Kongsberg, Norway - Winter Wonderland

[awilcockson]

I embarked on the following trip for work purposes (let's leave it at that). I'll add to the report as I go. This is my first time, go easy on me

Wed 12th January 2011

Leg 1
BNE - SYD
QF521
B767
Seat 2A

I caught a taxi to the airport, rather than having my wife drive me, considering the floods in Queensland and the "don't drive unless you have to edict". The taxi came at 6:45am, leaving plenty of time to get to my 10:15 am flight. There were virtually no cars the road, so it took less than 40 minutes to do a trip that normally takes at least an hour, longer in peak hour. So is rocked up at the checkin desk at 7:30, and was handed my boarding passes for the first two legs and told I would have to get the two finnair passes in hong kong. Bugger. I knew I had a 3.5 hour stopover in hong kong and that the AY desk was unlikely to open until 2 hours before the flight, meaning 1.5 hours standing around waiting when I could be in the CX F lounge.

I went to the QF J Dom lounge, where I asked if the could see if they could provide my AY boarding passes. They said the flight was still locked, but to ask in Sydney.

I had some toast and juice and was convinced to set an extremely tasty chocolate muffin. Haven't seen those before, but I hope to see them again.

The flight departed 30 minutes late and there must have been a delay in flight as well because we landed almost an hour late.w

I proceeded to the QF F lounge, where I asked about the AY boarding passes. I was told that they have no access to the AY flights, and suggested trying a web checkin.

Unfortunately the late departure meant I only had a bit over an hour so no time for the planned trip to the spa for a massage. I headed straight to the restaraunt where I had:

Starter pork belly with pickled vegetables, with a jack daniels ans dry. Yum, this was awesome.



Main 300g tenderloin and chips, and another JD. Hmmm, it was nice, but no way it was 300g, even uncooked.




Desert banana cheesecake, and de bortelli noble one. I wasn't planning on having desert, but when the waiter offer I thought why not. The cheesecake was quite nice, just the right size.



Overall I was very impressed with the meal, and the service was very friendly and polite, even offering drink refills without me having to ask, and remembering what I was drinking.

I had just enough time to head to the business area where I used one of the shiny new iMacs to attempt a web checkin. Unfortunately this was a no go.

With that, it was time for the next flight.

Leg 2
SYD - HKG
CX100
A330
Seat 15D

Another flight in a herringbone layout A330. I both love and hate these seats. The foot rest is great, the privacy is awesome, but the airbag in the seatbelt is absolutely on of the most annoying design decisions ever.

The flight left on time, and was extremely bumpy after takeoff, but smoothed put soon afterward. I was surprised to see that the meals were lunch and a snack, considering we left at 3pm, but I figured it was based on HK time.

Lunch was a seafood starter (why do they do this? There must be plenty of people like me who don't/can't eat seafood). For the main I had lamb korma with vegetable jalfrezzi. Fantastic. The korma was smooth and rich, andnthe jalfrezzi had enough kick to work up a bit of a sweat. Washed the main down with a glass of margaret river Shiraz and then settled in to watch some movies.

The social network
Megamind
Top gear botswana special

A note on CX service. Exemplary as usual. All of the cabin staff were polite and willing to help, and always referred to me by name without having to refer to a sheet of paper (take note Qantas)

90 minutes before landing we were offered the second meal. I had the chicken satay with nasi gareng, and it was fantastic. The maggie beer vanilla and eldeberry ice cream was a highlight, as it always is, although it was served extremely cold and took 15 minutes to thaw out enough to eat.

we made good progress on the flight and arrived almost 30 minutes early. Which was good because it gave me more time to sample the CX F lounge, assuming that I could get hold of my onward AY boarding pass...

Leg 3
HKG-HEL
AY70
A340
Seat 2L

I arrived in hong kong with 4 hours to kill before my next flight. Luckily the Finnair desk was open, although it took 3 people nearly 10 minutes to issue my boarding passes for the next two flights! From previous experience this, this didn't surprise me.

