Day Nine - Trondheim

We are scheduled this morning for a tour of Trondheim with an afternoon free.  This is our last day in Norway.  We cannot believe how fast the time has gone.  We have yet another breakfast and I discover cafe latte is an option on the coffee machine.  I can't believe I didn't notice this before.  I have been drinking caffeinated coffee instead of my decaf so I have no excuse for not noticing this.  We meet our tour guide for the morning and begin our driving tour.  We saw the statue of Leif Erickson, the main part of the city, and the Cathedral.  We learned about the history of Trondheim.  We stopped there and had a tour.  Our guide Daniel is a PhD student at the University in history and is working at the Cathedral for a summer job.  It is a beautiful place.  At 1PM there will be an organ recital and a music service at 5:40 so we are planning to return for that.  We drove up into the hills and saw the University.  Hilde's son will attend here in the fall.  We got out at the top of the hill and had a wonderful view of the city.  We were at the fortress of the city and could see the other fortress out in the harbor.  We drove back into the city.  We walked from the hotel to the Cathedral.  We ate lunch there in the cafe and did a bit of shopping.  The organ recital was wonderful.  The organist played the Wagner organ which is one of only 5 in the world.  We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping for our last purchases in Norway.  Hilde had given the knitters three shops in Trondheim and we located on in the Trondheim Torg which is a mall.  I got some red and black sock yarn for $2 a skein.  A wonderful bargain for the price and even more important I have been unable to locate red and black sock yarn in the US.  I need this for Maryland football games.  I have been able to find red, black and gray or some other color but not red and black only!  Score!  I did not go to the other 2 shops although others did and got some bargain there as well.  We traipsed all over Trondheim trying to locate the illusive Scream poster and finally found it back across town.  Long story and a long walk but we survived.  We sat for a bit and had a soft ice cream which we had seen ads for many times, but had never eaten.  We met some others for the tour back at the Cathedral for the music service at 5:40.  We asked if it would be in Norwegian, but the docent said that she would tell the pastor there were English speaking people in attendance and he would do some of the service in English.  The organist played the other organ in the Cathedral.  We went back to the hotel for our farewell dinner.  Some of the group were going on for a few more days for the Land of the Midnight Sun excursion.  Most of us will head home tomorrow.  We took a group picture on several cameras.  Hopefully someone got a good shot.  We had a farewell glass of wine with members of the group and headed up to repack our bags for the flight home.  I brought a bag which unfolds to be a nice size duffel and that came in very useful.  Off to bed.