Little known Norwegian factoids:

� Norway officially closed June 30th at midnight and will not reopen until 12 am August 1st. (A good friend who lives here says he got a t-shirt on his first visit to Norway twenty years ago. It read something like this “I went to Norway, but it was closed.”)

� Oslo is one of the top three most expensive cities in the world (the other two are in Japan). A visit to the coin laundry with 3 loads of wash costs 180 Kroner ($25 – and that includes using the dryers).

� It is a bad year for Norwegian strawberries – a cold, wet May & June have impacted the crop and they are importing strawberries from other countries. Bummer.

Today is the most gorgeous beach day. Bestamor and Bestafar have driven down from Oslo with lots of plantings for the garden including a large rose bush for me. We went to the beach for a couple of hours and the water felt so good in the heat. I actually enjoyed the coldness and had to MAKE the kid come in with me. We collected more beach glass and now have a large brandy snifter half full of the multicolored bits.