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.

St. Olav's Well and the Kristiansten Fortress

We spend another day in Trondheim enjoying the interesting ancient city and its wonderful scenery. Today our route was like this:

In two maps as Google can only use 10 locations in a map!

 

The day begins

I wake up at 3.30am, Indian food is very tasty and a long time favourite of mine, but it is also quite gassy and it is the gas that gets me up. But as I'm up I continue with Wednesday's blog post and finish it at 4.30am, subject to Drew's review pre-posting. 

We are still not able to access photos from the camera as the computer and camara are still not speaking to each other. But this should be resolved today as the electrical shop is opening at 10am.

Drew wakes at 5am and I make us both a cup of Earl Grey, it is that or English breakfast tea and that would be to conventional for us. 

Breakfast

We head down for breakfast at 6.30am it is much quieter today than yesterday. 

Drew began as he usually does with fried sausage, bacon, egg and potatoes, with Orange Juice and Coffee.

I have my new regular yogurt, seeds, hazelnut and fruit.

I then have oatmeal

and then the delight of pickled fish and vegetables

Drew having a second fried breakfast, now finishes with fruit and chocolate brownies. 

There is also a VY driver at breakfast good to know they stay and eat well between journeys. 

Laundry - Second Attempt

We go upstairs after breakfast and I upload the blog entry of Wednesday, which Drew has now reviewed. I then name and upload to Flickr photos from Saturday. Between real time, blog time and Flickr time I seem to be in three time zones at once and the zones separated by days not by a few hours!

We leave the hotel at 7.50am to head to Marthes Renseri Laundry where we arrive at 8.05am.

What a relief, yes they can do it, and yes they will. It is 7kg worth and at their prices of 162Nkr per kg it won't be cheap, but would be a lot less expensive than sending it out via the Hotel, with a price per item, or buying new clothes. 

Midtbyrunden - Day 2

As the laundry is in Solsiden, where we started the day yesterday we thought it would be a good idea to walk in the opposite direction along Midtbyrunden - the city centre trail, so that is what we did. 

The route takes us past the Central Station, where we leave from tomorrow, and along the shore past a lot of boats and old buildings. Until we come to the statue entitled - The Last Viking. This is a memorial to a book in which this character is the primary protagonist. We then walk along Sandgarten, a more urban environment. This leads to Skansen Bridge which takes the train traffic over the river. From there we come to Skansen Station, which is small, but well laid out. Slightly above the station, on a hill, is Ilen kirke (St. Ilen's Church) but it is locked so the only images are from outside. 

This video captures some, but not all, of the photos, the others can be accessed via Flickr, starting here and following.

We then continue along the Midtbyrunden route which has now become synonymous with the Pilgrim route (Pilegrimsleden) and the signs mark both until we reach the cathedral.

We pass the Cathedral Workshop as we are on this route, not all the statues are of saints!!

We come to St Olav's Spring, just below the Cathedral. It is modern but built on the place where a spring appeared to mark St. Olav's death.

Back to the Cathedral

As we come back to the Cathedral we stop to view a monument with different sports being represented. It is the monument to those Norwegian Sports Men and Women who lost their lives in the 1940-1945 war (note the war started a year later in Norway than elsewhere).

Having left the hotel at 8am, even after this walk it is only approaching 10am. So, after we leave the well we decide to revisit the Cathedral coffee shop as it has a good strong coffee as well as the cheapest we have seen, plus it enables as many refills as you want for one price. We arrive at the café at 9.58am, it opens at 10am - perfect. 

Returning to Vår Frue Church

We leave the coffee shop at 10.50am and return to Vår Frue Church, which was closed yesterday. The main reason for our return visit was the entertainment of reading the rantings of a Trumpist:

"It is such a beautiful place to worship but it was transformed into such a disgrace 😔. To paint Jesus's pictures in rainbow 🌈 color. That in this sin world significant (LGBTQI+ community) it is against the principles of God's creation. I have been visiting many churches in Europe but i have never seen something like that."

With that kind of comment we had to go in and in keeping with our good luck this morning we arrive at 10.58am and the church opens at 11am.

This is the offending image by the artist Sverre Bjertnæs:

It seems very mild and respectful to me! 

While it was the comment on Google Maps that brought us into the church, we were so glad we came, as the other images in the church are quite striking.

Up to Kristiansen Fortress

From the Church we walked down to the river and took more photos of the lovely converted warehouses that seem to be one of the images of Trondheim. 

From here we go on to the Gamle Bybro - the Old Town Bridge. 

This is where we move on to the second of the maps above. 

Across the bridge is the part of Trondheim called Bakklandet, an area free of traffic, laid with cobblestone streets and colourful little houses.

From here we walk up the hill to the Kristiansten Fortress, this provides some amazing views across the city, the Fjord and the mountains.

The Kristiansten Fortress 

The Kristiansten Fortress is not just a place to look out at the city, but somewhere with an amazing history in the city's and Norway's life.

