Sunday August 9th 2009
As I got into bed the night before the 9th of August, I was really excited about that I would be flying the next day. Combined with the horrible heat in Norway, I didn't fall to sleep before nearly 01:00 GMT+1. At 05:00 my phone called for me to wake up, and so I did. I took a shower, ate some breakfast and waited for my mom to finish showering. We then packed the very last stuff, like tooth care items, shower soap and the remaining clothes into my little suitcase.
Then, in a beautiful sunrise, we drove to Oslo Airport Gardermoen. Some shots from the ride:
The clock a few minutes after we started driving to the airport. (Bad picture though: It was hard to take a picture while driving)
Awesome cloud lightning from the sunrise.
Then, as we reached OSL, I took some pictures too.
Control Tower:
No doubt this is OSL.. i've seen these planes on the tarmac here so many times! (Never the BA 319 though: I've only seen it take off like 2 or 3 times lol)
We entered the Departures Terminal and went to check me in. After successfully booking my "helper" that would get me through security and boarding safely, we went to the café in the terminal. We shared a cup of sliced apples, and my mom got herself a coffee as well. About 15 minutes later, we went to the Meeting Point (very convenient, I must say) that was a few steps away from the café and met my helper.
Date: Sun August 9 2009 - 9/8/09
Flight DY 1742
Airline: Norwegian Air Shuttle
Rego: LN-NOC
Type: Boeing 737-800 (737-81Q)
Departed: Oslo Airport Gardermoen (OSL, ENGM)
Arrived: Barcelona Airport El Prat de llobregat (BCN, LEBL)
We then went to security. There was just a wee bit line there. Here was where the fun began: We skipped the small line. People didn't seem to care, and I got my backpack through security without any more doodling.
We then went to the gate of DY 1742. Here, we skipped the line to get me my boarding pass and enter the jetway. As we went down the jetway, I took it all in - the thrill of flying, and the thrill of trying many new things. We also skipped the line that was in front of the entrance of the aircraft, as they were not ready to board passengers just yet. I then had the awesome oppurtunity to look at my aircraft, noticing it was LN-NOC, with Ole Bull on the tail. I told my helper: "Okay.. this is kinda awkward. You know, my sister and brother went to Barcelona a few weeks ago, and they flew on Ole Bull too.." She laughed a bit at that. Side note: I absolutely friggin' love the glass jetways at OSL! All hail glass jetways! I got a good look at the fuselage, winglet, and the beautiful non-circular CFM56-7 engine.
As we got the green light to board, my helper bid me adieu and I, feeling a bit alone, boarded. I was greeted by happy, smiling flight attendants. I was completely blown away by their helpfulness, 'cause this was not what I had expected. I told one of the flight attendants I would be sitting in 30A today, and she walked me down to my seat. I promptly put my hand baggage, my backpack, into the overhead locker. This would turn out to be a mistake a bit later.
Very quickly, NOC filled up with passengers, until it was at its maximum passenger capacity. (I had a lot of fun comparing this to my SAS flight to BCN in December which had like 6-7 passengers onboard.. now, SAS is older and maybe "more experienced", but really, SAS are having a lot of turbulence now if you catch my drift..)
And then -
NO! I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this alone. I was filled with a horrible feeling. I don't know why. One moment I was feeling fine, another one, horrible. I sent some SMS'es to my mom. I also tried to look out at NOC's wing and remember I had to do this. It would make me happy. I loved flying. I tried to lock out the aircraft's small vibration from the APU. Still, remembering sitting in my A330 from OSL to TFS had made me feel a lot better... maybe this was the reason I lovey-dovey-wovey A330s. :P Anyway, a photo from the time we were sitting at the gate (The crew seemed to have some problem with the safety card video unit - something about the power button not wanting to stay inside. Hope you fix this problem, Norwegian!), a great-looking SAS 734 at the gate next to us, LN-BUF.
I breathed. In and out. Innnn.. and out. The aircraft left the gate, and started the taxi to runway 19L. Some videos (sorry for video'ing the first one, it was on video mode and I didn't have the time to change it - but it made me so excited!)
Thai Airbus 340-500! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOO!
We then rolled out on runway 19L. And as we were still rolling from the power that was used during the turn, the pilots selected takeoff thrust and NOC's engines roared loudly. And after my longest 738 takeoff roll ever, Ole Bull took flight into the rain-heavy clouds.
In the very gray clouds.
Over the extreme clouds, in a light bank to the right.
Wee! Cloud skimming!
We then climbed to our cruising altitude. If the pilot told us, I could not tell as he spoke swedish with a terrible accent (I didn't hear/understand anything..) and his english was kind of bad.
