Rainy day today and so there was not much smelling of roses along the way. 57km from Halmstad to Falkenberg. More nice beach houses. Also, we've noticed a large number of houses have little robotic lawn mowers that trundle about snipping at the grass and they dock themselves presumably when they're done or need more power.

On Friday we cycled 50km from Falkenberg to a campground in Kärradal. Just outside of Varberg we got totally dumped on; you might as well have been throwing buckets of water at us. The wind was slightly behind us though and once you're wet it doesn't really matter.

Although our cabin at the campground had cooking facilities we went out for dinner at a restaurant nearby called Fridas.

Yesterday we made our way from Kärradal to Åsa (43km) where we stayed at our favourite AirBnb so far. The hosts went out of their way to show us around the area and cooked us BBQ dinner of wild elk burgers with cooked banana and lingonberry sauce along with some nice French wines. Well above and beyond what you expect from an AirBnb stay and nice to finally meet and talk with real Swedes.

On the way to Åsa we went via the Ringhals nuclear power plant which sounds like it'll be decommissioned shortly. Sweden doesn't seem to have as many wind turbines as Denmark.

Today was a bit of a long day. 69km from Åsa to Särö and with fairly blustery head winds for some of the way. Took us 5 hours. 

We're finding these kinds of distances are nicely maintainable over a number of days but our bums start to ache after about 20km and there's really not much you can do about it. I've been thinking of seat inventions where you can flip a lever and change the shape of the seat temporarily. People would pay a lot for that if it worked.

Last day tomorrow with a shortish ~30km leg to Göteborg where we'll chill out for a couple of days.

A nice day today for the final leg of our cycle ride. Mostly followed the coast past beach houses through the playground of the well-to-do of Gothenburg. Nice and flat with a tail wind and, more importantly, only 30km. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant on the coast before entering the suburbs and waterfront of the city.

The last kilometre into Gothenburg! We're now showered in our hotel and prepping ourselves to stalk the city for good food and beer. Gothenburg seems to be more culturally diverse than other towns and cities we've been to along the way and that's kinda nice to see.

We explored Gothenburg yesterday. It's got the feel of Melbourne or Wellington with a walkable city centre, lots of good food and more culture than bigger cities. 

In the evening we met Linda (Eddie Johannnisssonns's sister) along with her friend and we did a craft beer pub crawl and dinner. 

This is the Vegemite/Marmite of Sweden. It's smoked fish roe paste in a tube and people who were not introduced to it as children generally find it to be awful. They say you should try something ten times though and I'm on my third and starting to like it. It goes well with boiled eggs.

Yesterday was our last day in Gothenburg. We went to a museum where they had an exhibit on the founding of the city. We also went to the Feskekörte (fish church) which is the main fish market. 

We traveled north for about four hours by bus last night to Oslo in Norway. Lots of wrapping the sharp and dirty bits of the bikes in bubble wrap for the trip which turned out to be unnecessary as we had a cargo hold to ourselves.

We arrived in Oslo yesterday and got our bikes and ourselves to the Citybox Hotel. Very compact (but nothing compared to Hotel So) and we have even got our bikes in the room with not too much bother. Awoke today to a fantastic day in Oslo. We started the day at the Opera House which is a similar style to the Mosegaard Museum (no photo of the actual building but here is a view from on top). 

We spent the rest of the day exploring Oslo and it is a fantastic city. We spent quite a lot of time at the Akershus Slot and the surprisingly interesting Forsvarsmuseet (a history for Norwegian military museum).

We checked out the very ugly Radhus where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every 10th of December.

Hugary?  How about Jamie's Italian in the Oslo sunshine?  Lovely meal washed down with beer and prosecco. 

Onwards to the Frogner where we came across a craft beer shop. Although anything over 4.7% needs to be sold through the government owned "Wine Monopoly" this shop (called Gulating- which is named after the tax people used to have to pay in beer). The store was great so we bought a couple of cans to drink in the park.

Vigelandsparken -sculpture park.  Then a quick visit to Crowbar where the brewer is a Kiwi from Napier - didn't meet him but got some good tips for our Norwegian holiday from the Aussie behind the bar.

Fantastic day today. We took our bikes on the metro up to a place called Frognerseteren which is 469m up in the hills on the outskirts of Oslo. They have skiing, ski-jumping and tobogganing in the winter and during the summer months lots of hiking, foraging (we ate lots of raspberries) and mountain biking.

We rode back to central Oslo via a ski lodge / cafe for lunch and rolled most of the way. Our favourite way to ride bikes.

I also visited the science museum while Sal read by the lake.

I've got to say that other than the road chaos Oslo is now my favourite city in the world. Love it here.

As an aside, we've noticed there are a LOT of young parents out pushing prams (often groups of two or three guys with their infants). We think this has to do with the very generous maternity and paternity leave they have here. Fathers get 10 weeks leave at 100% pay, mothers get 35 weeks at 100% pay). There were heaps walking or jogging around the mountain trails we were riding on.

The graphics are amazing and there's no lag at full res.

We're on the train from Oslo to Myrdal where we'll get off and roll down the mountains on our bikes into Flåm. 

From 866m to sea level for 20km.

Lovely lovely.

1222m above sea level on the train at Finse.

In NZ last year we did the Alps to Ocean cycle trail which is 300km from the base of Mt Cook to Oamaru with a drop of 750m. This cycle ride was only 20km from where the train stopped at Myrdal to Flåm on the fjord with a drop of 866m. By far the best cycle ride of my life!

A place of worship. Also, a church.