Europe Trip - A Short Report

I returned to Malaysia on Saturday morning arriving at the KL International airport at 6.00 am.
I and three other colleagues spent about two weeks in Europe. The first week was spent in Norway. I had to fly from Kuala Lumpur to Stockholm airport, Sweden. At Stockholm, the connecting flight on SAS was delayed by 2 hrs. This delay caused us to miss the connecting flight from Olso to our final destination, Trondheim. When we arrive in Oslo, the flight to Trondheim on SAS again was delayed for two hours. The upshot was we boarded the flight to Oslo at 11.0
pm instead, three hours later than our originally schedule of 8.00 pm. It was very cold in Trondeim with the ground was covered with snow and ice. I think the temperature was probably -5 deg C.

In Norway, we went to three places; Trondheim, Oslo and Bergen. I liked Bergen the most as the city is filled with old buildings. Norway is a good place to run really with plenty of lakes and parks. I didn't do any running as I didn't bring any gear for winter conditions.

From Norway (Bergen) we flew to Amsterdam airport to catch a flight to Edinburgh, Scotland. This flight was on Saturday and so I had the weekend in Edinburgh. On Sunday morning, I went to Edinburgh castle. The castle overlooks Edinburgh city and there were fine views from various spots around the castle. In the castle, there were various exhibits on Scottish history with emphais on the military history of Scotland. It was quite surprising how warlike the Scots were in the past. In the past, many Scotsman have in fact served as mercenaries in European armies.

I managed to run twice on a the hotel treadmill (6 km). The gym was in the basement and it was quite cold in the room.

After Edinburgh, I left for Aberdeen about 2 hrs by train. The view of the country side was spectacular as the train track ran fairly close to the sea. Abedeen is not an attractive city as it is an industrial area mainly serving the oil and gas industry.

After spending just one night in Aberdeen, I flew to Paris on Tuesday. The weather was quite good in Paris with temperatures around 18 to 20 deg. C. There was a large park (near Jardin Vendrome) about 200 m from the hotel. But in the end I could not run due to lack of time.

I am hoping to minimise travelling in the next two months and do enough traning for the Penang bridge half marathon on 24th June 2007.