7th day: A day of rest.

When on vacation, I refuse to hurry just to reach some activity on time. It's abhorrent to me to be stressed about relaxing. So when I stayed up as late as I did the night before, this day was clearly going to be somewhat curtailed. Cold and windy weather with the occasional rain shower wasn't exactly a motivator either.

In the end, apart from doing laundry, I didn't do a thing until we went for a "Curry, cheese and chips" at the Ace Cafe , which is a biker cafe on the outskirts of London. They serve some quite tasty and well portioned food. I can see why bikers tend to become big, if most biker places are like this...

Later it was on to the pub where I had a delightful evening trying out drinks and different kinds of puzzles brought by some of the other old geezers. Very relaxing.

6th day: Walking in London.

Today I started out walking along the Thames. First a bus to Kingston, then a nice 6 miles (10 km) walk downstream to Richmond. Strangely enough, a former gravel source next to the river was filled in with rubble from bombed out buildings during the second world war, and the final result today is a very varied and interesting wildlife area. I almost felt lost in there, for a long time only occasionally seeing civilisation across the river.

Fortunately I reached Richmond when I did; I had to hurl myself into a flower-shop because I hadn't heeded my friend Jonathan's warning and taken an umbrella. It didn't exactly start raining, it was more like the Thames river all of the sudden just started flowing vertically.

Learning from my near error, I decided to follow the next tip of Jonathan. I found the tourist information and asked for the brochure to London Walks. Unfortunately they hadn't got the winter program yet, but I took a chance and picked up the summer program.

Taking the tube to Monument station was no problem, but once there I thought I'd walk to Bank station. I was told to go "down" King William street. Unfortunately, going downhill turned out to be 180 degrees wrong, for some reason. Fortunately, this meant I got a trip across London Bridge. It's a modern rather boring structure, but who cares when the view of the neighbouring Tower Bridge is so nice. When I finally got the direction right, finding the statue of Wellington outside the Bank of England was quite easy.

I shared a few hours of "London by Night" with a small group of friendly foreigners, a bloke from Winchester and a very knowledgeable guide. Very interesting, I got to see the "Gherkin", the "Toast Rack", and many other strange buildings. I definitely think I'm going on a walk tomorrow as well.

5th day: Lazing about.

Apart from a little shopping, I did nothing all day. It was wonderful!

Late in the evening we did go out for a bit of Chinese in "Wok This Way", which turned out to be quite a treat. Then on to the Roebuck pub, a fantastic place with all kinds of strange things on the walls, including working traffic-lights! They go amber (not yellow!) when it's time for last orders, then red when closing. Which happened (in the opinion of this Norwegian) incredibly early at around 23:30.

When we go somewhere together we travel in style. Jim owns no less than six motorbikes, two of them which I have had a chance to try. As a passenger of course, or as "a sack of potatoes" as Jim puts it. I think I'm getting to be a rather good sack of potatoes, though it's quite a lot easier when we drive the one with a backrest...

Tomorrow I think I'll try to visit the Museum in Docklands.

4th day: The Hampton Court Palace Gardens.

Armed with brochures, I went back to Hampton Court Palace today. They have a "world-famous" maze I walked through first. Not really worth the £3.50/42kr in my opinion, but the school-kids that was there seemed to love it.

The gardens impressed me more, especially the Great Fountain Garden with a lot of great topiary (artificially shaped) trees. The lawns were so English; Very, very green and cut so short they almost seemed like carpets.

Walking on them was another story, I really had to concentrate to avoid what for a second I thought were dog turds. With no dogs around though, it didn't take me long to figure that the real perpetrators where the large groups of ducks and geese you could see all over the place.

Fooled by not looking at the map closely enough, I ended up doing the gardens in the way suggested to do the maze, keeping to the right at all times. I never found a way around the palace, and finally ended up leaving the way I came in. This being not the smallest of gardens, I felt justified to call it a day.

3rd day: The Chess pub.

I had my first experience of the London public transport system. It was quite nice having an "Oyster card" to just wave in front of a reader as I entered and left the station. The subway cars were small compared to the Norwegian, you sit along the walls facing inwards. To my joy, contrary to what I had heard, the double-decker buses are still there, in fact they are practically everywhere.

After the double-decker, I took the Piccadilly subway line (tube) to Kings Cross. That was extra enjoyable because this lady was giggling every time an extremely clear and proper (taped) lady voice declared: "This is the Piccadilly line going to Cockfosters." Her boyfriend actually got a little flustered by it, which may be understandable considering how many times this message (and the giggles) were repeated.

Finding the Harrison pub was easy, finding chess players was quite another story. In the end I only got two games with the cook! He wasn't that bad actually, but soon had to do what he was paid to do. I may regret admitting this, but I kind of liked their strawberry beer. Still, after waiting for any other chess-players through two of them, I gave up and decided to play that other game of trying to remember a route backwards. Since I overshot only by a bus stop or two, I think I did rather good for a rookie.

2nd day: A day in the park.

My friend did warn me; "London is huge", he said. I still was surprised about how long it took me to walk to, then through, Bushy Park to get to Hampton Court Palace. Even though I started at around 13:00, when I got there it was just an hour left before they closed at 16:30. I just picked up some brochures so that I can be there early, next time.

Fortunately the park was very nice and well worth the walk. Very British, I suspect. Lots of fences and gates, to protect the deer no doubt. What I didn't get to see though, were the zebras. I found this sign that told me where they cross the road, after they have finished their business. I'll leave it at that, until I can update this post with picture evidence from my mobile. I need to get hold of an USB cable first, to make it connect to my laptop.

This evening we had a delicious meal with Jim's son and his partner Bryony. The rum and cola wasn't half bad either. Made the motorcycle ride home afterwards even more enjoyable.

1st day: Travelling to London.

That was easy! 9:45 I went out the door in Oslo, less than ten hours later at a little past 18 local time, I was sitting in Jim's couch with a nice cup of tea.

Prices made no sense though. 20Kr/£1.66 for 15 minutes on the bus to the centre of Oslo, 150Kr/£12.50 for 110 minutes to the airport, 307Kr/£25 (!) for 90 minutes of air travel, but then 260Kr/£21.50 (!!) for the 90 minutes with bus from Stansted to Heathrow. This makes absolutely no sense to me, not that I'm complaining. 750kr/£62 from door to door is fantastic.

Most of the credit for that goes to Ryanair of course, that price must be below actual costs, though with quite a few seats empty taking me probably made financial sense. Cheeky company though, when we taxed to the terminal at Stansted I could read this in big print on a neighbour plane: "Bye, bye Latehansa!" :-D

So last night was spent getting settled, drinking lots of cups of really good tea (it's going to be hell to go back to yellow Lipton again) and having my first "Pie and Mash" in "The Popes Grotto".

Best of all, the resident cat approves of having me here, marking me with lots and lots of hair. This is going to be fun!

My first vacation in years and years.

This feels unreal. I've been doing my thing 24/7 for years now, with no time for enjoying other bits and pieces of this big, cruel and wonderful world.

But for the next 15 days, I'll try to do some serious catch up... And blog about it here in case the occasional friend or relative is wondering what's happening. I might even post some pictures from my mobile phone, if I can find out how to get them transfered to a computer.

Early tomorrow morning I fly out of Torp to land in Stansted, north of London. A bus will take me to Heathrow where I'll get to sit on the back of a motorcycle driven by my hospitable friend Jim over to his place.

This will be my first time on a motorcycle, believe it or not! (I've driven a moped in my younger days, and even crashed it doing 80 km/h, but that's different. I hope...)