Norway Bike Trip
Thu 17 July 2025
Bob and I booked a trip to Norway with Bikes and Beers Tours and return Bergen to Oslo with Fjord tours.
This blog post will cover the first few days of the trip, before we meet up with Bob Williams of beer and bike tours.
Bob and I booked transit to the Denver Airport with Groome (bob) and Landline (me). Both buses leaves the Loveland airport at the same time. However, Bob wins, his driver deviated from the construction on I-25, and although a bumpy road according to Bob, got the airport 30 minutes before me.
It was fortunate for Bob, he got SNAFUed by TSA. For some reason, they had an internal database on him that listed his birthday in December, not in January. Several trips back and forth with TSA, Lufthansa and United resulted. Not sure if it really got resolved, both airlines insisted that his information was correct and matched his passport, no idea where TSA got hidden data about it. We speculate that the third time through security at the airport was just an agent that wasn't as diligent about looking at the screen data and passed him on.
I used my United lounge passes this trip, doesn't seem likely that I would have another trip prior to them expiring in October.
Flight to Norway Jul 15, 2025 1 Connection +1 day arrival Over Night (travel via Frankfurt)
Frankfurt flight was uneventful, I did check my bag. However, in Frankfurt, we boarded our flight to Oslo and then the captain came on over the intercom. Apparently, the ground crews somehow damaged the read cargo hold door(s)? and it can't be repaired. We had to disembark and after an hour delay, boarded a new plane for Olso. Arriving in Olso, it was easy to find the express train transfer to the Olso city center and get tickets. A few hiccups with enabling my esim card, looked like I had to enable 'roaming out of country network' to make it work. Not sure why, but the card worked after that with no issues.
July 16th Hotel, first night
Small hiccup, again, I booked the wrong Radison Blu for our pre-night stay. I booked the Plaza and the tour starts at the Radison Blu Scandinavia (about 1 km further from city center). Oh well, we ended up eating dinner at the burger pub next door and planned on transfering midday tomorrow to the new hotel.
We walked around the harbor area near the train station. The opera house was exceptional for sunset views.
The plan to meet Bob at the hotel bar for a pretour drink, meetup wouldn't have worked anyway, Bob's flight was delayed and he didn't arrive to Olso until 10pm anyway.
July 17th City explore and join tour
We planned out a couple of city sight seeing items for our day before joining the tour at the Scandinavian.
We did the Viking Planet 'museum', a virtual reality type experience. A couple of motion rides and interactive learning experience.
We visited the Rose Garden Memorial, which is a collection of iron roses made by artists all over the world to memorialize the victims of the terror attack of 22/7. Had lunch in the park, good people watching.
Our tour is only 4 people (plus Bob our guide). Tom and Kathy, who have travelled with Bob before and us. We have full mountain e-bikes. They appear to be very nice, heavy, but top quality bikes.
We all met at the top of the Radisson Blu for pre-dinner drinks and they walked to dinner. After dinner we went to the R00R bar. A craft beer, Belguim beer bar with many (>40) beers on tap and an entire walk of bottled beer choices.
The tour begins tomorrow with our first ride from Olso.
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Ride the Fault
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Gravel Adventure Norway
