Norway, Travel, Winter

Ice Climbing in Europe’s Ice Climbing Capital: Rjukan, Norway

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Ellie & I did some ice climbing in Rjukan, Norway, earlier this year, in mid-January. And we thoroughly enjoyed it. We booked the two-day climbing course and accommodation via SkyHook (£340 per person), with whom we had previously done some hiking on Mount Toubkal. FLIGHTS, ACCOMMODATION & TRANSPORT IN NORWAY NOT INCLUDED Several of the other participants came in groups. They were old friends, work buddies, and there was one other married couple. The flights from London and bus transport or rental car from Oslo to Rjukan and back had to be booked privately by all participants, which is fine, of course. Same with any additional accommodation in Rjukan & Oslo. INSURANCE NOT CHEAP We learned only afterwards, that insurance can be bought much cheaper than the £90 per person that we had spent. Mind you, though, it will never be cheap, and you can bet that the regular travel […]

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Fun, Norway, Travel, Winter

Snowshoeing in Rjukan, Norway

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Ellie & I recently did some snowshoeing in Rjukan, Norway. We had arrived one and a half days early for our ice climbing beginners course, with some time to kill. For a long time we had been planning to give snowshoeing a try, but every time an opportunity seemed to arise, it never worked out. During our trip to Spitsbergen there was not enough snow. Another time, in Austria, the gear rental place didn’t have any snowshoes left for hire.     OLD SCHOOL We felt lucky when the Old School (Dale Skole) in Rjukan, the ski school cum hostel where we were staying, had two brand new pairs of snowshoes available. We paid the hiring fee of €25 per person, walked to the snow-covered hilly area behind the building, then put the snowshoes on.   OUR FIRST FEW STEPS A few minutes later we were casually walking around and […]

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Europe, Norway, Travel

Trip to Colesdalen from Longyearbyen

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We had been looking forward to our 11-hour speed boat trip to Ny-Ålesund ever since we started looking into booking a trip to Spitsbergen. It was supposed to be the highlight of our weekend stay. The linear distance is only 114km, but only government, scientists and emergency services are permitted to do inland flights (even though you can buy unfilled seats on scientists’ flight connections for large amounts of money), which is why boat is the only option. This means that the actual distance travelled one-way is roughly 200km.       You pass by some decent whale spotting locations (including 45m long blue whales), a giant walrus colony, and, if going from Longyearbyen by boat at this time of year: your best chance of seeing a polar bear, unless you’re happy with the stuffed variety in the local museum. We had booked our trip with Better Moments, the highest-ranking Spitsbergen […]

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Norway, Restaurants

Fine Dining at the North Pole: Gruvelageret

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During our visit to Spitsbergen last weekend, Gruvelageret Restaurant in Longyearbyen (the capital of Svalbard, Norway) invited me to try out their 4-course fine dining menu with wine pairing. I was joined by my wife, Ms B. The restaurant, whose name translates into mining warehouse, sits 30 metres up the hillside, no more than 200 metres direct distance from Coal Miners’ Cabins, where we were staying (0.5km by car), but – being cautious (everyone seemed to think: overly cautious) people, we took a cab anyway. At least in winter, polar bears occasionally stroll around in this northernmost human settlement on planet Earth, and we didn’t want to end up as polar bear picnic. Like most structures in town, the building doesn’t look like too much from the outside (even though the whole building has a beautiful history and a lot of love and hard work went into it), but as […]

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Norway, Restaurants

Ekeberg Restaurant, Oslo – our Review

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View from Oslo's Ekeberg Restaurant

Michelin Guide listed Ekebergrestauranten, ranking in the top 30 of 1,200 Oslo restaurants on Tripadvisor and regularly featured by gourmet publications as one of the best fine dining locations in town, invited us for dinner during our stopover in Oslo on our way to Spitsbergen last Friday evening. They offer innovative, at times adventurous, but not excessively experimental Scandinavian and European cuisine in very chic, spacious, bright dining rooms of a perfectly maintained 1920s functionalist (regularly erroneously labelled art-deco by reviewers) building. It is considered to be one of the finest of its kind in Europe. While being managed locally, they are part of Fursetgruppen, who own another 20 or so local restaurants, including the world-famous three Michelin starred Maaemo. On the ten-minute cab ride from the city centre with its magnificent opera house (40 minutes by train from the airport; the opera house is next to the station) up […]

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