Yes, problems with both laundry, and laptops!
First of all, the laptops. My Asus 15.6" laptop has done me well. I bought it five years ago so in laptop years it's pretty much an antique! But it's become really slow to start up, and the network adapter is acting up and it takes several tries and resets to connect to WiFi. It's still working, but it's annoying and I've tried all the easy fixes. Not worth paying someone to look at it. Time for a new one.
Ruth's HP 14" laptop has been disappointing. We only bought it three years ago when we were in Australia. It's falling apart physically, and her network adapter is hardly working at all. She can only connect to WiFi if the source is really close to the laptop.
The AIDAnova cruise ship was just pulling into port.
Norway has a popular chain store called Power Electronics. They just happened to have an outlet in the town of Nordfjordeid, so before we left we popped in to talk to them. Prices were better than I expected. About the same as what you would expect to pay in Canada, except that we would be able to claim back the 25% tax when we left the country.
On sale for 5999 kr ($784 CAD, $610 USD).
That includes 25% tax so we would get almost $200 CAD back as a tax refund when we leave Norway.
The one I want is 6999 kr ($913 CAD, $710 USD) but it's a 15.6" screen and has a few more bells and whistles.
But Amazon Prime Day is coming up next week and it's possible they will have a deal that we can have shipped to our friends in Calgary. We don't arrive there until August 6th though, so that would mean putting up with our current laptop(s) for at least another month.
Power Electronics has a much larger store in Bergen and we will be there next week. If we don't buy anything on Prime Day, we will buy two new laptops in Bergen.
Then we drove to the town of Selje. Again, a very scenic drive but as I've said before, every drive in Norway is scenic!
Scenery along the way.
Norwegian cabins.
Pretty, even without blue sky!
This building has a real garden growing on the roof!
Beautiful view as we get to Selje.
Selje is a pretty little beach town. Despite the thousands of miles of coastline that Norway has, there really aren't that many nice beaches. But we didn't come here for the beach! We came because we read that they have an inexpensive washer and dryer available for tourists.
We went and got the key from the tourist office. It's all done on the honor system. You take the key, go do your laundry, and then when you drop off the key you tell them how many loads you did.
We got the first load washed, and put it in the dryer and put the second load in the washer. Later, we went back to check how the dryer was making out, and the stuff was still wet!
Having done laundry in many different machines around the world, Ruth is pretty good at figuring out which settings to use even when all the labels and instructions are in a different language. But a dryer really doesn't have that many choices. We tried a few things, but couldn't seem to get the clothes to dry. And of course it's raining and damp outside... and the first load we put in was our bedding!
We went and spoke to the tourist office and they came over with another lady to check things out. They also couldn't get it to work properly. Eventually, I hit the button that actually lowered the drying temperature. Sure enough, we finally got a bit of heat out of it. I guess the main heating element is done, and when you lower the temperature there is a different, smaller element that comes on. So we removed half the load and put it on low temperature dry.
But then of course we wouldn't be even close to done by the time they close at 4:00pm. They are pretty trusting in small town Norway though, and they told us to keep the key until morning and give it back to them then. We didn't finish the laundry until almost 11:00pm! Each half load took about two hours to dry. Good thing Max was parked close by so we could run back and forth as necessary.
The beach at Selje.
Ruth's home made pizza for dinner.
Yummy!
We weren't planning on spending the night here, but by the time laundry was done, so were we!
Still, not a bad view out the front window.
This morning, Ruth went and gave the key back and they only charged us 40 kr ($5.20 CAD, $4.05 USD) for two loads washed and dried. So at least we got a deal.
The rain continues. We better get used to it, because the long term forecast looks like... rain. And only a high of 12C (54F) today. It's July the 5th for gods sake!
Weather forecast for the next 9 days. Yikes.
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And in Canada...
Hi guys - curious about the laptop keyboard layout over there - do they have the standard English/American keys?
ReplyDeleteEverything appears to be exactly the same except for the addition of three more keys to accommodate the Norwegian language. Other than that, it seems the same.
DeleteTry to take solace in the fact that the weather forecasters always lean towards predicting poorer weather than may actually happen. They want you to be pleasantly surprised instead of being annoyed at them.
ReplyDeleteWe have been told that the forecasters here are quite reliable and so far yesterday was exactly what they said it was going to be, rain and lots of it and the same this morning! :-(
DeleteWow, I can't imagine a forecast graphic looking like that -- of course, we are hot, dry, and and sunny here in NC. I would love just one rainy day, and so would our garden, container plants, and grass! Bad dryers are the worst. Glad it didn't completely flake out on you, as it would have been really bad not to have dry bedding. Good luck with getting great deals on laptops! I would be inclined not to buy one with the Norwegian keyboard since it's possible other settings will have been tweaked for that country. It took me quite awhile to get all the "Mexico" out of my Android phone, even though I thought I'd changed all the settings to US/English. Every now and then, I still get an ad in Spanish!
ReplyDeleteNope, it isn't a very nice looking forecast and so far they have been totally correct! It is a shame that the weather around the world can't balance out. We are hearing that Spain, Italy and France and getting very hot weather, too hot, we wouldn't enjoy that either but right now it sounds better than the cool weather and all the rain. As for you, you have to be careful what you wish for, hurricane season is approaching!
DeleteWe are glad that we kept trying different things on the dryer. Because the one dial didn't work properly, we couldn't tell what cycle we were using, so we ended up just turning the dial and listening to see which cycle lasted the longest and watched where the dial setting needed to be in order to start that longest setting and then pressing the temperature button in, that seemed to do the trick but it took forever to get the stuff all dry. The next morning when we handed back the key and paid, the guy at the information desk told us that they are going to buy some new machines so that others won't have the same issue as we did.
The only thing different on the keyboard is that they have three extra letters and a few of the symbols are in different spots, so it will just be a matter of adjusting our fingering when typing and that shouldn't take long to work out. It won't bother us if the ads are in Norwegian, we don't pay attention to them anyways.
Your laundry drama brought back memories of when I was at the Grand Canyon and after a full day out decided to get the washing done. Same as you guys the drier wasn't working and yes it was midnight before we had shuffled through multiple machines to get the washing completed. Raining too here in SE Australia and sadly more flooding in some areas.
ReplyDeleteOh no, so glad that you finally got yours dried too! It's frustrating when that happens, especially when it is your bedding and it is raining out and you can't even hang it up outside to dry.
DeleteSo sad about the flooding there. We haven't run into that problem yet but if things keep going the way they are it wouldn't surprise us if there are issues here too. We sure noticed in just the day and a half or so that we were in Selje, how much more water was coming down on a distance waterfall from when we had arrived.