We Made It! Hallelujah!

On our way to the airport Sunday we stopped off at Grammy Js for some hugs goodbye.   She’d made up a little airplane goodie packet for Kaleb so he was pretty pleased about that.  We left our car at our apartment building in Seattle and a friend drove us to the airport so we could leave our van in the garage there.  My step mom met us at the airport so she could give us some hugs goodbye too, so that was special.  It’s a good feeling to know we will be missed.

I’ve been getting messages for the last week from friends and relatives in Norway, counting down the days until we arrived.  The funniest one was from my friend, Tina, who re-wrote the words to an old gospel song, but substituted my name in there, so it said, “Soon and very soon, we are going to see Mickey…” instead of “Soon and very soon, we are going to see the King.”  That made me laugh.

The only stress in traveling this year has been around the weight of our luggage and the number of pieces we were bringing, but in the end, it all worked out.  We could only check our luggage through to Oslo on Iceland Air, then we had to pick it up and recheck it on Norwegian Air for the last leg to Aalesund.  Thankfully, nothing was overweight for the first part of our journey, but Norwegian Air has no mercy for us international travelers, so we had to pay an “overweight” fee to the tune of $90+ because they don’t allow domestic flight luggage to be as heavy as international.  Since our flight with them was just within Norway, we had to take the hit.  I might have been upset about that if I hadn’t bought our tickets for less than $100 each on Norwegian Air, so paying an additional $30 a ticket was a bargain when I could have easily spent $300 for each of us for that jaunt from Oslo to Aalesund, and then had to pay for overweight luggage anyway.  Future travelers to Norway, beware!  Twenty kilos (about 44 pounds), is the “free” limit.  Anything over, it’s $5 a pound. Yikes.

I took some things out of our check-in luggage to reduce the weight of our bags, but then, when we went through security in Oslo, they said one of our carry-on bags was now too heavy so we had to pay an additional 100 kroner (about $18) to check it in.  (Actually, all our carry on was too heavy, but they didn’t catch the others, so I felt blessed!)  I thought it was pretty funny, since so many people carry on heavy bottles of wine and other goods from the duty-free shops, AFTER they’ve gone through security but that doesn’t count toward any weight limit.  Weird logic, and even weirder business marketing if you ask me, but I promised myself to travel lighter next time.

Kory nor I slept the entire flight.  Kaleb stayed awake until we hit Oslo, then fell asleep in my lap while waiting to board. Kory’s cousin Odd and his wife Turid met us at the airport in Aalesund and drove us to our condo.  It was so great to see them again!  When we walked from the airplane into the terminal and we got drenched from all the rain.  We’d left a beautiful blue sky sunny day in Oslo to arrive in the midst of a raging coastal storm complete with wind that nearly knocked us over and rain that soaked us in seconds.  Good thing we don’t come to Norway for the weather. 

When we opened the door to our condo we smelled Norwegian cooking coming from our kitchen!  Cousin Kari and Axel had arrived earlier and made a big dinner for us in our own home and the food was ready right as we walked in the door!  We sat down to a candle lit table, all set with our dishes we hadn’t seen in nearly a year, and enjoyed dinner with the cousins.  Was that ever a treat – and the food tasted so good!  None of the airlines served food, so we had only eaten snacks all day and night. We were treated to baked salmon, boiled potatoes, carrots, broccoli and snow peas, all smothered with hollandaise sauce.  It was a huge blessing and one of the best surprises I’ve had the pleasure of receiving. 

We visited with the cousins a bit then Tante Kari came up for some hugs and to tell us how happy she is we are back.  We then had to rush to the grocery store to get some breakfast items before everything closed.  There wasn’t a loaf of bread to be found in the store since it was late in the day, but we got a few other things to hold us over.  Tante Aslaug came over for hugs after we got home, so we have been more than warmly welcomed back to Norway.  I must have gotten six text messages on my phone the minute I turned it on, so we have several more days of greetings ahead of us.

Kory and Kaleb went to bed about 10pm local time (1:00pm Monday Seattle time – after pulling an all-nighter), but I stayed up a bit longer, trying to unpack all our luggage.  I only have one bag to go.  It’s good to be home!