We were not able to sleep through the night, so woke up very late this morning. However, I got up at 9:00 am and have got ready to appreciate the city views of Oslo. My son is still in bed, though he is awake but doesn't want to get up, as he said, he "couldn't". It is 12:20 pm on 7/7/2015 now, but no matter how late will we get out on the street, we will spend 10 hours outside, so may not come back until late night. Hopefully, we will fall into deep sleep tonight. It is gorgeous outside.
In the morning when we were in Karlstad, I got up in time to catch the free breakfast buffet but my son didn't. It was very good. The hotel offered varieties of foods and drinks from cheeses to sausages, it was definitely not a plain continental one.
Driving out of the garage, I was wondering if we headed to the right exit but eventually found out it was the only way out and in. A senior lady who was standing to wait for her husband to start their car dragged a string to open the garage door for us, so my son didn't need to get out to do it. Actually, we didn't know how to open the door by ourselves and would have had to figure it out had the lady not done it for us.
Parking the car alongside the street, I ran into the lobby to checkout. Since I had paid everything, it was a very easy checkout. I actually hadn't realized that I booked the same franchise for the first two nights of this trip because they were all named "Scandic". In addition, I happened to pick up the hashtag of "Scandic2015" on Twitter because the first one of "SCAN2015" had been used by other. It is a nice franchise I would recommend to you guys.
I asked the girl at front desk how we could drive to the Lake, I assumed they all knew it was referred to Vanern. As soon as we arrived at the lake, I immediately knew this must be a local lake because Vanern is the largest lake in Sweden I had never gone previously and this one in front of our eyes apparently isn't. Fortunately, a gentleman probably at his 60s or 70s was dropping the trashes into a dumpster in the parking lot, I walked to him to ask the direction. He might not be able to hear me very well because I did notice he was wearing listening assistance in his ear, he walked back to his car and asked his wife to help. From the clip I posted above, you could hear I pronounced "Vanern" with the wrong tone, I forgot Swedish rule then, so she couldn't understand which lake I referred to. I almost left after thanking for her trying to help, she suddenly realized what I meant. Senior Swedes are not as fluent in English as younger generations are, she exchanged with her husband for a couple of seconds, her husband simply said to me: "Follow us".
I was pretty sure they were leading us to the lake, so kept following them back on E-18, then took an exit to the local road. I intended to videotape the scenes of following their car, my son stopped me because he thought it wasn't appropriate to tape other's license plate. I didn't think it was critical but took his request. After a couple of minutes driving on local road, the senior Swedish couple led us to the bank of Vanern in this area. The lady got off the car and walked toward ours' to ask where we came from. I mentioned that we came from States and would head to Oslo. She probably was concerned if we were disappointed to see Vanern like this since we came from the country across Atlantic, so mentioned if we wanted to go to more popular beach, we should head to the freeway to Goteborg. I had booked hotel room in Oslo, so it's impossible to change the plan. However, even this wasn't the most crowded and popular beach, we were satisfied to reach the largest lake in Sweden and 3rd largest in Europe anyway. After appreciating her help and waving to her husband when they drove away, we walked along the lakeline for a while and could sense it must be a very large lake.
E-18 to Oslo became a two-lanes road even it was called freeway. We followed a mobile home for quite a while, then surpassed it in the zone of dotted lines. When surpassing it, I accelerated my car to 120 kilos per hour, which was a bit of scary. Swedes generally don't do it.
Approaching the border between Sweden and Norway, I kept videotaping the road, which caused my son's protest. He was wondering why I was so interested in a normal road. I argued with him if I were a swede, I wouldn't be so interested, but as a Chinese-American who was born and raised in Beijing, has lived in Seattle for 18 years, it was very significant for me to drive on Swedish freeway after 19 years again.
It took us quite a while to arrive in Oslo after crossing the border. GPS didn't work as effective as it did in Karlstad, we were directed to be close to another Radisson Blu. As soon as I saw that building, I naturally assumed it was the one I booked room with. Even worse, there was an VIP event being held in that hotel, dozens of military polices secured the whole area where the hotel was located, which made more difficulties for us to drive in.
After checking with a police, I drove our Volvo to get into an underground public garage. By the way, all of those military polices held machine guns.
