorts of stories about her time in New Zealand. It turns out that she has seen much more o the country that I have, and that was fourteen years ago! Later that night her husband came home and I ended up looking at another bunch of photos of his trip to Nepal and India.

The following day, both Marie and her husband had the day off so they could show me around. The first outing we made was into the Swedish forest to see the cave which Per Gynt, the fabled huntsman, hid inside. (He is also the subject of a play by Norweigian playwrite Henrik Ibsen.)  The walk was beautiful, the forest was amazing with its autumn colours in full flourish.

Autumn Forest

After walking for a kilometer or two we got to the cave which was much smaller than I had thought it would be. Regardless of that, I decided to get inside it.

Inside Per Gynt's cave

After this we wandered into the forest a little further and ended up at Per Gynt’s gallows and also in a position for an amazign view over the local forest.

View from the Gallows

Later on we headed off to pick up Marie’s daughters, Gabriella and Rebecka from school. They finish at 1:30pm at their school so had time to make an excursion with us in the afternoon. We headed to the next town, Falun, 15km away, to take a tour through was what Europe’s largest Copper mine.

Falun Coppermine

We joined a tour which was to show us the mine and go through the history. It turns out the the mine had been running  for close to 900 years when it was closed in 1992. It has been set up as a place to made the common Swedish red paint and also for touring. The tour started at the top (the picture above) and then decended into the mine.

Decending the mine

For around 45 minutes we toured through the mine, seeing the 250m mine shaft, the old equipment which was used inside, we were told ancient stories about the ghosts of the mine, and at one stage all the lights were turned off. This was the darkest place I have ever been, there was absolutely no light, it was impossible to even adjust to the darkness.

That night was my last in Borlänge. The following day I headed back on the train to Stockholm.

Further North: Bodø

The train to Bodø was old, rickety, uncomfortable, and I couldn’t afford to buy a sleeping ticket so I sat awake for 10 hours through the night, listening to music and watching the darkness fly by. I must have fallen asleep at one point, because next thing I knew it was light outside and we were careering though snow-covered mountains which slowely morphed back into green, yellow and brown autumn trees. At 9:30am I arrived in Bodø.

I had about five hours to spare before I was picked up by my CouchSurfing host, Susanne. So I found myself a map, glanced over a local guide book and set out for yet another fort, this time at the end of a small peninsula which marks the entrance to the Bodø harbour.

Fort on the Peninsula

The walk took about an hour to get there, passing some amazing mountainous islands to the north before arriving at the very end of the peninsula which looked back over the city of Bodø.

The Mountains Beyond

By this time I was wearing four layers including a marino jersey and a down jacket, a polar fleece scarf, woolly hat, gloves (thanks Mum!) and more and I was still cold. It was all the fault of the wind – it was out of control and bringing down the temperature by probably around 5 degrees to what would have been close to 0 degrees. I couldn’t feel my face at all!

But never mind the cold, there was more exploring to be done. My next stop was the marina which I walked to the end of, took a few pictures and left because it was just as cold out there was it was at the fort.

I then walked all over the seemingly-small town for the next few hours, my legs almost ready to collapse, and soon it was 2pm, time to be picked up by Susanne.

She had told me that she was going to show me a few sights around Bodø, so off we drove, accompanied by Susanne’s friend Lynn to the world’s largest maelstromm, or whirlpool. It was hard to see the actual whirling of the water, but you could tell that the current was very dangerous.

At Saltstraumen

Afterwards we drove off into the mountains to try and get close to the snow. The scenery was absolutely stunning with fjords, rivers, forests, and snow-topped mountains.

Nature!

Later we returned to Susanne’s apartment, chatted nonsensically for some time, then she left to support the local football team. I knew they were yellow, so I watched a team of yellow-shirted players live on television lose to another team. She came home, they had lost, but it turned out that I had watched the wrong game!

The next day it was raining. I spend the morning hanging out in the public library. In the afternoon the rain died down and I decided to head out to the open-air Nordic museum. This place was cool, it contained a number of very old houses and boat sheds built on the rocky shores of Bodøjorn.

Ancient Boat House

After wandering around amoungst these houses, I decided to go for a bit of a tramp up into the surround bush where I found lots of trees bearing red berries, and old bunkers.

Bunker

I walked on and found a strange and makeshift looking bridge, so I crossed it.

Little Bridge

On the otherside I found a place that appeared to be named Løveskogen. It had a chillout bivowac of sorts and a number of hammocks and swings. It reminded me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Løveskogen

Soon it was time to go so I started my trek back towards Bodø city, met up with Susanne, had some dinner and then she drove me to the airport. I was off to Tromsø.