I headed to the CW Wing F lounge. Or at least I thought I did. I went up to level 7, and went for a shower straight away. No sign of the cabanas, but I figured they might have been removed. It was only after the shower, and after walking past the noodle bar, that I realized that the F lounge is at the far end of the J lounge. The J lounge was very crowded, the F lounge wasn't much better. I've got to say that the lounge was looking quite tired, but perhaps my view was tinted having just visited the SYD F lounge. I had a meal in the restaurant in then haven, it was a buffet and the food was reasonable with table service for drinks. I had some roast beef and Singapore style pork spare ribs with rice. It was getting near midnight, still had an hour to boarding. I considered checking out the QF F lounge, but checked online and saw that it closed at midnight. 1am came around eventually, I had intentionally kept myself awake so I could have a good sleep on this flight and awake somewhat aclimitised to the new time zone. It worked. I fell asleep before we pushed back. I woke up just long enough to fully recline the seat and fell asleep again. For once the cabin crew showed common sense and didn't wake me up to offer me food. When I woke 5 hours later I did find that they had kindly placed a nice warm blanket over me the rest of the flight was pretty uneventful, landing on time in Helsinki, where the temp was a chilly 2 degrees.

Getting through security in HEL is always painful, took nearly 20 minutes to process the 4 people in front of me. Made it to the lounge just in time to use the free wifi to make a cheap skype call home to talk to the kids and make sure we still had a house.

Leg 4
HEL-OSL
AY651
AY319
Seat 2A

Boarded on time, always interesting to get on a plane where you can't see out the windows due to the layer of ice and snow, hopefully the de-icers will do their jobs properly! 15 minute delay due to peak hour ATC hold ups turned into nearly 1 hour of delay, most of which I dozed through. Arrived in Oslo at 9am, an hour late. Weather was a balmy -10 deg celcius!! Breezed through customs and waited 40 minutes for my train to Kongsberg. 2 hours later I arrived in Kongsberg around midday (photos to follow once I've had a chance to get out and about during "daylight" hours on the weekend") .

Promised to keep myself awake until 9pm, and failed miserably when I fell asleep on the bed around 4pm, woke up at 2am the next morning and that was me awake for the day.

I'm off to Oslo for some sight seeing on the weekend, report and photos to follow.

Note that I wrote up most of this trip report on various aircraft using my iPad and then emailing it to myself. If you travel even a bit, get an iPad, they are awesome!

 

[Moopere]

Thanks for the travel report - always interesting to read peoples experiences.

Flew F with CX 5 or so years ago SYD-HKG and its great to hear that the absolutely superlative service I received then is still ongoing now. Certainly hard stepping back into Domestic whY after doing an international F

Also interested in your view of AY as I'm not familiar with them at all. Looks like you were sleeping through most of your AY experience but I note no bad words so they must be performing pretty well (??).

[Edit: Looking forward to some photos of OSL]

 

[DrAndyC]

Ah....Kongsberg. I was there in late 1999 (i spent the 99/00 NYE in Oslo). I actually got frostbite of my left big toe as I borrowed a friends ski boots which were too tight so my circulation was cut off. I remember I flew AY from ARN to OSL (which I dont know if they still fly) on a RTW ticket and I got a 25000 QF points bonus as it was an introduction for Finnair to oneworld. Oh the memories.....

I also remember receiving a 375ml bottle of champagne in Y on an AY flight from LHR to HEL around the same time as some sort of celebration (?oneworld joining etc). It was quite excessive...but being finnish australian...and liking the odd bit of etOH I wasnt complaining.

 

[awilcockson]

I've been extremely busy since I got back from my trip, but I've finally managed to find 5 minutes to upload the rest of my trip report.

Kongsberg

Kongsberg is 1.5 hours by train south west of Oslo. It is quite a small town, supported mainly by the massive defence organisation KDA who have their main facility in Kongsberg. There's also a very nice ski facility, but that's a story for another day.

The Kongsberg township is quite small, this is the main street:



There are several Indian restaraunts, 2 Italian restaurants, too many pizza joints to count and 3 Kebab shops! Love the name of the second one.




I've never eaten a kebab in Norway (too expensive to get drunk enough to have the courage), but they must sell so someone ...

We went out for dinner at a restaurant up on the top of the hills behind Kongsberg one night. Three notable events this night:

1. We didn't die on the steep ice/snow covered single lane road, which was a miracle
2. I ate elk (moose) for the first time, and it was very nice



3. They served Australian wine with the main. Unfortunately it wasn't very nice, pity as there are so many nicer Aussie wines

It was still a very happy atmosphere and a great night though!

