Scandinavia- 26th Oct (Thu)

We woke up later than planned this morning for breakfast. We headed down for breakfast at 9:00am. The breakfast was a very good spread of bread, salad (salmon, herring, tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and so on) cereal, cooked food like bacon, cooked potatoes, eggs, fresh fruits, juices, tea and coffee.

After a few phone calls, we headed out for our walk. We could have driven to the beginning of the trail but decided to walk. After walking for 40 mins, we walked past houses, occupied and otherwise, deserted summer camping area, sheep, cows, ponies and lots of fruit trees (red and green apples, pears). There were lots of fallen fruits on the ground. At around 11am, we reached the start of trail 7 (the one highly recommended by the waiter last night). We soon realized that the trail was marked by red paint. It was a steep climb all the way up and we had some good scenery along the way. There were also small rock houses along the way, Ross assumes that they are shelter houses. We went through firstly climbing up large rocks, followed by a slush-ish water trail, leaves-laden ground amidst trees and plants before finally reaching the top. At 12:45pm, we reached the top. We had a clear panoramic view at the top, there were 2 wooden houses with curtain-covered glass windows and grass growing on its roof. The houses were locked. There were also icicles from the roof. Though we could have continued, we had some snow on the way and thought it wise to head downwards.

We managed a faster pace downwards. But the trail was quite steep and we had to be careful. I was thinking that we probably wouldn’t physically be able to do a trail like this 10 years from now, but Ross disagrees. Even now, I could feel the strain on my knees. But hopefully I am wrong and we can both get fitter instead.

From the bottom of the trail, we dropped by supermarket and then walked back upwards again to the hotel. We proceeded to the restaurant for lunch. The hotel had filled up. There was some kind of meeting or conference going on. We went into the wrong restaurant (though nice and fancy) and once we were seated, we were served a good plate of hot food. We were puzzled since we didn’t order and was told that this was a fixed meal. We didn’t feel like having something that heavy for dinner and asked for a menu. They directed us into the breakfast/dinner restaurant instead. We adjourned into the directed restaurant and ordered some food. We wanted to share a cream pasta (something we also had last night) and a club sandwich. The club sandwich was the worst we had anywhere. The bacon and egg was obviously from breakfast and were reheated. They came out very burnt. The pasta was also not as good as last night’s.

We asked for the bill and though we did feedback about the sandwich, no discount was given. We were quite disappointed but hoped that dinner would be better.

Back in the room, we felt really tired out by the walk we had. It’s raining outside and we felt pretty contended to just rest in the room. It rained for the whole day today. We were in the room on the internet, we had bought 24hours yesterday.

At around 7pm, we went down for dinner as well as getting some printing and fax done. The hotel was a bustle of activity with lots of people around. We headed for dinner in the restaurant and asked whether there was a la carte food served. The waitress initially said no but said she will check. There was a great spread of buffet served, lots of seafood and tempting range of desert, ice-cream, chocolate cake, something that looked like salmon tart, berry mixture, cream bulee and the like. We thought it was a fantastic buffet but since we had a late lunch, it probably wasn’t worth getting it.

We managed to get some ala carte food and when we asked for chocolate cake, we were surprised that the waitress came back to say that instead of just the chocolate cake, we can have everything at the buffet desert for 80 kroners per head. We readily took up the offer. So though we had worked our bodies hard at the hike, we made up for it by pigging out today.