I love Norwegian's livery, and the norwegian flag on their 738's and LN-KKX's (the only DY 733 with winglets) is very nice.
At this time, it was pretty much only clouds to see down there.
Awesome looking clouds! Unfortunately, they caused some turbulence. But nothing horrible. Turbulence, I feel, is only bad the first time. There were several points of turbulence during this flight, but I didn't care.
Leg room (well enough i'm only like 1,60 m yet, but I felt it was needed anyway :P)
No question how NOC is spending its days... (tray table)
BTW Norwegian: What is the point of posting "Life vest under your seat" and "Fasten seat belt while seated" twice?
A little while after these photos were taken, the beautiful, hardworking and smiling FAs sprang to action. They rolled the cart into the cabin from the front and worked their way down. There were four of them on this flight: 1 young norwegian-asian girl, 1 young norwegian girl and two a bit older norwegian girls. But they spoke english so well, it didn't matter they all had norwegian as their mother tongue. When the norwegian-asian FA came to me, I remembered:
"Oh no, my bag is in the overhead locker.. and.. oh boy... The wallet is in there too. I asked the FA is she could look for it, and she tried, but it was way back in the locker since I was first to board. I then asked the two guys next to me, and the spanish dude in the aisle seat got out immediatly (thanks to him), but the big dude in the middle seat didn't seem to want to move. Finally, he got out and I digged out my backpack and put it under the seat in front of me. I then got out my wallet which I had laid in my magazine compartment (:P) and ordered one box of Pringles and one can of orange juice.
My "Meal":
Hey! What's this? Improper seat maintenance? Seats have feelings too, you know!
Me looking out my window. Awesome angle, eh?
Awesome ice formation forming on my front window.
Meal with a view..
More clouds below.
Water down there?
Norwegian's in flight magazine. Unfortunately I forgot to grab a copy on both flights D:
WTF? This can only have 2 explanations:
1: Because the guys who made this magazine forgot that they were making the DY magazine and not SK's, or
2: The reason SK is nearly going bankrupt is because they paid DY a LOT of money to have an ad in their in-flight magazine. XD
Tuuuurning!
Safety card.
Taken a few minutes after starting our descent into Barcelona airport.
Mean clouds that would later turn out to be rain/thunder clouds, the only bad weather I saw during my entire vacation..
Bad picture of BCN. It was a bit misty.
In the dark clouds. These were extremely turbulent! NOC shaked terribly.
After landing.
Competition (SAS MD)
Air Europa.
Easyjet's Airbus nr.100!
Three new airlines for me in one shot: El Al, Delta and Air Transat.
We then stood at the gate for like 10 minutes without anything happening. It looked like they tried to attach stairs to the back door of the aircraft (which I really hoped for) but it seemed that they eventually gave it up. We then exited through the front door, and I told the very nice crew goodbye.
Without thinking.
"Oh crap," I thought as I entered the messy dual Arrivals + Departures part of this terminal. I followed some people from the plane as I had forgot to ask the FAs for someone to get me safely to my sister and her boyfriend's dad. I followed them to baggage claim, and after calling my mom telling her everything went fine, I asked the guy I had been sitting next to and his wife if I could go with them. They told me "Sure, why not?" and they waited for me to get my baggage.. thanks to them! We then went to the hall of this terminal and met my sister and her BF's father. Finally, I was back with a family member :D
We then drove to his family's apartment, in his comfy Daewoo. It's a very nice car, in my opinion. And so, a great vacation started.
As we arrived at his place, we had "lunch" by spanish means ("dinner" by norwegian means :P) and after dinner, my stomach was murdering me for some reason (It wasn't the food, it had been like that for a while).. but it's never happened to me during flying before. Well, there was another first for me.
After that, we went to my sister and her friend's apartment (her friend wasn't there this week) and watched some movies (I promise you, the movies she lets me watch.. well, my paranoid mom would never let me watch them :-P I'm thirteen dangit!) For dinner, we had a delicious pea soup, but as I was still full from the "lunch", I didn't eat too much.
We then went to bed. The next morning, my sis' BF was there too. He must have arrived after I got to bed, no worries though. (I've strictly told them not to get married yet - I absolutely despise weddings. BORING!)
Monday
Today, me and my sister went on the metro to Barcelona, near where the FC Barcelona stadium is. We got off the ultra-comfy metro seats *COUGH COUGH* and went the short walk to the ticket counters.
And nearly stopped and turned back.
There was a horrible que. Far beyond anything i've ever seen. It was horrible. We nearly screamed and went back, but we decided now that we were here, we could get in the que anyway and just wait. Luckily, it went by fast and we got our tickets.
