Blog Day 23 Wednesday July 9, 2014

Oslo Norway

Now officially in the final week of the trip.  Waking up in Norway is fantastic.  Our funky hotel got quiet in the night, and doesn’t seem to be an early rising place.  We walked from the hotel back down to the trainstation.  It is amazing now much closer it seemed when you are not dragging suitcases and when you know where you are going.  We changed some money into Norwegian Kroner (not to be confused with Danish Kroner…), got some help with our final several train reservations, and had a little breakfast.

Because of the huge oil boom in Norway, everything is EXPENSIVE here.  Finding food has turned out to be challenging.  Our eating today ended up being pretty spotty.

We got our tram/bus pass for the day, and then set out to go to a wonderful sculpture garden, Vigeland (Sculpture) Park.  Catch a little slideshow of the photos at  http://www.visitoslo.com/en/product/?tlp=181601

Or a longer explanation at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frogner_Park  The sculptor Gustav Vigeland had an amazing career creating huge sculptures, mostly in granite of people commenting on the cycles of life.This included some amazing elders.  It is an astounding collection, free and open to the public.  And you can touch the sculptures and people do, interacting very playfully with the art.  What great fun!  Dick first saw them 40 years ago, and wanted so much to see them again.  

 We also went to a nearby museum where we got to see some of the prototypes and the process behind making them. Wow!!!!  It was incredible.

Then we took a long tram ride (kind of by accident) riding out to the suburbs and the end of the line.  Oh well, we saw some interesting parts of town.  Coming back, we had the chance to get off and see the king’s palace, and some of the harbor area.  This is another very old city.  And one that gets a lot of tourist attention.  There was a large cruise ship in the harbor, and lots of tour groups all around, especially at the sculpture gardens.

Then we went to the Museum of the Nobel Peace Prize.  There were caught up with a tour in English, and got to hear about the fascinating process that goes into honoring someone for bring more peace into the world.   http://www.nobelpeacecenter.org/en/ We both knew something of the prize, but were quite moved at this place that focused on peace.  Well worth a visit.

Then, the hunt for food was on again.  We found a great restaurant on a boat right on the harbor, but after 30 minutes we never could get someone to take our order.  Bummer!  Then we wandered looking and being amazed at the prices.  We finally grabbed some bread and ready-made potato and shrimp salads and ate this looking at the water.  Followed by ice cream.  Ice cream seems to be very important to Europeans, so we have been trying to do our best to sample it wherever we go.

Did we mention that it is HOT here?  Everyone is talking about the heat.  We were told that 2 weeks ago they had snow here in Oslo, but not this week.  The temps are in the 80s and muggy.  Takes a lot out of you!  We hauled a lot of cold weather clothes along to be prepared for raining and cool, but not this week!

We dragged ourselves back to the room and feel asleep for about 3 hours starting at 7pm.  Party animals.  Then awake a bit, and restless sleep in the hot night. We are still so tired from our full week in Denmark, and Dick is still struggling with his stomach.  And the heat….it all means, trying to get some extra rest wins.

We went to bed, knowing that tomorrow we hit the rails again, now getting out to the coast of Norway and some amazing views.

“Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go; this is my station.’” – Lisa St. Aubin de Teran