The Leyrers take on Norway: Part I

Just to clarify: The absence until now of a post about my parents’ and Chris’s visit with us does not imply in any way that it was an un-blog-worthy event. It might be categorized as borderline un-blog-able, though, just because there’s too much to say about it. Conciseness has never really been a strength of mine. Hightlighting just key moments of a visit require a lot of concentration: when just about every minute of something seems important, it’s almost painful to pare it down….but just as painful to write every detail. The problem here is that while ”conciseness” is not a strength, ”attention-span” isn’t really either. Which is why Bjørn and I were going to write these updates together, and in a more real-time fashion. Too bad such great ideas never make it to reality. Sigh.

So as the lesser of two evils, we will attempt to highlight and concize. (that’s ”concise” as a verb, folks.)

As ‘the L crew’ was flying into Oslo, our plan was to meet them there; so the entire vacay started with a milestone for Karlito — his first train ride. We have been blessed with two little boys that are very good travellers, so the train/plane combo to Oslo went very smoothly. Finding Grandma/Grandpa/Chris at the airport also went smoothly — Bjørn spotted them outside baggage claim, so while we reunited, he kindly played the role of packmule and got our luggage.

(Each of the next several days could be summarized by the types of transport we took; but that would lead to the impression that the Leyrer visit’s main goal was to experience transport alone. As it was, that was just a bonus.)

Bus-foot-hotel-tram — Dinner at a restaurant recommended by Lars (who also joined us) overlooking the city. Grandpa discovered that ordering mussels near a coastline is a bit different than ordering them in Wisconsin — speaking certainly of quantity (possibly quality?) — Chris mastered ordering ”Coke Lite”, and Grandma started to correct her grandson-snuggle-deficit.

Tram-foot-hotel: All slept well the first day

The next day and a half we toured around Oslo — Viggeland Park, the Nobel Peace Center…the play room at the hotel. The American crew did remarkably well considering the jet lag; the youngsters did well considering the lack of schedule. Bjørn and I even managed to go out — alone — for a couple of beers the second night. We exploit grandparents-as-babysitters at any opportunity with only the smallest, very ignorable, amount of guilt.

Bottom line: they got a good taste of Norway’s capitol and largest city to kick off the tour.

More to come!

* ”Going out” without kids could probably fill a post on its own. You can tell the parents of young children in the bar by the way they spend the first hour out in near silence, looking wide-eyed around the bar like they’ve never been in one before. 

* ”Traveling with kids” could fill another post. Mom kept asking me if I was looking forward to spending some time in Oslo/Arendal. It’s kind of a mixed bag — it’s nice to see something new, but taking a city-vacay with kids should not even be in the same sentence  as ‘relaxing.’