The ridicolously long queue for the Barca Stadium tickets:
The last 30-40 % of the queue:
Luckily, it moved fast and we got a slush from Pans & Company (Why can't they have any good fast food companies except for Burger King in Norway? All we've got is McDonalds (Yeah right that i'm going to that place unless I have to.. I mean, a burger should consist of more than meat, ketchup and cheese...) and Burger King (My preferred, as they actually put healthy stuff into their burgers..)
After finishing it, we entered the Barca museum.
The wardrobe. Sorry, it was impossible to get any shots without people in it here. (The long que was there for a reason :P)
Read the sign.
Weird room!
Press room.
A whole lotta' presidents. O_o.
View from some sort of balcony.
We then went into the city if memory serves right, bought some food from Pans & Company and got me an awesome cap.
Yes, we went into the city. Some random place in Catalunya, I believe:
Some random (narrow!) street with a dude not liking getting his photo taken D:
Just went off the metro here in Terrassa here:
Tuesday
When we woke up Tuesday, we went to my sister's boyfriend's apartment and did the last packing.
Taken from a cool bridge as we walked. I walk a lot faster than anyone I know, so I had the time to take a photo. :D
In the car, with me looking like a genius like always. Yea right.
Weird forest. Sorry for the relfection.
When we arrived, we checked in at the hotel and ate some lunch at the nearby restaurant. Unfortunately, they managed to bring me Spaghetti Bolognese instead of the Spaghetti Carbonara I had asked for, so I had to wait a bit longer to get my food.
Also, their Sangria wasn't really tasty. LOOL, I shouldn't even know that. I'm 13 xD
I believe this was taken after we got back from the beach. Spot the seagull (I believe it was a seagull at least) =D
Tricky shot to take.
The street.
Wednesday and the following days, incl. Friday
As I have one 'friggin HUGE load of pics/videos from Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, i'm going to select those I like the best and post them.
The insanely crowded beach a bit away from our hotel.
This guy was a n00b at windsurfing. He fell into the water several times. ROFLMAO.
And the birds were having a great time sunbathing at the part of the beach that is under construction.
These guys were jumping from this weird rock... I'll pass.
After climbing the weird rock.
These awesome signs with this cool dog were everywhere!
Shipyard
Some old stuff
We ate at this restaurant every day.. It was like the best place ever.
The shipyard from above after walking up some hills.
A beach we eventually came to after a lot of walking. We didn't go down to it though. It was too late and too crowded.
This water is not for drinking - from a fountain
Arr matey! (more old stuff)
Just like the signs with the awesome dog, these small Frigo shops were to your right or left every 30 meters you went forward beside the beach. We made good use of them though :D
Some guys were paragliding :D
Sunset!
It wasn't allowed to swim in this area as boats were arriving and departing here. People did it anyway. xD
We then went on a boat trip. Some pics from the boat trip:
I wonder what these guys were carrying... xD
View of Blanes from the boat.
Boat beach of some sort
Mega-crowded beach
Another mega-crowded beach
Beach + don't you just love that beautiful turquoise water?
The inside of the boat
Some small beach-like place between some rocks
Some other small beaches
Doesen't that look like a great place to live?
Cool-looking place. This was not our destination though. Oh, and yes, another mega-crowded beach.
This was awesome to watch! There were like 4 or 5 people on the "flyfish" and there was a boat that was pulling them, and suddenly it would do a sharp turn so the people fell off. LOL
Side note: I'm adding waaay too many pics to this report. :P
Awesome boat! I need to get one of those :D
Big boat.
Small boat.
Another big beach, also uber-crowded
A lazy-mans paradise: McDonalds and the beach right next to each other. :D
A glass bottom boat racing past us
Another glass bottom boat, me and my sister could have gone on this one when we returned, but I didn't feel like waiting 30 minutes more just for that.
An old castle
Some... place
A cave :D
Some.. place.
Finally, we're about to arrive at our destination!
The boat's menu
We then ate lunch at a great restaurant with awesome food, and after that we went up to the old castles and such. This was the view as we were walking.
Awesome water..
The narrow walkway as we were walking
Spot me! I'm the one with the orange cap :D
Amazing view..
A restaurant! Weird place for one though. But there were actually people living in these uber old apartments... insane!
The place with the uber old apartments
Another great view! This was more my style though :p
More old houses
A street in Tosca
The beach as were walking around the city half-lost trying to find a Caixa Catalunya bank so my sister could withdraw some cash from her bank account
If the H wasn't there standing for Hotel I would say this was just a little bit off..
