Our final day in Norway arrived. Since we hadn’t explored Trondheim much yesterday, we decided to do an express tour before heading to the airport. We got up early to squeeze in 1.5 hours to see the city.
Our first stop was the old town bridge, lined with colourful houses along the river. The houses looked harmonious as if the whole town had agreed on a colour palette beforehand. The sun was slowly rising, and the reflections on the water made the view prettier. We wandered around the town a bit, though most shops were still closed. The shops in Trondheim looked more interesting than those in Tromso, but unfortunately we didn’t have much time to look around. It was probably better for our bank accounts though.
Next, we drove up to the fortress on the hill for a panoramic view of the city. In front of the fortress were four big candlelights, and only two were lit. Antoine explained they light one candle per week like a weekly advent calendar, and we were in week two. I found that quite cute. From the top, we could see the colourful town, the ocean, and the mountains layered behind. After enjoying the view, we headed to the airport.
Trondheim airport was very small, with mostly domestic flights. Since there was no direct flight to London, we had to take a short hop to Oslo first. At this point, I wished we could fast-forward through all the logistics and teleport straight home to our dog.
The first flight was only 45 minutes. I spent most of it napping while Antoine took some photos of clouds. In Oslo, we had less than an hour to get through border control and reach our international gate. The “all passports” queue was full of Japanese tourists, but thanks to Antoine’s French passport, we slipped into the EU line with zero queue. What a privilege. We even managed to buy more Norwegian chocolate at duty-free, elevating our chocolate haul to 10 bars.
After a long journey, we finally landed in London. It felt noticeably warmer than Norway. Even though all we wanted was to collapse at home, we first had to pick up our dog Hazel. We decided to play a tiny prank and walked past him without saying anything, while my friend had him out on a walk. He didn’t notice us at first, but then he caught our scent and started sniffing the air like a detective. When we approached again, he finally spotted us and shook his entire tiny body with joy. After our happy reunion, we headed home and finally went to bed as a full family.