 

[awilcockson]

I had a weekend to kill, so caught the train back down to Oslo. I've been here six times previously, so I've pretty much done everything that there is to do. This time around I decided to visit the Oslo sculpture park. This park has been the center of controversy over the years, due to the sculptures almost entirely being of naked humans. The sculptures tell the story of life from birth to death, and I found it impressive and inspiring. Some of my favourite sculptures are below:



After this I went to Visit the Norwegian National Art Gallery. This place is truly amazing, I'm not art fanatic, but I just can't pass up the chance to see the works on display here. To be honest the first time I went it was purely because Munch's "The Scream" is on display, but I fell in love with so many other artists on my visit that I've made a point of visiting the gallery on every trip since then.

I caught the train back to Oslo on Saturday evening, and then had a quiet day to try and get over my jet lag on Sunday before work on Monday.

 

[awilcockson]

Leg 5
OSL-HEL
AY
Embraer 70 Seat 1A

What a start to the trip home. I normally plan to arrive at the airport 3 hours before international flights, but previous experience tells me the Finnair only open their flights from Oslo 2 before departure. Therefore I arrived at Oslo central train station at 11am for the 20 minute trip, only to find that all the trains to the airport were indefinitely delayed due to a switching failure. Luckily they put us all into taxis, in groups of 4 to minimise cost. I was not entirely unhappy with sharing the 45 minute trip with 3 lovely young Norwegian ladies . I'm glad I didn't have to pay the NOK1000 (AU$160) fare! The train operator must have lost a fortune on the cab rides, our four tickets only came to NOK680. As an added bonus, as I got out of the taxi I noticed a US$10 note sitting in the gutter which I quickly pocketed.

I arrived at the airport with an hour to spare, just long enough to check in, clear security and head to the lounge to make a few quick purchases on the iPad kindle app to get me through the flights home. I'm not sure if it was due to my WP status, but luckily the check in agent happily accepted my 26kg bag without asking for the €80 fee that he should have technically charged me for being over 23kg. Stupid new luggage rules ...

The E70 isn't really configured for business class, I'm glad I had the bulkhead seat so that I got some decent leg room. The front three rows were designated business class and were the standard 2+2 seating with one seat on each side blocked out. I had a very nice lamb with black pepper meal for lunch, and before we new it we were landing.

Immigration in Helsinki was horrible. It took nearly 25 minutes to get through a crowd that wasn't really that large. I'd hate to see them handle the early morning multiple 747 arrivals that are seen in Sydney!

 

[awilcockson]

Leg 6
HEL-NRT
AY67
A330 Seat 1A

I had a bit of time in the lounge, and I was checking on seat guru when I realised that there was a chance that I would be on a Finnair A330 with true lie flat seats! This is my 4th time on an AY A330, and I hate the almost flat seats. This is the first time I've flown through Narita, and a quick check showed that this route is often serviced by the one A330 with the new seats.

Sitting in the lounge I noticed that the flight had been delayed 10 minutes, so a little longer to find out if I got the "good" plane. Boarding time arrived and I was happy to see the plane with the new seats waiting for me. The seats are very different to the old seats, completely different fabric. More to come once I've had dinner and settle in for sleep.

I was offered water, juice or champagne before takeoff, and again when the captain announced a 20 minute delay due to waiting for a de-icer and heavy traffic. We ended up departing 30 minutes late, and the FA came and offered drinks not long after take off. One of my big complaints with AY is that they don't carry any form of bourbon on their aircraft... Guess I will have to make do with their red wine selection instead. They had two reds on offer. I tried the chateau Fontesteau 2003 after takeoff. Mmmm, very nice. For dinner I started with a chicken Caesar salad. This was very, very tasty. Crisp lettuce, nice chicken and real Parmesan. A nice touch was the FA offering freshly ground salt and black pepper. The starter also came with soba noodles (bleh, no Taste), a green salad and some cheese and grapes (nice). I tried the other red during the starter, a Campomaggio Chianti Classico 2007. Whilst this was a nice drop, it wasn't as good as the French wine, so I will be drinking that for the rest of the flight. Service is very good, I've already had my glass refilled twice during the starter.

For the main I selected herb roasted lamb steak with country style sauce and gratin potatoes (yes, lamb twice in a row, but I was wasn't interested in the perch fillet or cheese ravioli). So how was it? To be honest, the lamb wasn't as tender as at lunch, but sauce was fantastic. To be precise, the little onions (half the size of a coughtail onion) were the star of the meal, bursting with flavour. Needless to say, the plate was empty when I was finished.