Awesome name, huh? We had slush here :D
We then went on the 17:10 boat back to Blanes. I didn't take any pictures as I was sitting in a middle seat (we were a bit too late - we were actually lucky to even get a seat..) When we came back, we decided on something special..
Saturday
The "special" thing was that we would get out of bed really early, like 6:00 am to watch the sunrise. It was a good choice. It was beautiful. But cold, and windy. There were also some bats flying around. And we had to sit there for about half an hour before the sun started going up.
Blurry, but you can see how it was.
The birds were enjoying themselves before the humans came and took all of the fun away from them.
Taken at what was near to the exact moment the sun peeked up over the horizon.
I actually went into the water and checked the temperature - actually it wasn't that bad. But still a bit cold.
Looking good now
Even better now
Some birds and bats were still flying around
Beautiful...
And my personal favorite:
We then went back to our hotel room and slept for about 2 hours more. Then as we woke up, we were "greeted" with this view. I was like "WTF?"
Luckily it dissappeared quickly. While my sister was packing down our stuff as we would be leaving today, I took some pictures of our hotel room.
Our bathroom! It did have a shower/bathtub! :P
Our suitcase packed up + our beach umbrella
Our beds + my reading material for this week
We then met up with my sister's boyfriend and her friend as they were here too to enjoy our last day here in Blanes. After racing around a bit we went down to the beach and my sister took this shot:
A helicopter was flying back and forth with this banner:
Another view of Blanes from above as we were walking to a nature park
Inside the nature park
More from the park (I didn't really want to take pictures because
1. I was tired and not into taking pictures
2. Not interested
3. Dehydrated)
Some cool birdies in the park.
Black roses.. never seen anything like it!
My sister took most of these shots, but I took some too.
Great view here!
The stairway we walked down to get to the place with the awesome view
We then went back to Blanes and had lunch. PS: The stairway of DOOOOOOOM and aching feet.. it was horrible D:
We then drove back to Terrassa. I was exhausted so I just tried to relax, something that turned out to be pretty hard when I noticed my sister's boyfriend's old Peugeot 205 had some malfunction with its doors.. appearantly, my door had been open for quite some time while driving at 100 kph. Well, that sure was fun, having to hold onto that door for dear life..
Eventually after some nasty driving we got back to my sister's boyfriend's apartment. I was exhausted and didn't want any dinner, so I just went straight to sleep - at 19:30.
Sunday
Sunday we woke up at 08:00, which I thought was a bit too late as we needed to be at the airport at 11:40 to book my helper (even though my flight was due to depart 12:40) AND we needed to wait for my sister's boyfriend to get to the apartment and we had to eat breakfast and shower AND we had to get to the apartment we had been in during Sunday and Monday and pack my stuff into my own suitcase and my backpack. I was like WTF!?!?! EIGHT o clock? Are you mad??
But we made it back to our original apartment and packed down my stuff, ate some more and I actually had a little time to play golf on the Wii before we left.
We then drove to the airport, and I was getting excited again. And when we arrived, what do I see? The same type of plane and same airline that I always seem to see at the gate when my mom and I are picking up someone at OSL... a Continental Boeing 757-200. :X
Date: Sun August 16 2009 - 16/8/09
Flight DY 1743
Airline: Norwegian Air Shuttle
Rego: LN-NOG (I didn't find this out before we had landed at OSL though)
Aircraft: Boeing 737-800 (737-86N)
Departed: Barcelona Airport El Prat de llobregat (BCN, LEBL)
Arrived: Oslo Airport Gardermoen (OSL, ENGM)
We entered Terminal 1 IIRC and when we saw that incredibly long check-in line we were like "GAH!!!!" and we wanted to scream. Note: There were no other people queueing for ANY other flight... the entire Departure part of the terminal was just a MESS of DY 1743 passengers :S
As we stood in line, I told my sister "Dang, I forgot to buy something, like a souvenir for my friend!" and she told me she would go buy some of my favorite gum - Trident Strawberry Gum - for me and my friend. She came back soon with 10 packs of Trident.
Eventually we came to the counter and told the check-in woman that I was supposed to have a helper. "Sure" she said and got me my boarding pass and took my suitcase. She told us we would have to wait a bit before we could come back and get me my helper. So we just went around the terminal, looked in stores, took a group photo in a photobox and after what seemed like 5 minutes, we went back to check-in and got my helper. I told my sister and her boyfriend goodbye and me and my helper went to the boarding pass-check and the escalators up to security. I went through security (no priority for me this time, though) without any problems and to the waiting area of my boarding gate, which was, of course, crammed full. After waiting for about 15 minutes we could finally board.
