Views from Akerhus

James says that my blog posts for the last two days have consisted mainly of lists of the places we have visited, and I see what he means. However it's hard not to fall into that format when I am visiting lots of exciting new places! 

Today Ally slept in and was a bit late meeting us at our hotel. We told him that he just can't keep up with us oldies!

We didn't try to do too much on our last morning, and instead spent our time strolling around the ramparts of Oslo's castle, Akerhus, which overlooks the town and provided beautiful views on this warm, sunny autumn morning. There was a wee visitor centre which related tales of some of the most notorious prisoners during the castle's many years as a prison. My favourite was a fellow who escaped lots of times to commit more crimes. Finally he was imprisoned in chains in a tiny cell with several guards outside. The next morning, imagine the guards' surprise when they opened the door of the cell to find ...... The information board stops there but I presume that the slippery customer had escaped again! Up at the top of the castle was the Norwegian Resistance Museum which was excellent. The unprepared Norwegians had managed to fight off the German troops for 62 days in 1940, before they were defeated, and they bravely continued resisting the Nazis for the rest if the war. The "Shetland Bus" was mentioned - we have of course visited the other end of that wartime route! 

A short walk took us back to our hotel to collect our suitcases, and thence to the station. Alasdair shepherded us safely to the airport express train and we said our farewells. I was so sad to say goodbye to him, it has been such a great weekend and he has shown us a really good time. 

A bit of drama awaited us at the airport. Some sort of mix up with our tickets that I still don't fully understand meant that we couldn't drop off our cases. Even though we had already checked in online the lady at the luggage drop off insisted that we were not properly checked in! After various phone calls we finally got approved and had to RUN for our plane - we were the last on board! We have just had dinner in the BA lounge at Heathrow (fancy!) and we are about to board our flight to Glasgow.