A wander around Trondheim - Nidaros while photos and blog posts are edited

Most of today's blog post is about Drew's wandering around the city of Trondheim, formally Nidaros and us getting our clothes back. 

But before we move on to that, let's go back to the start of the day.

Early Morning

I wake up at 3am, the earliest yet. But know there are 1182 photos on the PC that haven't been edited or uploaded to Flickr, so on the principle that the earlier you start the earlier you finish. I progress with them. I begin with last Thursday in Olden which I complete by 4.10am. 

Then on to the first blog post of the day - Dr. Olden in Olden. I get it completed but not checked by 5.15am,

Drew wakes at 5.20am and I make us both an Espresso from the Nespresso Machine. At 5.30am I begin my ablutions and Drew does the same after me.

Breakfast

We go down to breakfast at 6.25am and even then there are 6 people there before us - other eager breakfasters around here. I feel a bit obvious wearing the same shirt on Day 3, thankfully I have fresh pants and socks still, but I just hope no one else is noticing. Perhaps the Thon staff are going around saying - see that guy in the green shirt, well he has had that on for breakfast every day so far!! Perhaps they aren't!!

Drew begins with a mix of fried items

I stay with the yogurt that has characterised this holiday, but today have grapes and dried banana, as well as nuts, on top of it

I follow this with some oatmeal

While Drew tries some pancakes - he approves - he has the first lot with raisins

I go for my regular picked vegetales, pickled fish and, today, eggs with prawns and maionaisse

Drew has jam with his next set of pancakes

and finishes with some chocolate brownies.

We come back up from breakfast at 7.10pm and I complete the blog post Dr. Olden in Olden after Drew has checked it.

At 8.07am I get a text from Marthes Renseri to say our clothes are all washed and dried. What a relief. We leave straight away and arrive at the laundry at 8.22am. This is the face of a very relieved Haydn, ready to take off his, now, third day shirt, and put on a clean one - but I have to get back to the hotel first 😉. 

We get back and I move on to the photos of the Glacier and Loen. 

At 9.20am Drew goes out for his stroll. And at 10.15am I finish with the Glacier and Loen photos and begin on the second blog post of the day. 

I complete the blog post of Friday at Midday, this is the one called  Mountains, Valleys and Rivers - a fun day in the Olden Valley, the Briksdal Valley and Loen.

Drew meanwhile, well I'll let you hear his view in his own words:

A Co-pilot's tale:

 

You will, dear readers, no doubt be aware of the saga that our valiant blogger has been faced with vis-a-vis the camera not being able to connect to Mr Bs laptop. If you are up to date with the blog you will know that I/we yesterday purchased a SD card reader (I asked, he paid). Said device worked, which on one hand has been a positive (he's stopped pacing the room at all hours going "me little pretty piccies"). Unfortunately it means that he now has a backlog of over 1100 images to 'curate'. Yay. Such is our blogging heroes commitment (some might say retentiveness - but not us dear readers, certainly not us) he decided the stress and chaos of all this travel meant he needed a quiet day. And wouldn't it be 'convenient' to spend the day fondling his images. So today is all about me, and my adventures, profoundly awe inspiring adventures around the big city of Trondheim. So hold on tight and enjoy the ride. (Captain Jack has just instructed me to say that he was also using the excuse of  'I might need to go and collect the smalls' to stay in the hotel')

Mr B woke up (I'm sure he'll edit this to put in some times here - it was 3am see above) and did some blogging, and made a early start on his curations. Then I woke up and demanded tea, a duty completed in a timely fashion. At 5:30 Mr B went went off and had a shower, and I went after. Then we went and had a bit of breakfast. After breakfast we went back up to the room and waited I had planned on leaving at 09:00 to go on a gentle perambulation of this fair city - I have a long-standing moral objection to leaving the hotel room before 9:00 (under normal circumstances).

At 08:03 all manner of chaos ensued dear readers, for our valiant blogger received a text message saying the smalls were no longer mucky. Yay. I struggled to keep up with our blogging lunatic as he charged through the city centre of Trondheim, in the manner of what can only be described as 'a human cannonball'. Poor Norwegians were flinging themselves out of the path of this menacing creature making his way towards them with both speed and purpose. My cries of the 'slowdown, they are open till 18:00' were met with a response of 'clean smalls. Must collect clean smalls'. Luckily they were open, smalls were clean and passed over, so the trip back to the hotel was a little less stressful. What fun we had dear readers, what fun.

After spending a few quiet moments and making sure Mr B had finally calmed down (he had images on his laptop AND clean smalls - what joy!) I left in my wandering at about 09:30am. The singular aim of the day to get to a target of 17,500 (interesting point -  by default Garmin set a target number of steps, and if you leave it is increased each and every day. I decided I wasn't having that a few years ago and so now have a constant target of 17,500 (I recall well the day in Homer where it set me a target of 24,500 steps and us fools did it.)

I left the hotel and gently made my way in the direction the cathedral. Where I was able to ignore the signs and instead take some interesting pictures of the roofline of the cathedral (I do like a good roofline). Here, an elderly American lady attempted to engage me in conversion. This doesn't happen normally I thought. I don't normally have elderly ladies telling me that 'Trondheim is such a quaint little town'. I nodded sagely and scurried off. 

