Norway: Oslo + Jeannie E. Roberts: Tips to Attract Editors

This is the first part of making good on my promise to bring you along to Norway via this post-vacation form of writing. What follows are photos and a sort of journal that I texted to family and friends along the way.

Much of why Norway is so incredible is because of — well, so very much! Using their superb mass transit, in our case it was busses, ferry boats, hiking trails, a rental car, and an airplane, we enjoyed every bit of our three weeks there from the middle of May to early June. We started in Oslo, went on to Kristiansand, Stavanger, Bergen, Balestrand, and ended back in Oslo.

When we left our home in Los Angeles, flowers already perfumed the air, and the sun kissed our short-sleeve clad arms. In contrast, each day in Norway was a panorama of sunny to rainy to warmish to chilly. The entire time, I carried an umbrella and wore multiple layers with a minimum of leggings under jeans and a warm jacket over a long-sleeved shirt. On average, we logged 15,000 steps a day. No wonder we slept well while the sun rose at 4am and faded amid peacock colors at 10pm.

Shortly before the start of our trip, record-breaking wildfires razed huge portions of Los Angeles. Our national politics flamed as well. So that we might catch a break from the mounting bad news, I implored Khashayar, “While we’re away, let’s stay as news-free as we can.”

Once we returned home, the jet lag paled compared to the challenge of grappling with how U.S. politics has…