Desert was a raspberry mouse cake (divine) washed down with a chateau d'arche 2004 2nd cru classe (definitely going to have to hit the treadmill hard when I get home!). I absolutely love a nice semillon, and this was, well, a disappointment. Far too acidic and harsh. I've hard far better locally produced (I'm looking at you, witches falls and cedar creek) late harvest semillons that can be had for around $10 at the cellar door.

Dinner done, and after a bit more reading I decided it was time for bed. I excitedly pressed the "sleep" position button, only to have my hopes dashed as the seat ended up in a straight but angled position. Seems that I must have read the tail code wrong after all. The seats are definitely different to the AY J seats I've had in the past, with a light blue colour vs dark blue previously. I noticed whilst trying to sleep that the sets actually seemed narrower than on the A340 on the way over, and that I kept getting wedged under the side of the seat while trying to sleep. I managed to grab about 6 hours of interrupted sleep, and was woken by the noise of breakfast 2 hours before landing. I passed on breakfast, so nothing to report there sorry.

We landed about 30 minutes late, which meant I only had 9.5 hours until my next flight!

 

[awilcockson]

Stopover - Narita, Japan

It took about 45 minutes to clear immigration and customs. Immigration were fine, but customs went through my roll on bag, and gave me third degree about how long I was going to be in Japan, and what I planned on doing. Eventually he was happy and I was on my way. I had planned on leaving my roll on in a locker at the airport, but made the decision to take it with me, figuring that it was easy enough to roll along with me, and that it would give me somewhere to put my jacket if I got too hot. I needn't have worried about that, it wasn't as cold as Norway, but it was hovering around 5-10 degrees and the coat stayed firmly on. I had to try three different ATMs before I found one that had English instructions. I wasn't sure how much I was going to need, so I took out 4000 yen, roughly A$50

It's a quick trip on the train to the Nnarita station (250 yen each way), and then I went looking for the tourist information center. I had planned ahead and knew that it should be right near the station. What I didn't realise is that there are two train stations in narita, one for each of the competing train lines (JR and Keisei). I had taken the cheaper Keisei train, but the tourist info center is near the JR station. I found the JR station by accident after following a big sign to McDonalds, hoping to leech some free wifi for a cheap Skype call to the kids. I think I found the only McDonalds without wifi!

Anyway, the tourist info center was unattended, but I picked up a tourist map of Narita (in English, too) and headed of towards the temple. The highlight of a visit to Narita is a many hundred year old collection of Buddhist temples. Some of these are huge, and some are in true shogun era, samurai style.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. To get to the temple, you walk down a street for 500 or 600 meters. This street is blocked to traffic, and is crowded with people, and lined on both sides with both street food vendors and sit down food stores (they are too small to really be called restaurants). The smells are fantastic, although some of the sites, such as live eel being gutted and filleted and then roasted out in the open can be a little off putting. There are also a good collection of stores selling various souvenirs. I was attracted by the smell of a street vendor selling chicken cooked on a hot plate. Apart from the smell, I figured it was a good choice for lunch as I could easily overcome the language barrier as there was only one food on offer and the price was clearly displayed (300 yen). The chicken was cut up and handed to me in a plastic container and I was given a set of chopsticks. I sat on a bench at the side of the road and ate my lunch. It was delicious. I walked the rest of the way down the hill to the temple and couldn't find a rubbish bin anywhere. The whole area was immaculately clean, but not a bin in sight. There was a policeman at the entrance to the temple, and I asked him where to put the rubbish. He had no real English, and although I think he knew what i was asking he didn't know how to answer. Anyway, I walked along the street a bit further and where in turned back into a vehicle road there were several garbage bins.

I returned to the temple and was amazed at the size and beauty of it all. This is where my "bring the roll on" plan came un-stuck as there are a LOT of stairs. Behind the temple is a large park complete with cherry trees, ponds and waterfalls. I am guessing that the large stones set into hill are either tomb stones or shrines. Most of the path through the park consists of gravel and stairs, so my arms were aching by the time I got back to the temple.



It was about 2:30pm, so I decided to head back to the train station slowly. I stopped at a couple of shops to buy some souvenirs. I was surprised by the shop that sold nothing but chopsticks!

I spent 3000 yen in one shop, but only had 2000 left in cash, so I put it all on my master card rather than trying to split the bill. So I've managed to bring home 2000 yen, 1000 Norwegian kroner and $10 US.