The fort was built after the great city fire of Trondheim in 1681 and stood guard over the city for the next 100+ years. Most important to its history is that it saved the city, and Northern Norway, from conquest by Sweden in 1718. This history is well represented in the fort.

Given that by 1816 Sweden was in charge of Norway, the fortress was decommissioned by king Karl XIV Johan (Karl III Johan i.e. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte). 

The fortress was again used by the Nazi forces during World War II. The site was where 23 Norwegian partisans were executed by the Nazi forces inside the fortress.  

Here are some of the images from both inside and outside the fortress, there are more of Flickr, follow on from the link above.

Down the Hill

We walk out the back exit of the fortress area and down a steep path that leads through a forested area and into a residential part of the city. 

The path then leads towards the Bakke Bridge which brings us to Olav Tryggvason's Gate and the shop called Kjell Electrics.

Kjell Electrics

We arrive at Kjell Electrics and Drew talks technical stuff to the shop assistant, yes they have such a device in stock, yes it is a reasonable price. She goes and collects it and we walk out of the store very pleased with ourselves. With our laundry experience, this experience and the perfect timing of our arrival at the Cathedral and Our Lady's Church earlier this is clearly one of those blessed days when all goes as well or better than planned.

Afternoon in the Hotel

Walking back to the hotel takes the whole of 2 minutes, we arrive at 112.45pm and I start drafting a blog post and sorting the photos from the mobile phone, so that they are in order before I download all the new ones.

At 1.40pm the cleaner arrives and we go downstairs to the sitting area which has coffee and tea available. It is a pleasant area and we have a few cups until we decide to go back upstairs. at 2.15pm and where I complete the Flickr upload of the photos I took at Fagn on Saturday. 

At 3.30pm we trial the device Drew has bought and it works perfectly. We have 1182 pictures from the last 5 days, so it is time for me to get busy - Yikes. 

I complete the Flickr uploads from yesterday and today before starting on the newly acquired batch.

Yesterday we had booked tonight's meal for 7pm and tempted as I am to keep going with the photos we now have in abundance I decided food is a greater priority and I have time to do the photos tomorrow. Having gone left after leaving the hotel yesterday, we go right tonight. Leaving the hotel at 6.50pm we arrive at Osteria Moderna at 6.51pm, it is less than a minute, essentially one building, away from the Hotel.

Dinner

Drew starts with a Zenzero mocktail with ginger beer, cordial, mint and Lime; while I keep to the old favourite, sparking water, but here, it is one of my favourite waters - San Pellegrino. 

We then share a Pane 

I'd been expecting Foccacia, but it was a delicious Italian sourdough bread, which was equally welcome.

I then started with what is our normal go to meal on a Saturday night at home - Fettuccine al Ragù

the pasta was al dente and it was served with slow-cooked minced meat ragù and rosemary. It was warming and comforting and brought back many memories of beautiful pasta dishes, many cooked by myself, but equally those cooked by the parents (in all cases the mothers) of my school friends. One of the advantages of a Catholic school was having friends whose mothers cooked Italian, Portuguese or Spanish foods and I was always willing to try them.  

Drew opted for the Carpaccio di Osteria 

the thin slices of beef were marinated in ponzu oil, arugula, pea cream and sun-dried tomato cream and served with Parmigiano Reggiano (36 months old) and crispy fried shallots. Of course, Drew made the old joke about it being a bit underdone 😉.     

Drew's main was a pizza, but what a pizza. It was called Pizza Nduja e Prosciutto 

and had an intense pepperiness from the Nduja that Drew loves. The Italian pizza base with tomato sauce had mozzarella, Prosciutto from Modena, ´nduja, gorgonzola and pecorino. Drew was very pleased with his second Pizza of the holiday, the dough was crisp and crumbly, like Italian pizzas should be and the gorgonzola added a piquancy to the whole pizza that was an unexpected delight. "A great example of the genre" according to Drew.

My mains was Ippoglosso in Guazzetto 

that is Halibut cooked in tomato and garlic-infused fish stock with cherry tomatoes, pickled onions, mustard and capers, served with smoked potato puree and salad leaves. I love a Guazzetto and think Halibut is a wonderful fish, so what could go wrong with this treat - nothing. It was delightful, it brought close to an end a really excellent day, when everything went so well.

Drew's dessert was Il Mango 

it had really sharp citrus jellies around it with a very fruity sorbet. The mango itself was crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle it brought a wonderful texture to the dish. 

My delights were to continue when they brought the plate of Formaggi 

there were four Italian cheeses - Pecorino, Asiago, Gorgonzola and Canestrato - all lovely, lively cheeses that sing on the lips and tongue - oh what a wonderful day. 

We returned to the hotel by 9pm and were in bed by 10.30pm, at the end of a day full of treats and delights, who could ask for more.