After the superb Hurtigruten fjord cruise and a couple of rest days in Oslo we were picked up at our hotel by my cousin Bjørn and his wife Toné for the drive down to Svelvik.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svelvik
Svelvik was my father's home town. He had 2 brothers and 2 sisters and there was quite an extensive family there.
Bjørn and his brother Odd were the cousins that I knew about the most and were a natural first point of contact for this trip. (Bjørn, pronounced Beeyurn, means Bear and Odd means Odin.) Bjørn's wife Toné (pronounced Tone-uh), and Odd and his wife Anne Stina were just the nicest people. Bjørn and Toné have been sweethearts since Toné was 7 years old.
The drive down was through some urban and country areas that were very green, very pretty.
We were dropped off at our accommodation, the Villa Rorvik.
http://www.villarorvik.no/english.html
It is Svelvik's only acccommodation and we had booked this about 3 or 4 months before we got here.
I was able to point out the driveway entrance to Bjørn (not that I needed to) because I had driven down this road many times on Google Earth Streetview. Cool tool for trip planning.
After we had settled in and unpacked, Bjørn picked us up again and took us to Odd's house for dinner.
While planning this trip I was aware that there was always the possibility that my cousins and I might not like each other. What would we do then? But all those doubts were put aside that evening. They are all very, very nice people.
Anne Stina had prepared a beautiful meal. I felt a little guilty that since I had my gastric band fitted I couldn't do justice to the spread in front of us, but I tried my best. Robyn helped.
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