Admiring the skies of Sandefjord

Four months ago I published my first entry on Norway and now I decided to publish the second entry, encouraged by the fact there are new, more recent adventures to come. The previous entry was on Oslo, and now we’ll focus on the area of Sandefjord, where my friend Hannele was then living.

So, continuing from where we left off… (and please note, this all happened and was written in October).

On the second day we had a chill morning, with delicious brekkie and lunch and post-lunch cookie dough (to be made into cookies). The cookies were baked and packed with us for our first destination, Sandefjord airport.

Oslo has two airports, Gardemoen (the one I arrived at, 20min away from the centre) and Sandefjord, which is both second biggest and utterly miniscule. This is also an “international” (quotation marks are added by me) airport as, in addition to the tiny planes with pilot students and the less-tiny helicopters with helicopter pilot students, once every half hourish there’s a bright blue KLM passenger plane or a bright pink WizzAir plane departing to or arriving from places like Stavanger, Warsaw or Lublin (have intentionally not googled where the last-mentioned is actually situated, as am highly entertained by the name – a rip-off Dublin?).

We had cookies and milk and enjoyed watching airport life, truly one of my favourite types of moments.

Later in the afternoon we headed off to Mokollen, a nice viewplace near Sandefjord. Hannele hadn’t been before, but had heard it was pretty.

And my goodness it was GORGEOUS. The early evening sun glistening over the beautiful town and its quaint buildings, with a clear view over the bay where a large ship was just chugging its way out from… IDYLLIC.

The sunset, again, was magnificent, and we spent a highly enjoyable time admiring it and taking a multitude of epic pictures.

*

On day three we headed to nearby town Tonsberg, possibly the oldest town in Norway (having existed already in 871), where there was an old ruined fortress with one new unruined tower. Okay, ‘new’ here means built in 1888.

The sun shone brightly from the perfectly blue sky, and we wandered about, sat and ate home-made granola with yoghurt and gigantic blueberries.

Then we went to the End of the World. Tbh, ‘World’s End’ is a bit of a glamorous description for the albeit atmospheric set of rocky islets at the southernmost tip of that area (for a more impressive World’s End, I’d still go for Cape Reinga at the northern tip of New Zealand, where oceans collide).

Still, we had a highly enjoyable sit on the rocks, watching the blue, barren sea (can sea be barren?), eating a traditional School Bun (literally), which in Norway means a custardy inside with a generously coconut-sprinkled exterior. The seagulls seemed to agree with us in terms of tastiness levels, as for one fearful moment there was just a loud SWOOP of wings behind us, and we both ducked down, not sure if to protect our school buns or our heads. The culprit seagull maintained careful watch nearby, but then was chased away by a superior seagull, who then fiercely watched over us (I’m sure just out of the goodness of his heart, to keep away any intruders to our pulla moment) until we’d finished the last crumbs.

We walked a little bit down the rock path, which was atmospheric, but neither of us felt at our most energetic, so most of the time was spent chilling on another set of rocks.

It was nice to get back for both of us – me feeling under the weather, and Hannele having driven so much.

I do adore sitting in cars. It’s such a nice way of seeing so much. And Norway was, without exception, STUNNING. Maybe the closest to England, if you had to compare. The hills and the colourful houses. And the LIVELINESS of it all. In Finland, many small towns you go thru seem to be quite dead. I don’t quite know if there is a huge difference in Finnish and Norwegian lifestyle, but Norway has LIFE.

All in all a great trip, and since I hardly had any expectations for the sightseeing itself (as top priority was seeing Hannele), I was manifold blown away by the beauty of this less-well-known part of Norway.

Tho I did resort to having a plain bun and tea for lunch at the airport, instead of my initial plans of buying some nice traditional Norwegian pasty or sandwich or similar. Nope, prices were too far in the skies. It was nice to return to good old cheap Finland.

Forever yous’,

Emzy

xxx