Ålesund; Sunday, 08 September, 2019

I’d managed to arrange a late checkout so I wasn’t having to rush to get things done. After breakfast I partially packed my bag and then headed out into town to explore the park and the mountain. The highest point in the city is Mount Aksla – not really a mountain, but a pretty high rocky outcrop that dominates the city centre. Carved out of the side of the rock is a staircase that takes you from the City Park up to the viewing platform and café/restaurant located at the top.

I headed over to the park to have a look round there before starting my ascent up the side of the hill. Its quite a strenuous climb, though there are frequent platforms as the staircase zig-zags its way up the hill with a copious supply of benches. In the end, with several photostops it took about 40 minutes to make the ascent up, though I was passed by the same runner about 4 times as she ascended and descended the mountain.

By the time I reached the top I was in need of a refreshing drink, so I paid the overinflated prices of the café at the top for a bottle of soda, though it also meant I got free entry to the viewing platform located on the roof of the café, which was probably work half the markup on the drink.

The views from the top, particularly on a day with clear skies – looking down onto the Fjords – are spectacular, and well worth the effort of getting up here. I spent about 30 minutes taking in the views before it was time to make my descent back down the mountain. That was a much quicker exercise, though even then it still took about 15 minutes to get to the bottom, partly due to the number of people coming up.

From the park I walked over to the Aalesunds Museum and had a quick look around that, though by now I was conscious that I only had limited time left before I needed to checkout of the hotel. After taking in the key highlights of the museum I headed back down into town and over to the hotel, taking advantage of still having the room, to change into a clean T-shirt and jeans that hadn’t stomped up the side of a mountain so that I was slightly fresher for my journey home.

I then checked out of the hotel, grabbed a cab and headed over to the airport. I’d intentionally headed over early as my amended booking, thanks to the BA strike, now meant I was booked on SAS all the way through to London and wanted to make sure that my bags could go straight through without needing to reclaim them in Oslo, thankfully on checking in my through booking was shown and the self-service machine printed my boarding card and baggage tag all the way through to Heathrow, so in the end I had rather more time that I needed to hang around in the departures lounge, not helped by the inbound flight from Olso being delayed by nearly 45 minutes due to a technical problem at Oslo.

The flight was inevitably late leaving Ålesund, not helped by the paperwork taking a long time to print at the gate, but given I had nearly 3 hours to hang around at Oslo Airport I wasn’t that worried. We eventually left 35 minutes late and made a bit of that time up on the way to Oslo so I still had quite a bit of time to wait around there before my final flight back to London.