First night

The rest of Saturday involved moving the final important bits and pieces. Beds, cots, food, clothes and all other required pieces of kit required to live in the new place and not required to show at the old apartment viewings were transported in one of the many runs.

Whaddaya mean this isn't a proper parking space officer? Luckily there don't seem to be many parking enforcement officers... especially at the weekend... in fact I don't recall ever seeing a parking pig in Oslo? Do they even exist?

This is a first night snapshop panoramic shot... tell me what you think

First Sunday morning. Maud feeling better I think, but was a little bit uncertain of her new unfamiliar surroundings. Still very cute though.

Yes Maud, the kitchen bin is in the middle of the living room floor... don't worry, normal service will be restored soon!

Park Playtime Pitstop

Saturday: Maud had been spectacularly ill overnight so Matt and Silje had been up for hours dealing with the fallout from all that drama. Uncle Tim was blissfully unaware of any of this until breakfast time the next day, despite being only metres away! Sorry :) So really the last thing on their minds was getting on with moving house.. but the jobs were stacking up and there was no putting them off any longer! So a hearty breakfast later and we were off to move more stuff in the amazing Fat Wagon.

A few ticks on the list later and we stopped for a well earned break to meet the girls down at the playground.

Maud was happy to show off her brand new summer shoes...

...scoff buns....

...gossip with the girls...

... and share a few deep and meaningful thoughts with Kristiana.... probably about shoes by the looks of it :)

The Move

Last weekend saw my latest jetsetting adventure, this time back to Oslo for a "working holiday" to help Matt, Silje and Maud in their moving house plans.

This was also the first time I have flown with Sterling.com, and was pleasantly surprised by their service. The flight cost £77 including baggage, which is well under half the usual cost of SAS. Incidentally they have recently advertised fares where I could get there and back for a total of £38 including taxes! Just unbelievable! Gatwick is also a much nicer/easier airport to fly from so they are onto a winner with me! The only unfortunate thing is their schedule which is only every other day and at funny times... I arrived at Matt and Siljes flat at midnight and went straight to bed in preparation for the hard days work ahead.

Dont know what is wrong with these pictures but my camera is old and clunky now... on its last legs. First stop on our list was at the garage for important tyre business! Its great for me to get to see all these places that have only existed on the I&I and TFW blogs... it really is an Alladins cave of treasure down there and completely how I expected it to be: clean enough organised chaos. After that was quickly sorted there was a bit list of jobs to do to get the move done.

The Fat Wagon proved to be an amazing workhorse over the course of the weekend. Transporting with ease the enormous fridge ...

... and then the washer and tumble drier both still in their packaging in one go... with room to spare... its just a dream when things are this easy...

Here we see the final resting place of the luxury washer and dryer combination... top of the range laundry experience all at the touch of a button ... and all under the one roof! Bliss... The only problem was getting the correct fittings... Matt took me to the hardware shops but as DIY plumbing is not strictly allowed there is not a massive choice of specialist bits... needless to say the proper plumbing shop does NOT open late on Fridays and will not even reopen until Monday! Ugg!

Lovely view from the balconio. Right down to the water and lots of trees and birds and peace and quiet.

Bokashi update

My bokashi adventure is progressing nicely. I have made a nice home for the box in the cupboard under the draining board which is easy to access and keeps in the malty smell of the bran.

This is how things looked after I came back from Montreal. A total of about 5 days goings on. The white fluffy fungus is good and a sign of healthy bokashi. If things start going black and rotten then its bad news and the batch has to be chucked out.

Before food gets into the excitement of the bokashi bin, it goes into the kitchen caddy. I'm aiming to build up a good bulk of stuff so that when I chuck in into the bokashi bin it forms a good layer and also means I open the lid less and use less bran.

This is what it looks like again after loading in another layer... work your magic you microscopic marvels!
I am still waiting for my first harvest of bokashi juice. You are supposed to drain off any liquid from the tap to prevent the load turning rancid. The juice is highly nutritious for your plants and garden. Yum!

à bientôt Montreal

Sarah claims to have not experienced these more stringent safety rules and regs when flying on aeroplanes now but quite frankly unless she had been living under a rock... well... anyway upshot was that the $30 special moisturiser that she bought was in her hand baggage - it was over 100mls and we had already dumped her checkin luggage without a second thought! PANIC! Clever solution was to buy some little potion pots from the newsagent and squeeze the tube into several of these. Much fun, especially when this has to be done against the clock and in the middle of the aiport :) haha

Meanwhile I had a few hours to kill so went through to international departures, only to be thoroughly disappointed with the shopping facilities... all I could find was a bar.... so managed to squeeze in a few last Canadian G&Ts to toast a great Easter holiday success.

Breakfast time

We saved our special breakfast for the last morning. Beauty's Luncheonette is billed as the best in town so we trundled on over the other side of the city to check it out.

Sarah waiting for her tea to stew.

Hat head with smoothie concoction...

Stealing sister :)

MMmmm baaaacon... !

Nice neighbourhood too. We had a quick walk around then hopped back on the metro to the city centre.

Oot and aboot in the snow...

There was lots of snow and ice... much more than I expected. I had not taken appropriate shoes in any event...