Dr. Olden in Olden

After a long days travel yesterday, finally Dr Andrew (Drew) Olden has arrived in the village of Olden, in Olden Valley, in Olden Fjord at the top of the Nordfjord. One of the key objectives of this whole trip, and one of its initial inspirations, has been achieved. But more about the day of Olden in Olden, first lets go back to the beginning of the day.

Breakfast

I woke up at 4.15am and completed the blog post about last Monday. I then loaded up our Tuesday photos to Flickr.

At 5.15am Drew awoke and I made us a cup of tea each - there is a kettle in the room, but we had to ask for cups at reception yesterday and are using our own stash of teas, the stash from previous hotels where we have not used all we had and had taken them 'just in case', well this is the just in case!

I did my ablutions in the slightly limited facilities - there is nowhere for the shower gel in the shower and I can't shower one handed, I need both to reach all the parts, so it was a bit of a poser, but I managed in the end. The hotel seems to have all the functional elements, but you sense that they might have been more in keeping with the 60s than the 2020s. 

Drew did his ablutions and we went down for breakfast. Even at 7.05am we were the first to arrive and they opened the doors for us.

Drew had a fight with the coffee machine and needed the chef's help to get any drink in his cup! I started by having yoghurt, but as there was less fruit and nuts to go with it than there has been elsewhere, I had some dried apricots and prunes. I'm sure they were great for my digestion.

When I went to look for the next course I spotted, among the other cooked items, rather than among the cereals, cooked oatmeal i.e. porridge, so I decided to try it as it had a strange colour and texture - also its consistency is such that you needed to slice it not scoop it up. But it turned out that the flavour was excellent, enhanced with a dusting of cinnamon, which explains the colour.  

My third course was herring three ways, all of them delicious. One in sour cream, one in tomatoes and the more common on pickled with red peppers (called sild i paprika in Norwegian)

For my fourth course I went for the cooked meats and cheeses, finally biting the bullet and tasting the famous Brunost, Norwegian Brown cheese. While it was not offensive, it is a challenge for me to cope with sweet cheese, the texture and taste seemed to contradict each other. I could compare it to a sweetened plain sliced cheese with a very processed texture, but it is so long since I've eaten that type of cheese I can’t be confident about the memory. Still the peppered ham, peppered mackerel, Jarlsberg and Norvigia were all good, so any ill effects from the Brunost wasn't noticed.

 

Drew stuck with his mix of fried items.

finding that the mix of boiled potatoes and bacon, they offer here is just to his taste. As he put it 'anything Olden does is alright with me!' 😂

All the above was going on while the Mein Schiff 2 (My Ship 2) was sailing into the Fjord right beside us. Drew had predicted the arrival of this TUI vessel, targeted at their German clients. 

Drew has researched which vessels were in the Fjord during our stay. Though according to him, he and his name sake Fjord are one with each other, so he came to the knowledge by osmosis. 

Breakfast finished, we liberated some t-bags from the supply here, not to expend our own stash too quickly (we only have 44 left! - an archaeologist would have a fun time from them, as we have bags from February in London, March in Prague, April in Nerja as well as the ones we have been collecting in the first two Thon Hotels)! We went back to the room at 7.45am.

Wandering around Olden with Dr. Olden

[Co-pilot's note: To contextualise this, dear readers, it is probably best to imagine Moomin valley where I am Snufkin.] 

We left at 9am for our wander around Olden. We began by walking towards the village passing the Mein Schiff 2 again.

We came to the Co-op Market - one of the two supermarkets in the village. 

It had a large number of wooden sculptured Trolls plus a Viking all around it.

We went into the Co-op and noted the quantities of Olden Water

From the Co-op we passed Olden Outlet

Olden Bus Stop

and the Olden Brewery

There is also a place that calls itself the coldest and smallest beach in Norway. 

I note it has its own Google Maps site, so these photos will soon be added to it.

Next we come to iOlden - you've all heard of Asimov's I Robot, perhaps this is a version of that.

The village even warrants a sign outlining all it has to offer

After the excitement of two supermarkets and all the Olden signs, it is time for a coffee in the Yris Kafe.

We next went to the fascinating Olden Old Church, built in 1759 it is on the site of the original church in the district, which for centuries was a catholic church, the current church was built when the previous one burnt down.

From there we walked up the valley along the river

which had washed away the end of the walkway built across it, so it now leads into water.

This brought us to the Olden New Church, with some interesting art, and an advert on the Organ for the organist who will play for wedding and funerals!

Leaving the Olden New Church we strolled along and across the river, giving Drew chance to play (and lose) Pooh Sticks - the river was to fast for him.

We went back to the hotel at 1.30 pm after a fun gentle day of exploring the locale with such a familiar name. 

We have a panic on out return to the hotel as my PC says 'unrecognised item in the USB port' about the camara. A day full of photos with no way of recovering them!! Having a computer scientist with you on holiday is normally helpful in this situation, but sadly nothing would get the camara to connect. [Co-Pilot's note: I told him, dear readers, to try turning it on and turning it off again - and if that didn't work to wiggle the cable a bit!] 

So we spend the afternoon reading, emailing and catching-up with other things and not, as planned, editing and uploading photos [Editor's note: By the following Monday this is resolved, but with 1182 photos to download. I've waited for them to complete this post!] while drinking into our tea stash.

We leave the room at 6.30pm. with the postcards we had bought earlier ready to post in the postbox outside the Co-op. Here is our evidence of posting. 

We arrive at Yris Kafe at 7pm for dinner.

I begin with Buffalo wings med barbecuesaus (Buffalo wings in barbeque sauce) evidently Buffalo Wings - named for Buffalo, New York, not the animal - is a multilingual indicator and also a prompt for us of the buffalo-bisen joke. They were juicy and meaty wings with a sharp, tangy sauce.

Drew opted for a Vanlig Storfekjøttburger (regular beef burger) for his starter. It was simple but perfectly done. 

For mains I had a Rødspette med pommes frites og salat - Breaded Plaice with chips and salad. The plaice was covered in crisp breadcrumbs, but it was the flavour of the plaice that came through - a nice surprise once I'd used Google Translate to read the menu!

Drew had Pizza Pepperoni med pommes frites, Pizza Pepperoni (this also is multilingual) with what they call Pomme Frites here and we call chips. Yes, Drew has his first, and not his last, Pizza of the holiday. The Pizza was bigger than Drew expected, normally when people say a pizza is for two to three people he translates it as 'fine for Drew' but the measuring scale is different here.

We had Olden Water and Coke Zero to drink and finished the meal off with a Caffe Latter and Espresso.

Meal completed we returned to the hotel at 9pm. 

I was wondering why I'd felt somewhat tired this afternoon (apart from the camara crises) when I'd done so little. A quick check of Drew's Garmin connect indicated that we have walked 19,800 steps today, that's 14.9Km or for people my age - 9.26 miles. It rather puts my morning 5 miles at home into perspective!!