USA, UK and Norway

Today was good, but not quite as we had planned. First we went for breakfast at a Hartley recommended place - called Sonny, like our Sonny! - and it was very good. Excellent coffee, fresh seedy bread, tasty cheese, soft boiled egg! And a great juice - green colour with apple, ginger, tumeric and something whose name I didn’t know ...anyway, it was tangy and delicious. So that was a good start, and then we set off to go to the National Museum with the Viking exhibition. We had seen it was open every day, but hadn’t read the next line which said from October to May open Tuesday to Sunday...so again we missed the Vikings!! But we had heard quite a lot in Norway, so we cut our losses and headed for the royal palaces.

First to the Rosenborg palace, which houses the thrones, crown jewels, and exhibits the rooms of the palace as lived in by Christian IV (I think, there are many Christians and Frederiks)...and that was excellent. Spent quite a while there, and then moved on to the Marienborg which is where the residence of the current royals is, but there are several palaces round in an octagon, and one is on show. Also excellent, furniture as lived in by Christian IX who was the “father-in-law of Europe” as most of his children married royalty - one being Alexandra who married Edward VII of Great Britain.

So that took us through to about 3 o’clock when we had a coffee break, and I have a slight complaint. We cannot find what we call Danish pastries. It is like looking for what we call Sicilian olives in Sicily. They don’t exist. I just love the pastries with vanilla cream inside, with fruit, almond croissants, pain au raisins etc, and thought this would be the home of them, and the very best. We find them in France, Italy, Spain, Sydney...but here every bakery just has croissants, and nice bread, and cake things rather like muffins, and cinnamon rolls. Anyway, our hunt was fruitless. We did finally see some more like what we were looking for when later we came to the markets where there was a French chain - Brioche d’Orée - but in France we would never go there as there are so many better ones.

As usual we took umbrellas as it threatened to rain, but never actually did! It does rain at night, as it was wet each morning. Anyway again lucky as it is miserable to walk squelching along and getting dripping, and we did a fair bit of walking. These palaces, and the museum are quite a ways apart.

We had planned to go to a restaurant for dinner that we had seen. Amr had spied the bouillabaisse and it looked good...but when wandering later, after drifting into yet more furniture stores and sitting on their chairs and sofas, we found the market. Lovely market, you can buy things to take home and cook, and you can eat and drink at some stalls, and we found a tapas bar which just beckoned us. So we ate there instead. It had all our favourite food, and it all felt right, and it was so good just to order what you wanted as you ate it...I think we have had so many meals that it makes you lose your appetite. Anyway, this was just lovely, and we got back quite early and have packed up as much as possible and will set off tomorrow morning. First the flight to London, then connecting to the air New Zealand flight to Los Angeles. This is the thing - will we and the bags make the connection successfully as they are non related tickets! Hopefully all will work out. We stay and draw breath at LAX hotel for 2 nights before taking the flight to Sydney.Read more