As soon as approaching the entrance of the hotel, I realized that we came to the wrong one because this one is Plaza but ours should be Scandinavia. Waiting in the line in front of reception desk, I thought I would check with the receptionist anyway since we had made so much effort to get in here. The girl at front desk was very nice to tell us the direction to our hotel even though we were smelled badly after struggling in the traffic for such a long time during a summer day.
Driving through the exit of the garage, we encountered a big problem because the reader didn't recognize my credit card. Pushing the button to talk to someone, I figured that we had to drive to a "big house" to pay through my credit card. Though it was really frustrated, we drove out eventually.
Trying to figure out the direction to our hotel precisely, I keyed the address into GPS app. A very beautiful female soldier approached our car to check out what was going on with us because we weren't allowed to park there due to that VIP event. After I explained to her, she tried to help us figure out the route. It was really helpful that we followed her advice to get into the tunnel to arrive at our hotel eventually. On the way to our hotel, my son mentioned Norwegian girls were as beautiful as Swedes', he must be impressed by that female soldier whom was a typical Norwegian beauty.
Checking in at front desk and parking the car in a garage managed separately by another company, we got into our room, which was spacious enough.
After taking a rest for an hour or two, we went down to Enzo Restaurant in the lobby of the hotel. The waiter was very nice and recommended 3-course meal to us. After checking out the size of the main course, my son decided to order steak instead because he is a big eater and was very hungry then. I took the recommendation to order the 3-course meal.
Steak was very delicious, which even drove my son to comment: "It is f***ing tasty!" My main course of fish was equally excellent, so we were very satisfied with the dinner at Enzo. Because of this great experience, we decided to have dinner at Summit, another restaurant on 21st floor of our hotel the night after, unfortunately, we would find it out later that restaurant only allows adults over 23 years old to dine in. I guess there may be something related to "Rated-R" of which is not appropriate for the young people like my son.
Coming back to the room, we forced ourselves to fall into sleep but we wouldn't succeed.
I was pretty sure they were leading us to the lake, so kept following them back on E-18, then took an exit to the local road. I intended to videotape the scenes of following their car, my son stopped me because he thought it wasn't appropriate to tape other's license plate. I didn't think it was critical but took his request. After a couple of minutes driving on local road, the senior Swedish couple led us to the bank of Vanern in this area. The lady got off the car and walked toward ours' to ask where we came from. I mentioned that we came from States and would head to Oslo. She probably was concerned if we were disappointed to see Vanern like this since we came from the country across Atlantic, so mentioned if we wanted to go to more popular beach, we should head to the freeway to Goteborg. I had booked hotel room in Oslo, so it's impossible to change the plan. However, even this wasn't the most crowded and popular beach, we were satisfied to reach the largest lake in Sweden and 3rd largest in Europe anyway. After appreciating her help and waving to her husband when they drove away, we walked along the lakeline for a while and could sense it must be a very large lake.
After checking with a police, I drove our Volvo to get into an underground public garage. By the way, all of those military polices held machine guns.
As soon as approaching the entrance of the hotel, I realized that we came to the wrong one because this one is Plaza but ours should be Scandinavia. Waiting in the line in front of reception desk, I thought I would check with the receptionist anyway since we had made so much effort to get in here. The girl at front desk was very nice to tell us the direction to our hotel even though we were smelled badly after struggling in the traffic for such a long time during a summer day.
Driving through the exit of the garage, we encountered a big problem because the reader didn't recognize my credit card. Pushing the button to talk to someone, I figured that we had to drive to a "big house" to pay through my credit card. Though it was really frustrated, we drove out eventually.
Trying to figure out the direction to our hotel precisely, I keyed the address into GPS app. A very beautiful female soldier approached our car to check out what was going on with us because we weren't allowed to park there due to that VIP event. After I explained to her, she tried to help us figure out the route. It was really helpful that we followed her advice to get into the tunnel to arrive at our hotel eventually. On the way to our hotel, my son mentioned Norwegian girls were as beautiful as Swedes', he must be impressed by that female soldier whom was a typical Norwegian beauty.
Checking in at front desk and parking the car in a garage managed separately by another company, we got into our room, which was spacious enough.
After taking a rest for an hour or two, we went down to Enzo Restaurant in the lobby of the hotel. The waiter was very nice and recommended 3-course meal to us. After checking out the size of the main course, my son decided to order steak instead because he is a big eater and was very hungry then. I took the recommendation to order the 3-course meal.
Coming back to the room, we forced ourselves to fall into sleep but we wouldn't succeed.
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