We have arrived in the Arctic Circle. And we did see the Lights a bit from the plane. No chance to take to take photos though.

I finally had a chance to write up a post at the Oslo airport while waiting for our flight, that I can post now from our Tromso hotel:

After our first night out with Tommy and Jan Roger, we slept in a bit on Sunday morning, and then again enjoyed our hotel's "kick-ass breakfast." On Sundays they keep the breakfast open until noon, which tells you what a typical Oslo Saturday night is like. We were up by 10, though, and out the door around 11-ish, headed to the National Gallery.

The gallery is home to Edvard Munch's famous painting, The Scream. There is a full room dedicated to his works (not to mention a full separate Munch Museum that we didn't make it to this trip; our friend Heather did and she saw Arnold Schwarzenegger there, in town for some sort of environmental conference). In addition, we saw many great Norwegian works. Chad and I had the same favorite, a portrait painted in the late 19th century by an artist of his wife, also an artist. Being head-on with a wide grin on her face (and fairly casual dress), the work looked at least 30 years ahead of its time.

From there we wondered Oslo, walking across the river to an old industrial neighborhood (now gentrified) call Grunnerloka. We walked through a flea market with very nice Danish modern furniture and through a nice riverside park. Our 4 p.m. screening had another good crowd in the smaller theater, though slightly less engaged in the Q&A. Several good questions though.

After the Q&A, we were to meet Heather at 6 to go to dinner together. Tommy said he had time to show us a good Norwegian restaurant in his neighborhood when we asked for a recommendation, so we waited and waited but she didn't show (she was on her way back from the Munch Museum, though we didn't know at the time). So we left Tommy's number at the fest office and her hotel and set off on the 10-minute walk to his neighborhood.

The subject turned to soccer (of course) and we all shared our favorite teams - Chad Liverpool, me Arsenal, Tommy Man U in the English league. We were walking down the street and Tommy points at a window and says, "there is Liverpool now." They were tied 1-1 with Chelsea (a really good team) with just 5 minutes left to play. We should go in, he said (it was a betting place so you could just go in and hang out there). There was a large crowd of mostly immigrants eagerly watching the match.

We were there all of two minutes when Gerard found Glenn Johnson downfield. A good move past the defender, he shots, scores, and Liverpool is ahead! A mix of cheers and groans throughout the room, and one man threw a chair against the wall before storming into an adjacent room! An unbelievable piece of luck that we were just walking by in time to watch the end of an unlikely Liverpool win. Another minute passed and Tommy's phone rang. It was his staff back at the film house saying Heather had arrived. She easily caught up with us outside the betting place and shared about her "Governator" sighting.

The restaurant where we went for dinner was very nice. I convinced Chad to buy a bottle of wine for the table to celebrate the Liverpool win and we had a fun meal. Tommy, Heather and I all ordered the same thing, a pan-fried cod special that was delightful. Chad got the herring plate with three kinds of herring and cheeses.

After our leisurely-paced meal, we went on to a fun bar called Tilt that Tommy had told us about the prior night that has a bunch of pinball games and the only shuffleboard tables in Oslo. When Tommy first mentioned it, I had replied "Oh, I love shuffleboard!" (which I do, and not just because McGinty's has super-cheap pitchers), and so he decided that I must be great at it. Luckily, I was on my game, and so when Heather (who'd never played before) and I took on the guys, we won the first game handily. It was Tommy's first time as well, but he picked it up in the second game. Heather and I had a commanding lead when he knocked one of my four-pointers off the back end to score 5 for he and Chad, enough to win. However, adding the scores of both games together, the ladies were the ultimate victors.

We didn't get home too late, even though we hit one more bar after shuffleboard (a really cool place called Mono). We got up early this morning (8-ish) to make sure we got some of the "kick-ass breakfast" (which shuts down at 9:30 on weekdays) and to pack up our stuff for check out.

We met Heather at 10 in our lobby, stored our stuff in the luggage room and set out together for the bus to Bygdoy, a neighborhood about 20 minutes away that has the Norwegian Folk Museum (as well as all the ship museums, Viking, Kon-Tiki, etc., but no time for those). We got there right as it opened at 11 and all pulled out our cameras as we toured the old houses from various time-periods of Norwegion history, from the 1600s onward. The coolest part was an apartment building they'd reconstructed there, and they decorated the different apartments in different time periods, from the 1890s to the 1990s when the building was ultimately torn down and reconstructed at the museum. We realized later that none of us took any photos in that part; we were all so engaged in the exhibit.

We took the bus back and had to bid farewell to Heather, loaded up our stuff and caught a train for the airport, where we have hours before our flight but figured at least there'd be comfortable seating (which there is). We managed to sort through all our photos to upload to Flickr at our Tromso hotel and I wrote this blog post. Now we're off on our quest to see the Northern Lights.