Day 18, Oslo to somewhere in the Kattegat :)

content/blog/day18.md

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+---
+title: 'Day 18: Oslo to Kattegat'
+date: 2022-09-11T21:22:39+02:00
+Tags: []
+Categories: []
+---
+
+## Our trip today
+
+{{< image src="/img/day18/map.png" width="400px" float="right" >}}
+
+Just as most other moving-days, we did not manage to do much, but we will manage to write a whole page of storyline on the not much we've
+done. The church bells start chiming at 07:00 this lovely Sunday morning. I didn't know Oslo was so .. Christian. But one nice touch is that
+it's not just ringing of the bells, but a relatively hip song they're playing out there. Our window is open, which helps for oxygen, but it
+also helps with the noise from the street. I wake up at 07:30 as my alarm goes off, only to promptly fall back asleep until 08:10 and then I
+get up for-realz.
+
+Breakfast in the hotel is in the basement, it's quite nice, and my eye is caught by a fancy Nespresso machine. The coffee definitely tastes
+really good - what was I going on about all these weeks about Nescafe powdered coffee? I apologize. This is the real deal (and in case you
+were wondering, as soon as I drink a barrista pressed double espresso, that will be the realer deal). We have a light breakfast today, only
+a few sandwiches, eggs and bacon. I enjoy real _Rauch_ orange juice (!)
+
+{{< image src="/img/thumbnails/2022-09-11/IMG_5807.jpg" width="400px" float="right" >}}
+
+We had thought to charge the car so that we don't have to do that in Kiel. There's a supercharger 1.3km away from here, conveniently located
+in a shopping center with an underground parking lot. I find it curious that this location has mostly one-star ratings on Google, and this is
+because the Norwegians are surly that to charge their car they must pay NOK 40 per hour. OMG how will they ever survive. The words
+'entitlement, much' ring through my head as I proudly park the car in this place. It's not yet 9am, and we're looking for a grocery store so
+that we can buy the requisite feta cheese for our lunch today. Any grocery store will do, really, but many of them are not open on Sunday.
+We'll take anything Norway has to offer, _except_ REMA1000, because we boycott that one. We don't really remember _why_ we boycott it, but we
+do and that's all we know.
+
+It turns out, there's a Joker in _Tjuvholmen_, so that's great. It's great because we get to flick out our cell phones and book us another
+set of those lovely Bolt/Tier scooters. We scoot over there, we get the cheese and some more tomatoes, and then realize that it's 09:12 and
+our boat leaves at 14:00. We _definitely_ have some time on our hands. We kill this time by finding three geocaches scattered across the
+city: One at _Tjuvholmen_ itself, one at the third dock of the _Pipervika_ and the third one at _Nobels Fredssenter_. We also try a fourth
+one at the operahouse, but that one is annoying because we can't find it. We now hate Opera, with a passion.
+
+{{< image src="/img/thumbnails/2022-09-11/IMG_7824.jpg" width="400px" float="right" >}}
+
+At around noon, we take off from the _Thon Vika Atrium_ hotel and make the 350 meter schlepp all the way to the Color Line harbor. There, we
+are joined by a bunch of other cars, ready to go to _Kiel_. We listen to music and I make the signature Trunk Salad, with compliments from a
+few passers-by on the dock who appreciate _Die Teslak&uuml;che_. We gather our belongings into our backpacks, board the boat and hang out in
+the aft lounge for a while.  There's definitely not too many people on the ship today, most clusters of chairs/tables remain available,
+all day long.
+
+{{< image src="/img/thumbnails/2022-09-11/IMG_5840.jpg" width="400px" float="right" >}}
+
+After passing the lighthouse at the fjord in _Oslo_, our captain punches the throttle, and our little boat goes 22kts towards Denmark, with
+its 31.2MW engines. Why doesn't it have a supercharger?!