 

I passed more fencing for the festival occurring this weekend end and more staging has been put up. I didn't hold with 'Blackweir' (or whatever it was called) closing much of Bute Park in Cardiff, I'm not sure I hold with this either - What's the point in building Stadiums/Venues is you're going to do this in parks When I take over the world, dear readers, it will be banned...

I then generally tootled my way along, going past the university campus (they have a massive sports centre). At this point another elderly American asks if I'm from Manhattan. (Eh, I thinks). So I say no. And then she asked 'are you from here, and I say no'. We then have a bit of a to do and she asked about how to get to the old bridge. I get lost in Tongwynlais dear readers, I am the last person on earth one ought to ask directions from. A fact made worse by the fact I have elderly Americans trying to talk to me. I tried to vaguely point them in the direction of the old bridge (see yesterday's post).

I eventually escaped and go up into a residential area. A gentle climb but Gerald (my watch) informed me I had climbed 15 flights of stairs. Then I came back to the fortress we passed yesterday, turns out I had found the back way in. I spent a few minutes wandering the grounds again, before progressing on up to in a less affluent residential area but one where I felt perfectly safe.

Then I came to a piece of really impressive urban regeneration that is taking place in the city. I have to be careful here dear readers in case I go off on one of my rants about urban planning (or lack of it!!!!!!) that takes place in the UK, but this was a really nice example of a combination of retail/residential/social space. The type of place where people might want to live. Sigh. Perhaps I should have taken some pictures - but I was too busy being impressed. 

I then looped back around, oddly walking past the place where we picked up our clean smalls around four and a half hours earlier. All evidence of the carnage having been removed. I got back to the hotel having done a 20,000 step gentle walk. On my way up to the room I 'acquired' some more coffee pods for our valiant blogging hero. 

About 39 minutes later I worked out why elderly Americans were trying to talk to me. Thanks Janet (and Mr Chuckles) for my birthday gift!

Drew arrived back at the hotel

Drew arrives back at 12.15pm and reviews the blog post before it is uploaded. After his walk Drew has undertaken 20,470 steps of which 2,500 were to the laundry this morning, so 17,970 since then!! Hope it puts him in good stead for his Cardiff half-marathon in October. He takes this photo of me, to show I've changed my shirt (and trousers) since we have freshly cleaned clothes.

At 1.15pm I complete loading the Olden to Trondheim photos, a lot less in number, but with more complexity. It is then on to that blog post - From Olden to Trondheim - A taxi and two coaches - The blog is a very easy one telling its own story, so that is finished and loaded by 2.15pm.

The next pictures I move to are those we took on Sunday - there were 433 of these and almost all needed some kind of editing. I completed them by 4.30pm but haven't had the time to upload them as I needed to work on the next blog post as it is a complex one looking at the food we had at Fagn - and I don't get finished until 6.30pm, just in time to go our from dinner. Still I reckon it is my first four blog day for many a year.  

Dinner

We leave the hotel at 6.45pm to walk to the Koji Ramen Restaurant. We arrive about five minutes later as the restaurant is only three blocks away from the hotel.

We arrive and look at the interesting sign of Chopsticks and assorted sauces, ready for the food.

We order drinks and they quickly arrive.

Today Drew is Daniel on his Coke Zero and I have another brand of Sparkling Water.

We then have our starters.

We have Kimchi

the fermented cabbage and Korean radish and gochujang, chillies, ginger, garlic and salt, so beloved of Professor Tim Spector and the Zoe team who have improved my eating choices in recent years.

This is followed by Gyoza  

the tasty pork dumplings with a soy dip - beautiful.

The final starter we share is Karaage Chicken

a Japanese favourite and one that is done so so well here with a strong pepper bite to the bread crumbs.

For our mains Drew has opted for Shio Ramen     

this most traditional of the Ramens with chicken breast, egg, spring onion and menma is perfect for him, soon he is slurping with the best of them.

I choose the Tantanmen Ramen

the spiciest of the Ramens with pork mince, bok choy, nori, egg, spring onion and menma. An absolute delight to eat. Last year in Japan we saw some of the locals eating raman, with real speed (it is served in Tokyo as a lunch hour dish). I emulated that approach, which was very effective for eating the food, but would have been a problem if we hadn't had fresh clothes this morning, as my light yellow shirt was now dripped in red!

As we have noted in the past, lovely delicious Ramen is food that is cooked and eaten quickly, so we had finished eating at 7.30pm. 

We strolled back the long way to the hotel, to spend our last evening in this lovely city, before doing I begin some more work on the photos. 

Blogging on holiday

Last year on the final day of the holiday blog I said: 

PS - Note to self, build some downtime into the next holiday to keep the blog up to date!!

Well I followed my own advice and did just that this year. Today, an extra day in Trondheim needed due to the ship timetable for travelling further north, was always scheduled for some downtime. I didn't expect to have all the photos of the last five days to review as well as the blog posts to write, but it shows the advantage of having a free day now and again to do exactly that. I must remember to do the same next year. It has been quite an achievement getting four posts written and so many photos uploaded, I just feel sorry for those, like Robin and my sister, who look at every photo - it may be there time for a catch-up now.

We go to bed at 10.15pm ready for the long journey tomorrow. It takes only a few minutes to fall asleep.