As I entered the aircraft I was greeted, though a bit more unfriendly by a flight attendant. She asked for my name and boarding pass. I gave her my boarding pass and she told me to go to 30F, which was my assigned seat.
An Air France Airbus was our neighbour. I wonder what game they are playing inside that aircraft :P
I noticed that the plane smelled quite new, but I had no idea how new it was - and I couldn't get the registration either due to the bad gate and the non-glass jetways. Our winglet.
I could see the horizontal stabilizer from my seat! It felt quite weird.
I could see my suitcase being loaded on the aircraft too! It was weird seeing it. But I was happy to know that my suitcase was coming on the same plane as me too :D
My suitcase was the green one peeking out of the suitcase holder (lol)
After getting pushed out and starting our engines, I could see this BA 757-200 that I would later find out was G-CPER:
I did not get that horrible feeling of "not wanting to do this" this time. Probably because I was going home.
A Czech Airlines A320 that we taxied past
After a short taxi we turned out onto the runway, stood still for about 20 seconds and then the pilots applied takeoff thrust. After another lengthy takeoff, LN-NOG had reached rotation speed and we leapt to the air.
Takeoff video:
After takeoff, those on the right side had an awesome view of BCN:
After reaching our cruising altitude of 35,000 feet. I could actually understand and hear the pilots this time (Probably because NOG was less than two months old here..)
Awesome scenery here:
Some cloud layers
Bad shot, but you can see the legroom onboard NOG. I found the seats to be more uncomfortable than the ones on NOC, though.
Gazing down..
Our wing.
I'm leaving on a jet plane..
My window.
The flight was boring. Not as turbulent as DY 1742. I only ordered an orange juice as I wasn't all that hungry. I spent some time reading my book and the rest of the time looking out the window or turning my head around to look at the horizontal stabilizer. My seat mates were two french girls that didn't speak a word english, so they were quite quiet. They had even packed their own snacks - crackers and Fanta. Unfortunately they were coughing alot, and me, not wanting swine flu all that much, turned a bit away from them. But they were not the worst seat mates. At least they weren't young kids.
LN-NOG's cabin
More clouds
Some holes in the cloud layer here, revealing a city
Contrails from another plane below us
Even more clouds
A shoreline
A boat! I think we'll beat 'em to land :P
Just a wild guess here.. ummmm.. could it be... DENMARK?
On descent into OSL. I recommend the OSL approach to everyone reading this - both the summer, autumn, winter and spring approaches are great.
Another one
Oslo and Sandefjord was a bit cloudy today
A lake and some more scenery
Even more!
Seriously.. count the number of lakes in this picture. I think it's like 8 or 9.
We then approached the airport and landed. I am unable to provide the video as it is over 100 MB, but the landing was pretty rough as usual on 737 - the landing gear on these planes.. I don't really like it.
After landing, just about to put down the speed brakes
Home, sweet home.
We then docked at a gate and stood there idle for a while, just as we had done after landing at BCN. This time I asked the FAs for a helper and there was one waiting for me in the jetway. So he went with me to the baggage claim and then to meet my mom. Finally, I was home in Norway again. I felt quite relieved, but also glad for having done this. Now I can brag about having flown alone in my class :D
And that concludes this trip report. Hope you enjoyed reading. This will be for my own dear memories too. I've only used like 30 MB out of 1030 MB available for photos so I will be using this Blogger account for Trip Reports for quite some time.
There are two videos missing from this Trip Report, because they were over the size limit of 100 MB.
I think I might delete all this stupid 2009 stuff. Not the entire report, but the "ROFLMAO"s, "LOL"s, and "XD"s. I think it looks pretty stupid. Then again, maybe I'm being too serious. Whatever. We'll see the next time I check this web page, which will probably be this summer when I can't think of anything better to do. :)
Draft saved January 5th 2012 21:45
Ble ikke så mye sjekking av denne sida den sommeren, gitt. Var opptatt med Andorra og å slappe av. Men det var jo ikke så verst det heller. Burde vel egentlig ikke skamme meg over det, alle har vært 13/14 år en gang i livet. Selv om man ikke liker tanken på det, hahah
// 16 januar 2015
Ble ikke så mye sjekking av denne sida den sommeren, gitt. Var opptatt med Andorra og å slappe av. Men det var jo ikke så verst det heller. Burde vel egentlig ikke skamme meg over det, alle har vært 13/14 år en gang i livet. Selv om man ikke liker tanken på det, hahah
// 16 januar 2015
Wow, great trip report, dude. Seemed like you had a lot of fun. Looking forward to your next installments on this blog. :)
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