+
+Paul takes a stroll around the ship as I finish back-porting our [2013 Roadtrip UK and Ireland](https://2013roadtripukie.weirdnet.nl/)
+into our Hugo site. The first part of the trip still has 4 bars of 4G from Telenor, so I end up pushing and committing to git as well. The
+pictures will come in a week or so when I'm home, as I have to rummage through an old Google Takeout to retrieve the Google+ photos.
+Remember Google+? It was similar to the Mobile First era for Google, super very mega important, or at least that's what Vic told us :-)
+
+{{< image src="/img/thumbnails/2022-09-11/IMG_7838.jpg" width="300px" float="right" >}}
+
+We go shopping a little bit. It's one of those rare moments that I only do window-shopping. The stuff on this boat is really boring, old
+lady clothes and random chocolates, although I do randomly find NOK 300,- on the ground, which I eagerly exchange for a present (from some
+poor schmuck somewhere, to me!). In fact as I write this, I'm enjoying the present. Actually we got a bit too peckish having eaten only a
+salad in the afternoon, so we attack a bag of Kroepoek and a packet of Tuc.
+
+We watch the sunset (which isn't too stellar, because there's a bunch of clouds to the West), and see Sweden to the East as the minutes
+crawl towards 20:00. But, we are swiftly seated and proceed to dine a four course meal, including cured meets, steak, venison, pork and
+chicken; smoked fishes including salmon, eal, maatjes and fisheggs; an assortment of cheeses from France, Spain and Switzerland with
+flatbread and grapes. Oh, did I mention we booked the buffet? It was sort of an endless stream of food; we were mighty proud to have
+finished our four plates like real Dutchmen.
+
+I am GPS tracking our boatride, because Google Maps cannot route me from Oslo to Kiel over water (it'll cunningly take the ferry from
+_Larvik_ to _Hirtshals_, or alternatively the bridge from _Malm&ouml;_ to _Copenhagen_, but seeing as I've been so dilligent as to make a
+map for every day's driving/boating so far, I decided to go the extra nautical mile and capture our adventure in the _Skagerrak_ and
+_Kattegat_. Proudly shown at the top of this post, our lat-long at midnight local time was N 56.934 E 11.746 after having traveled 188.02
+nautical miles. The rest of this boatride will have to remain a secret until tomorrow!
+
+We finish our evening messing around on the cell phone, playing a few games, and watching the 8 channels of boring ship's TV until we settle
+on the GPS track which updates one pixel per few minutes, an ultra exciting activity. We fall asleep just after midnight, as tomorrow we'll
+be expected for breakfast at 7am (!), arriving at Kiel shortly before 10am.
+
+## Pictures of the Day
+
+{{< gallery-category >}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_5807.jpg" caption="The supercharger station in Oslo city center is in a (paid) parkinglot.">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_7819.jpg" caption="Pim has fun on the Bolt scooter in Oslo">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_7822.jpg" caption="The REMA1000, which we boycott but we don't remember why">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_5810.jpg" caption="We see our ferry Color Fantasy arrive">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_5832.jpg" caption="The yacht marina in Oslo">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_5840.jpg" caption="The lighthouse islet in the Oslo Fjord">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_5837.jpg" caption="Our view from alongside the ship">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_7824.jpg" caption="Paul and Pim hang out in the aft lounge">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_7842.jpg" caption="Pim immitates Rose (but on the stern, not the bow) - Paul made him do it!">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_5830.jpg" caption="The inside promenade is a veritable money making machine">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_5843.jpg" caption="The store has Chili Klaus trinidad scorpion chips (yum)">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_5844.jpg" caption="Pim finds NOK 300 !!">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_7838.jpg" caption="Pim turns his NOK 300 into a present :-)">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_7839.jpg" caption="The sunset over Skagerrak">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_7844.jpg" caption="One (of many) plates of foozle on the ship">}}
+    {{< gallery-photo fn="2022-09-11/IMG_7850.jpg" caption="Pim enjoys his present!">}}
+{{< /gallery-category >}}
+{{< gallery-modal >}}
+{{< gallery-script >}}