A week in Tromso

We stayed two nites at one of the Frogner Apartments in Oslo before flying off to Tromso on Staurday afternoon.

In Oslo the children visited Heldi and Nisa's family and spent time hanging out with their children Shala (14), Shekka (12), Tariq (4) and Zayyid (almost 1). They were buddies at ISS in Stavanger the previous year prior to Heldi's move to Oslo a month ago. There really wasn't much to do in Oslo when all the kids wanted to do was hangout at home and play. We managed to persuade them to take a stroll to Vigdalen's Park in Oslo so they fool around some more, outdoors this time.

We flew to Tromso on Saturday and stayed a week at Riverhouse, a holiday house in a small fishing village of Oldervik, about an hour's drive from Tromso city. Population of Oldervik stood at 100 but probably just saw less than 10 of them walking about during the day. A quiet little village by the sea, main occupation seems to be fishery.

Throughout the week our main activities were birdwatching though the kids had two full days roaming about Polaria, the Polar Museum, Tromso Museum, The Science Center, as well as a quick photo op at the Arctic Cathedral. Tromso is a very scenic city with majestic snow covered mountains all around.

The area nearby has plenty of venues for outdoorsy kind of activities, exactly what we were looking for. As this was our first visit, most of the time we were just gawking at the scenery.

 Next trip we'll do more ... like visit the outlying islands to look for whales, see the seabirds and visit the island which has one family of 5 living on it, Musvaer just of Vengasoya.

A week in a lighthouse in Lista

It was a week of walking, birdwatching and exploring new places we haven't been to further south than Mandal. We booked a week's stay in a coastal lighthouse in Lista, famous for it's bird ringing station. It's also only a short drive away to Hellvik and Farsund.

A long weekend in Mandal

This was our third roadtrip since arriving in Norway, Sirdal/Hovden and Helgoysund/Rylfylke being the first and second long jaunt on the road. This trip took place during the second half of the kids' winterferie or winter break. They had a week off school, we decided to make a short trip away from home to spend a few days south of Stavanger.

Our original destination was Kristiansand, supposedly 3.5hrs by road on the E39 (main highway connecting the two cities) but we decided to take the North Sea route along the coast instead which took longer than planned. After Eigersund, we decided to continue on Route 44 through some fjords and hilly terrain which lengthen the journey by another couple of hours. |

The scenic roadside view was worth the hours though. By the time we reached our base at Sjosanden Ferriecenter, Mandal around 1500hrs, we were still another 50km to Kristiansand. One good thing about being at a feriecenter during low season (beach and coastal areas normally have their low season outside of summer; hill countries the opposite) is that there's nobody else around. Though you are left with bare necessities ie. restaurants are closed, skeleton crew on the grounds, extra quiet environment; we practically had the place to ourselves. This of course was perfect for us.

The children enjoyed running around playing snowfights and making snow angels. Though they'd also have the same fun high up in the mountains of Sirdal but it'd be more crowded with almost everyone in Norway skiing at this time of year in Sirdal.

We had a small hill nearby for us to trek up and down during our stay and enough snow to throw around. The children loved the place so much that they made us promised to stay there again on our next long break. They of course say this everytime we stayed at cabin ... perhaps it's just the holiday that they like rather than the place itself.

They did enjoy the snow here more than they did the September rain in Helgoysund or the similar wet days up in Sirdal back in July. Next long break is Easter in March and later summer holidays when school will be closed for the duration of the summer.

We've booked ourselves a week's stay at a lighthouse in Lista for Easter, a week in a small village Oldervik near Tromso in May and still hunting around for the perfect summer hide away ... possibly someplace in the woods by the water.

Short break back in Malaysia

We left for Kuala Lumpur via KLM 19th December 2012 and return to Stavanger 08th January 2013. We spent 18 short days in Malaysia.

 By the time we left for Norway we had :
a) spent a few days at Grandma's place in PJ
b) procured Ali's Malaysian identity card at Putrajaya ... this completed within 48 hrs or arrival
c) spent a weekend in Kuala Terenganu to enjoy our favorite dish nasi dagang and keropok lekor
d) spent a few days at fixing up Tok Wan's place and unpacked most of the items shipped from Miri back in May.
e) visited Ayah Long at his house in Bukit Beruntong finally.

It's always nice to go spend time at home with family ...