06-21 Train Ride to Skien, Norway

Leave the Oslo apartment for the last time at 9:20 for a bus to the train station. We have our train tickets and we are going early to find some food here to take on board. They only have vending machines and no Coke on the train.

The luggage fits great in the locker with plenty of room left over. We could have gotten both the backpacks in also, with plenty of room to spare.

We scope out a place to get a sandwich and some Coke to take onboard with us, then sit down and wait.

Picking up our sandwiches and drinks, we head out to track #5. We have reserved seats 207 & 208 in car #5. We reserved seats and someone's in them. What's the point? We grab two other seats and the conductor doesn't seem to care. She checks our tickets then gives us one token each. For the bathroom, for drinks? We think bathroom. We are wrong; they are blanks for the coffee machine.

At the city of Drammen, the business men in our seats conducting a meeting finally get off and now the train is quiet. We don't move.

At 12:35 we arrive in Larvik and get off and get on the bus. It's across the track and around the building and waiting for us. Awesome.

Arriving in Skien, we grab our backpacks and walk over to the hotel (Clarion Collection Hotel Bryggeparken) and check in. Our room is ready. Great.

Check in done, bags dropped, we go for a walk around this new town of Skien.

Pedestrian only shopping area downtown.

Our hotel is on one bay and the bay next to it is where we will catch our boat tomorrow, the Victoria. But for now we walk through town and up the hill behind our hotel to the Brekke Park and through the Telemark Museum area. This area is like the open air museums we have been to with buildings from all over the Telemark area brought to this location. Most of these buildings were from the 1600's and 1700's. None of them were open, but we saw the others and there's a plaque describing the interior that we read in each house - in English.

We’re having an ice cream and some Lefsa. Karen remembers her Mom having Lefsa in the house. It’s kind of a flat bread with cinnamon, sugar and butter on it.

After this we walk down the stairs near the entrance and back through town, walking through their mall and out to the other bay.

We head down to the dock where our boat will arrive at 5:30pm tonight. We pick up a brochure in a rack outside (there's no gift shop, just kind of an office).

We keep walking around the bay by apartments and through a park, then back to the boat dock and back to the hotel.

After a break in the room, we went downstairs for dinner. Breakfast and dinner are included in our room rate and so is the water view looking out into the bay. Dinner was rosemary chicken (it was so so), sweet potato sticks (not bad), grapes, watermelon slices, strawberry chiffon, and some cold salads.