Warriorbern on the Move

Today's blog is dedicated to my great uncle Ron who passed away yesterday. He was a wonderful man who used to tease me about everything but I will always remember him for asking me every time he saw me to get him a permit to fish in the aquarium. He read my blog when he was able to do so and it was good to know that I was providing some entertainment for him. Thoughts and love go out to all the family. Yesterday was Constitution Day here in Norway. As I think I mentioned previously this is the celebration of independence from Sweden in 1814 and the establishment of a constitution for Norway. It is celebrated with parades for all the children through their towns and city centres. This year's parade in Levanger was the biggest ever as the parade included all the school children from the outlying areas as part of the celebrations for 1000 years since Levanger was established. The weather did not play along but Charles and I still got dressed up and walked into town to watch the p...

It has been raining for a lot of the time since we got home on Thursday evening. On the one hand this has been nice because it has made us slow down and relax but on the other hand it has put a dampener on doing things outside. Today we had planned to go through to Trondheim for the day but the rain was pouring down and it was only 6 degrees so we have postponed the trip until Wednesday. It is still vivid in my mind how miserable I was in Trondheim last year because it was so cold! Our alternate plan for today was to drive around the fjord in Levanger. It was nice to get out and here are a few photos from the mini-trip:   I can't get over the difference between November last year and this May this year. Everything is so green now. Here are two photos of the same place ... guess which one was taken when :-) It seems that sky is lightening as I write so hopefully we can go for a walk a little later. Tomorrow is Constitution Day in Norway. It is a public holiday ...

Our final morning in Svalbard was magnificent! There wasn't a breath of wind and the water in the fjord was like a mirror. We didn't do much except pack our bag, chat to Tonje and play with Elise. At noon we took our bag to the airport and handed it in before returning to the apartment for an hour before going back to the airport to leave. We had one last view of Longyearbyen through the air plane window: Then is was all systems go and we took off for Troms ø . The pilot was a regular travel guide and we flew low and slow over the Russian part of Svalbard. I could not choose which photos to show so here are a whole lot. Despite a pumping wind we had a smooth landing in Troms ø  after flying low passed Troms ø  Island. I was a little nervous about re-entering Norway after the visa fiasco but there were no problems. I am so happy to have two Norway stamps in my passport! We caught a taxi to our hotel, the Rica Grand Nordic. To get to the hotel from...