Jason and I had a lovely send-off at the airport as we picked up the twins from school so they could come along and say goodbye to us. A nice start to our adventure!

Travelling these days isn’t for the faint of heart. It was a long and gruelling three-flight trip to get to Oslo, but everything went smoothly, and all flights were on time. Still, I said to Jason, “I knew there would be lots of walking on this trip, but who knew so much of it would be in the airports?”

I had a little “grandma moment” in the Iceland airport while walking to our last flight. There was a woman with a small child walking ahead of us. She had two large bags to deal with, and we were about to get on the escalator to go down to our gate. She got on with the two bags expecting the child to follow, but she was scared to get on, and the mom panicked watching her child standing at the top while she slowly moved away from her. I ran up to the child, took her hand, and led her on that first step and held her hand until we reached her mom. Mom was relieved and thanked me, and we chatted for a bit. She said her four-year-old was about to get a lovely surprise. The child’s grandma was a flight attendant on the flight we were taking, and the girl didn’t know that, so she would be so excited when she saw her grandma on the plane. Made me think of my little ones.

Things are different when visiting a new country. We had a hard time figuring out how to turn on the lights in our room. You need to insert your key card into a slot in your room to activate all the lights. Then there was how to get out the door to our car in the underground parking of our hotel. Jason figured that one out too after many tries. And the traffic is another story. Pedestrians walk across the street everywhere, barely looking to see if traffic is coming. Jason has to be on his toes all the time while driving. It will take us some time to get used to walking the streets!

We went out to find something to eat and came across a large building that looked like any other building on the streets, but once inside, realized it was a huge mall with many floors of shops and restaurants. There were so many food vendors, so we finally decided on a slice of pizza to settle the growls of our stomachs. We will come back later but we need to meet someone first…

We had called my second cousin, Ottar, and his partner, Tutti from our hotel earlier and agreed to meet in our lobby to hand over the bunad – the official Norwegian costume that was given to my mother by Ottar’s mother many years ago. Tutti will proudly wear it on Constitution Day in a couple of days. Ottar said the dress was coming home, and I was so happy that he felt that way. We sat and chatted for a while and made our plans to meet tomorrow to do some sightseeing down by the waterfront. The weather promises to be in the low to mid-20s for the next week or so. It was fun to meet our long-lost relatives, and we will certainly share many stories over the next few days spent with them. More to follow.

We did have a couple of short visits on FaceTime with LJ and the twins. We chatted with them before they left for school and after they got home, which works out time-wise for everyone. They were pretty excited.

After we met with Ottar and Tutti, we decided to jump in our car and tour around the city. We came across a beautiful area along the river and walked along its pristine banks where the birds were still singing at 10 p.m., still in full sunlight. People were out everywhere sitting at pubs and cafes, enjoying each other’s company. Music and laughter wafted their way to our ears, and a flute player played his instrument under a bridge where the sound resonated everywhere. So beautiful! We found an old church on our walk towering over the area and stopped for some pictures. Down a little further we came to a street filled with more people enjoying food and drinks, so we found a place called Los Tacos and stopped to try it. There was a Norwegian taco on the menu, so I had to try that. Meat mixed with corn and sour cream in a double soft taco hit the spot, and we chatted and people-watched until the sun started to set, and we headed home. I got to bed around midnight and woke up a couple of hours later to see Jason sitting at his computer and, like I always did when he was a kid, told him to get to bed! Always a mother!

It was a wonderful first day of our adventure, and looking forward to many more.