I arrived back in Narita airport at about 4pm, 4 hours before my next flight. I breezed through immigration and security in about 5 minutes and headed straight to the new JAL F lounge.

The lady at the F Lounge counter said "oh, you are flying with Qantas, they have their own lounge". "Yes", I replied, "but your lounge is much nicer" She smiled and welcomed me to the lounge. There were no more than 3 people in the entire lounge the whole time I was there. I had a shower, and it was one of the best showers I've ever used. Also had two helpings of the beef curry which was very nice. I'm glad nobody was in the food area as I searched forlornly for a fork ... only to realise after a couple of minutes that I was in Japan and should be using chop sticks! I also took the opportunity for a 10 minute head and shoulder massage. Oh my. It was fantastic, but I swear the guys thumbs were going to come out through my chest at one point. We're talking deep tissue massage here. Felt great afterwards though. The lounge had a very well stocked self service bar, and I left the lounge well lubricated for the onward flight.

Overall, I loved my stopover in Narita, so much so that I'm quite keen to head back to Japan for a holiday.

 

[awilcockson]

Leg 7
NRT-SYD
QF22
B744 Seat 11A

Boarding was simple and pain free. I love flying upper deck on the 744 so I was looking forward to this flight. Not long before our push back time the captain informed us that we'd be 10 minutes late due to traffic. Which would have been ok, except that the over zealous FA had told me to turn off my iPad 5 minutes early while we were still at the gate. So nearly 15 minutes without the book I was reading. Not happy Jan.

After takeoff a different and friendlier FA came and offered me a drink, and handed us all a packet of cashews and almonds.

A while later the senior FA/purser came and handed out the arrivals and express immigration cards. He made a point of saying that "I'm sure with all your travel you know what not to carry". He also said "Mr Wilcockson, as one of our valued platinum flyers, is there anything in particular that I can do for you?"

I was flabbergasted, first time I've heard that. I thought about asking if he could bring back any time lounge access, but that would have been a bit cheeky

He came back a bit later and said "I can see that you are busy (I was working in this trip report) but we really appreciate feedback from our frequent flyers, would you mind completing a short survey for me?". Of course, I replied, the memory of being unnecessarily told to turn off my iPad fresh in my mind

Dinner was served and my run of bad luck with fish based dishes continued. Had to skip the starter, as I wasn't keen on salmon. I selected veal with tomato and green beans for the main. It was better than I expected. Desert was a banana cheesecake with passionfruit sauce, and went down quite nicely with a glass of desert wine (never saw the bottle, so I have no idea what it was).

I managed to get about 5 hours interrupted sleep. Between the horrible seats and some reasonable turbulence, it wasn't a very restful night. It was capped off by an incredibly annoying FA coming through the cabin saying "good morning, good morning" quite loudly in an attempt to wake everyone up. Never seen anything like it before, I think it was the same girl with the iPad incident. She really had no business being in the J cabin.

Breakfast was toast with Vegemite and a banana muffin. Wasn't long after breakfast and we were descending into Sydney. We had an awesome view of the city as the aircraft flew over the harbour and then a great view of the airport as we over flew it on an extended downwind before turning base for a landing in over the water.

Clearing customs and immigration was a breeze, thanks to the express card. Then a short bus trip over to T3 and a wait of about an hour for my final flight back home to Brisbane.


Leg 8
SYD-BNE
QF516
B767 Seat 2F

I had a short wait in the SYD J lounge while waiting for this flight. Was well and truly over airline/lounge food, so I was really just passing the time until the flight was ready.

Luckily the flight departed on time, and I had an empty seat next to me as well.

The flight was uneventful, I passed on food and we were soon landing in Brisbane.

I managed to snag a Business Class taxi from the rank, and settled in for the hour long drive home. The drive turned into a $140 1.5 hour crawl fest due to a prang on the Gateway, but I finally arrived home safe and sound.

 

[awilcockson]

Between the 5 images per post limit and file size limit, I wasn't able to embed as many pictures as I would have liked. The full album is available at Oslo Jan 2011 pictures by awilcockson - Photobucket for anyone who is interested.

I hope this TR was interesting, please let me know if it was, so I know whether to bother with the effort next time.

Cheers!

 

[Maca44]

A great read. Thanks for the TR.

 

[drron]

Keep up the good work.i like reading(and writing)TRs.This was a good one and brought back good memories-I just love walking down to the Temple at Narita Town.