Oslo Day 2
Trip Start
May 08, 2007
1
4
8
Trip End
May 17, 2007
Oslo, Norway
Saturday, May 5, 2007
The night before we planned out our entire day based on the hours of the museums and the location, our logistics were impeccable. We are catching the Ferry at 8:45 to go to the Viking museum on the peninsula. Just writing while waiting for the moment. We have our whole day scheduled full. We are all running on little sleep, I slept 5 ½ hours last night, but when you just have Europe to wake up to, it isn't so bad, it is exciting to get out of bed. We all had a big breakfast, the hotel breakfasts are great, it had a cafeteria. I'm still sleepy.
Oslo Recap -
Oslo was great and even more than I had expected it to be. We got to see everything we wanted. It was crammed into a little over 30 hours. It is great to have this. Everyone is excited to see what the city has to offer. We are all willing to sacrifice sleep, food, fatigue and we probably overcame all odds of not seeing so many attractions in our limited time. By purchasing a 210 Kroner Oslo Day Pass, we were able to see all the museums for virtually nothing. Full price would have cost us over 670 Kroner, a savings of 460 Kroner. The exchange is roughly 6:1, so we saved about $76 each and then some for the train fare. Great Deal. When we scheduled it out last night we has planned to depart Oslo around 3 P.M........Not quite exactly how it happened.
We started off by catching a ferry to the other peninsula. We walked to the Viking museum. Very fascinating, In 1903 they had uncovered a Viking ship that had been built in 800 A.D. along with a few fully clothed women. Their bodies had been preserved by the clay. Apparently it was a burial site, they had buried the ship with the women. We got some great pictures. The Vikings were world rulers but that is about all I can say at this point.
After the Viking museum we checked out the Norweigen Museum of cultural history. The garden was open but the houses weren't. The were the old wooden housed built on stilts, presumably to prevent water from flooding the house. We then walked about a mile to the other three museums The Polarship Fram, The Kon-tiki museum and the Norweigen Maritime museum. The Kon-tiki was about a man and his crew that sailed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans on a hand made raft. I believe he is still the only one to do it Kar ______? He left from Ecuador to Easter Island in 1943 and in 1960 he did RA I and RA II finally made it to Barbados. His first one in 1940's was called Kon-Tiki. The Polarship Fram was neat, I know my brother Brian would have loved it. It was about North & South Pole Exploration. Cook was the first to make it to the general South Pole but a Norwegian was the first to make it to the Magnetic center of the south pole. Ther Ship"__________" is inside the museum, in fact the museum was built around it.
After quickly running through the museums, we caught the ferry back to the mainland. It was still overcast and chilly.
We went to the Nobel Peace Center. It was neat with great humanism portraits. We were on a schedule so we tried to find the Historical Museum but instead we found the National Gallery, which contained some very famous art pieces. It was amazing to see the art of the world's most famous, There are artists that I had studied in my two years of art in High School. It was quiet rewarding. With a team effort, Daniel found the famous scream painting my Norway's own Vedmond Munch. After the museum we caught a train up the mountain to see the ski jump. Wow, it was awesome, amazing and a rewarding experience. Great views, supposedly it is Norway's most visited tourist attraction. We were already behind our depature for Stockholm but we too wanted to see The Vigeland Park, wich contains nude statues of people clumped together, very odd to Americans.
We saw the national Palace after that & continued to walkd towards the car. Finally at 5:30 we left Oslo but with a lot of great memories.
It took us seven hours to drive from Oslo to Hanaige (just a southern suburb of Stockholm. Elijah drove to Karlstad & I drove in from there. We finally arrived at 12:15 a.m. Eventhough we had a very full day, I was wide awake. Herb bought us all a beer at the Hotel lobby and we all enjoyed a few minutes of relaxation & finished off watching the movie Rounders. We all made a toast and I asked the hotel receptionist/bar tender how to say toast in Swedish, he said "Skal" almost like skohl.
If I hadn't said it already , it appears that every other car is a luxury station wagon. Houses in the country of Sweden are either yellow or red. Houses in Norway are mostly white with black trim but you still see some red and yellow. The siding is vertical and it is made of wood. Still dripping coffee into my vains we got seven hours of sleep last night, the most for me in a week
