We awoke early to a beautiful sunrise over our last day in Norway. Putting Winston back together, we got our luggage all laid out and headed for Sandefjord. After a short trek to the E18, we made one last Circle K stop for our 11th free coffee and some cinnamon raisin buns.
With time to spare, we opted for a quiet route free of tolls and traffic, and snuck in the back door to Sandefjord, until the last few busy blocks before the train station. Lenka and Vlado were able to meet us earlier than planned, giving us a chance to catch the earlier hourly train to Oslo. After regaling them with a few tales of our travels, we said farewell to Winston, some 2997 km and many MANY fond memories later.
I bought tickets from a machine on the platform, and we caught the crowded 947am train, which clearly could have used more than five cars. We were seated apart, but at least we both had seats. When the conductor came to Jane and asked for her ticket, she pointed to me a few seats away and said "my husband has my ticket". As he turned to me, I replied to the conductor, "I've never seen her before". Luckily, he was a ginger and had a good sense of humour. The woman seated beside me couldn't stop laughing.
The train got so busy at subsequent stops that it was standing room only and very crowded at that, with people barely able to get on. Then came the mass exodus at Oslo Central Station, where most of the train emptied out. Once we made our way up from the tracks and out the front doors, we wandered the downtown and began to look for something to eat.
We found a great restaurant a few blocks away, Engebret Cafe - also billed as the oldest restaurant in the city (1857). It was actually so nice that we were hesitant to enter, given our suitcases, backpacks and generally disheveled appearance....but they were very kind and just said "travellers are still travellers".
We were seated in a very fancy dining room (for us, anyway), with dark wood and old art. We both ordered a form of smorrebrod (open-faced sandwich on rye bread), with Jane ordering reindeer with lingonberry, while I opted for pork chop and onions.
Sated, we walked down to the waterfront, and inspected the King's fortress followed by a Jewish memorial just outside the walls. Following the road, we wrapped around the harbour and found the DFDS ferry terminal and boarded our ship, which would take us overnight from Oslo to Copenhagen.
While the staterooms were not yet ready, we found a quiet spot for a coffee, then explored the ship a little. Later, once we had dropped our bags in the room, we wandered up to the open decks to witness our departure....completely with oddly triumphant marching music played over the loudspeaker as the Crown Seaways pulled away from the dock.
We spent the next several hours wandering the ship as we made our way slowly out the long expanse of Oslofjord and looking for open water on the way to Denmark. The crossing is about 19 hours in total, but you are required to book a cabin as part of booking passage. We also had to remember that we were now on a Danish ship and paying in Danish Crowns ($0.20 CDN), rather than Norwegian Crowns ($0.12 CDN).....making those expensive beers just a little bit even more expensive!
We had a nice dinner at Little Italy, shopped unsuccessfully at the duty free shop, and enjoyed some drinks at Sky Bar on the open aft deck as Norway melted gently away behind us.
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