This has been a day of good things and not so good things.

The flight from Portland to Amsterdam was excellent. The food was good and I think I got at least 6 or more hours of sleep.

Transferring plans in Amsterdam had really long lines.  But all worked out okay.  They announced any flights leaving by 9:15 should go to the head of the line.  We said goodbye to Marty and Ellen.

I had a window seat and Sue had the aisle seat.  The woman who was between us wanted to sleep on this very short flight so we had to be very silent and almost not move. I was looking out of the widow and saw a field of wind turbines.  The surprising part was that they were out in the middle of the water.  I had never seen that before.  Of course, I tried to get a photo.

From the plane they look like little tiny dots in the water . This photo shows a very small fraction of the turbines I saw..  Sue told me that they have these off the coast of Massachusetts.  I learn something knew every day.

When we arrived in Oslo, I went to the 7/11 to buy a Sim card for my phone.  We will have Wifi in many places but it just made me feel more comfortable. Then we used the ATM to get a few NOK. The owner of the AirBnB wanted us to pay him 200 NOK to meet us earlier in the day.

It was pretty easy finding the Express Train.  A man helped us purchase tickets and the next train was waiting for us.  I was glad to have the ability to call Dieter to tell him that we were on our way.

But when we arrived at the Oslo Central Station, things got more confusing.  We stopped at the information office to ask about getting our tickets for the Nordic in a Nutshell trip we are going to do on Friday morning and discovered we already had what we needed.

Then we went to the 7/11 to purchase the 24 hour bus pass to get to our Air B&B.  It turns out they only sold us 1 hour tickets.  The woman pointed to where the busses were, but the signs said to go in another direction.  So we walked clear across the station, out the door, and to another area.  Here is where we found out that we were in the wrong place.  So we backtracked.  On the way I saw this sign for a bar that I had to photograph

In the process of asking questions and looking in my pack to find the info Dieter gave me about the bus and his the address, I think I pulled things out of my pack at least a 1/2 dozen times.  Finally we found somebody who could direct us to the bus Dieter had told us to take.  It was all very confusing.

When we got off the bus, we really had no idea in which direction to walk.  I was glad that I had purchased that sim card.  I called Dieter and he came to meet us.  But we were in for another surprise.  The apartment was up a hill and we had to drag our suitcases.  Then we discovered that the apartment was actually on the 3rd floor of the building  – more dragging suitcases.  And even though this apartment is listed as being in the city center, it is 35 to 45 minute walk to where we want to go.  Besides, we are not sure which direction we would have to walk

Now for my worst part of the day.  I looked in my pack for the small bag that held all of my gloves.  I totally emptied my pack and searched my suitcase.  Upset – yes.  I had several pairs of layers of gloves in that bag and now it was gone.  I have no idea of whether the bag dropped on the airplane or someplace when I was pulling things out of my backpack in the train station.   I wrote to the airlines but don’t have much hope of their finding them.  I will have to buy gloves in the next couple of days.

We decided to just go to the grocery to get some food for dinner. There were very nice people in the grocery store to help sort out what were were buying cause it all was in Norwegian.  We also discovered that here was no place in this area to purchase another bus ticket.  Locals use a an App to purchase tickets but foreign charge cards will not work,  We only have one key to the apartment. Jane and Sue were not interested to trying to go out again today and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get down to the center of the city.  So even though it was only about 4:30 we chose to just stay at the apartment and try to make plans for the next couple of days.

Jane and Sue have a bedroom down stairs and I am up the spiral staircase in my room.  It is actually a nice room.  But I just looked at the clock and it is only 8:40.  Oh well, tomorrow we will take the 35 to 45 minute walk to where we want to go.  We have 2 more days in Oslo.