The best laid plans... — An Elegant Sufficiency

are liable to change at any moment. We simply try to make the best of it.

Our thoughts of visiting the ski jump at Holmenkollen were abandoned before we'd even started as the museum is undergoing renovation and reopens next weekend. Quickly revising our plans with an alternative viewpoint, we came up with the idea of Ekebergpark which not only offered views of the city but had a collection of outdoor sculpture too. Were we sculpted out yet? Of course not! And anyway, we recalled watching the little blue trams climbing the hill opposite our ship's berth last Summer and it was fun to think we might ride that same tram now we are back.

A short consultation of the tram routes concluded that we'd change trams at the stop called Solli where we jumped off the first one to be greeted with a familiar face. Why is Winston Churchill standing here, I wonder?

Actually, I had remembered the stop here in Solli for a different reason: I had seen a rather attractive shop front on the corner!

Yes, of course we went to have a look inside! Granit was filled with plenty of interesting bits and pieces and since we were not to half an hour, we took a good look around before returning to the tram stop to catch the next one. With a ten minute frequency on all lines, it's all pretty efficient.

But our plans were thwarted once again. As we climbed the hill towards Ekebergpark, our tram stopped and the driver made an announcement. There was no tram service beyond here and we would need to transfer to a replacement bus service.

OK. We can do that.

We soon saw the reason why. A gang of workers were relaying the tram track and clearly it would be closed for some time.

But our bus took us no further than the Maritime School and not really understanding what was going on or how we might go any further, we cut our losses and rode the bus back down to the tram again.

Looking over to see the Hurtigruten ship parked where Splendor had been last Summer, we considered our options. Perhaps we'd walk up to the square with the Christmas Market and take a look around the area near the National Theatre?

Which is how we came to be amongst the Saturday afternoon bustle of shoppers in the city centre - not exactly where we'd planned to spend the afternoon!

Never mind. There are some beautiful buildings around here and it was good to stop and take a close look at some of them rather than catch a glimspe from a moving vehicle.

The entrance to the Christmas Market was outside the Grand Hotel and we found ourselves being swept along, before we'd asked ourselves whether or not we wanted to do that!

Because really, there was no (easy) turning back. Reminsicent of leaving a football match, or walking through Hull Fair so many years ago, walking in a crowd like this is just something to jolly along with.

Eventually we reached the gateway adjacent to the National Theatre and felt that we were ready for a break. It hadn't been quite the day we'd planned (so far) but we'd seen some interesting places and enjoyed being in the city.