The airport lobby was like a ghost town. Now, here's a thing with Ryanair. They have been quite vocal about their new image, an image that is supposed to show them treating passengers like human beings. As a result, the usual animal stampede by said passengers to be the first through the airports gates and on to the plane to grab the available seats and storage compartments is a thing of the past. I was always amazed by those who paid extra to board first as it only meant they were first through the gate, following which they would be quickly caught up and swallowed by the ensuing stampede, thus losing any opportunity to select their seats at leisure. Anyway, Ryanair now allocate seats on booking. There is one small problem with this. If, when booking in online, you elect to have a free, allocated seat, rather than pay for the privilege of choosing your seat, you can only book in for a flight no further away than 7 days. That is all well and good unless, like us, you are away from civilisation for over a week and so unable to check in online for the return journey, UNLESS we wanted to pay an extra £20 to book specific seats, that you can do 30 days prior to travel. Alternatively, we could pay £30 on arrival at the airport for the honour of having our boarding passes printed off there. Consequently, during our tour of the mountains, we will be constantly in search of friendly hytte (hostel) proprietors in the hope one of them will allow us to use their computer and printer.
Anyway, after a peaceful coffee and mandatory muffin at the airport, we casually strolled to the boarding gate, handed over our passes and proceeded, like human beings, to our allocated seats. Travelling with Sean is like a breath of fresh air as, unlike my usual partner (no names, no pack drill), he is not a magnet for screaming children, the morbidly obese, people suffering from terminal body odour or the generally ignorant, rude or self obsessed traveller. Proof that our usual proximity to the aforementioned on public transport has nothing whatsoever to do with me!
The flight itself passed very quickly and without incident, and it seemed no time at all before we were looking down at snow capped mountains.
After landing at Torp it was a quick visit to the duty free before boarding the coach for the hour and forty five minute drive to Oslo. We were there collected from the bus terminal and treated to a feast of elk burgers with potatoe and cabbage washed down with a glass of Ringnes beer. On that note, and feeling very content, it will be an early night before our frantic days shopping tomorrow to sort skis and boots for Sean. I'm starting this blog with the best intentions of keeping up a daily log of our travels, so we will see how it progresses. I'm hoping that, if you take the time to read it, you don't find it too boring. Oh, and I blame any errors in text, punctuation etc. on Apples predictive texting. Though I do have to say that I am quite surprised the apostrophe has disappeared from the keyboard of my brand new, shinny, iPad Air! Yes, I did, I'm a hypocrite I know. A brief flutter with a Microsoft Surface had me returning it to PC World within a day and returning to the hated Apple corporation. Ah well, so long for now.
