Bodø; Saturday, 02 May, 2026

The room had been quite warm when I’d checked in and even with the window open for a little while before going to bed it hadn’t cooled down, so I left the window open overnight, knowing it was likely I’d be woken up by the first takeoffs of the morning, given the hotel is called Runway and the runway was clearly visible from my room.

In the end I can only assume that the airport was using the other runway first thing, as it was gone 7am when the first jet powered past my window waking me up, which was still a reasonable amount of sleep so I got up, had a shower and breakfast and a slow repack of the couple of things I’d taken out of my bag before heading down to the bus back to the terminal.

My flight up to Bodø was due to be on a smaller regional jet, which meant my suitcase, which had fitted in the overhead on the previous evenings A320, probably wouldn’t on todays flight, so I checked that in and then wandered through security and into the lounge for a couple of hours.

On boarding it looked like my bag might just have fitted, but given the plane was pretty busy it meant someone else could make use of the overhead space, and speed up departure. With a very quick team at Oslo we were all boarded and ready to go 20 minutes ahead of schedule, and pretty soon we were pushing back and on our way north.

The arrival into Bodø was pretty bumpy, though the final approach down the fjord was pretty impressive, as was the speed with which they managed to get everything off the plane and the bags onto the carousel within a few minutes.

From the airport it was a 25 minute walk to the hotel, and as the weather was dry I decided to go by foot rather than waiting for the bus. It also meant that I was only 20 minutes early for checkin at the hotel when I arrived which meant that my room was ready and I could head in, drop my stuff off and head down for the complimentary fika (Cake and Coffee) before heading out.

I picked up a bus a couple of stops to the edge of town at the opposite end of the runway to the airport terminal to visit the Norsk Luftfartsmuseum (Norwegian Aviation Museum). The museum houses a collection of planes and other aviation related material split into two wings, one looking at military and the other at civil aviation.

I only had 90 minutes before the museum closed for the evening so was only able to get a quick overview of the collection, so I chose to look around everything quickly rather than focus on any specific exhibits, but I was still only just at the end when they started switching off the lights and ushering everyone back out.

Rather than catching the bus I walked the half hour back across town to the hotel, going via Solparken which has the city museum, town hall and cathedral all on sides of it. I then headed on down to the harbour, just to check the route to get to where my ferry was leaving from the following day, and I was quite glad I checked as the walk was longer than it looked on the map, meaning I needed to leave a bit more time to get down there than I’d anticipated.

From the port I headed back to the hotel and after freshening up headed down for the complimentary evening meal. I had intended on heading back out for an evening walk, given that sunset wasn’t until just before 10pm, but the weather had taken a turn for the worse with sleety snow falling quite heavily, so instead I headed back up to my room for a while before turning in for an early night.