Woke up early to make our way back to Oslo. Rather than drive back to Kirkenes, we flew from the Vardø airport to Batsfjord or Vadso (I forget which one), through Kirkenes and then on to Oslo. At the Kirkenes airport we saw a map the appeared to show that Kirkenes is further north than almost anywhere in Alaska. Woah! It’s hard to imagine a time in my life when I’ll be further north, but life has a way of surprising me, so who knows. Lauren and I also had a Lego building competition!

Back in Oslo at the Scandic Vulcan, I fell asleep for ~3 hours, before going out for dinner at an Indian restaurant nearby. We learned that tomorrow we wouldn’t have anything on our plate until 1PM, and we’d be traveling around 5 PM, it was a great chance to go out in Oslo.

All 8 of us remaining first went to Rebel, an 80’s bar, where we ran into Ane, Brita, Kristopher, and Ola-Magnus. We met up with Quentin and his roommate Eva who literally just got off a plane from London.

We all soon transitioned to Qadis, another bar a few blocks away with a ping-pong table! I’ve said it before – I’m a humble guy – but I’m a good ping pong player. I played a couple of games against JK (Jan-Kenneth the cameraman), Jeff, and a few locals, and cleaned house.

As the night was winding down, me, Lauren, Richard, a few Swedish girls from our hotel, and 2 locals we met went back to Lauren’s room for an after party. Me, Lauren, and the locals stayed up super late – they were AWESOME folks. Kalle is from Finland, 32 or 33 years old, and has been a pianist in the Oslo symphony since he was 25! He’s transitioning to becoming a conductor, and is moving to Austria to conduct a symphony! Elise just turned 21 and is a vocalist in the Oslo symphony, and going to school. Both great folks who I’d love to see in Seattle or again in Scandinavia or Europe.

With the sun already up (it rises really early and sets super late) I went to bed ready to get up for our 1:00 PM lunch.

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