Oslo, Norway

Once we had made it into Oslo Station, we performed our usual routine of getting local currency and checking train schedules before getting back on a commuter train. We were heading south down the Oslo Fjord toward Holmestrand, the home of my Aunt Vibecke and Uncle Bob. An hour from Oslo, Bob was waiting at the station to pick us up.

Before getting to their house we stopped at the stables where their horses, Manhattan and Saffron, are kept. Vibecke and cousin Frederick were there, riding and tending the horses. We said our hellos and admired the animals before continuing on to the Homan household. We sat and chatted, filling our hosts in on our travels so far, all the while not noticing that it was getting past midnight. It was easy to not notice this because it wasn't even close to getting dark. Mid-June in these latitudes means only about an hour of true darkness each night.

Needless to say, we didn't get up at dawn the next morning. On his way into work, Bob dropped us off at the train station and we commuted back into Oslo. We walked around the heart of Oslo for a while, in the vicinity of the Nationaltheatret Metro stop, before finding a tourist office where we could obtain maps and info.

We decided to make the most of the beautiful weather and immediately go to the Holmenkollen, the ski jump used in the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics. There's a ski museum at its base, where we saw, among other things, Roald Amundsen's skis and lead sled dog (stuffed), ancient skiing equipment, and many photos of the Norwegian Royal Family on skis. The museum leads to an elevator, which in turn leads to stairs to the top of the jump. From that height, one can see all of Oslo and the surrounding forests and fjords. One can also see that ski jumpers must be crazy to willingly jump from that height!

I had been to Norway before and I wanted Hannah to see the Gustav Vigeland sculpture garden at Frogner Park, so that became our next stop. We were both impressed with his work, which consists mainly of stone sculptures representing people at various stages of life. What impressed us most was how expressive the figures were, even though they had rather little in the way of facial features. Somehow, with minimal detail, Vigeland makes it clear what is on the mind of each of his subjects. The centerpiece af the garden is a roughly 20 meter obelisk of human forms representing the entire human life cycle. Again, we were struck by the clear understanding we could gain of each individual even without obvious gestures or features.

From there we crossed town to Akershus Slott, an castle from the 13th century that protected Oslo back when it was called Christiania. We'd come back to it later and see the rest of the castle; all we saw on our first visit was the Norges Hjemmefrontmuseum, a museum detailing the Nazi occupation of Norway from 1940-1945. The museum holds artifacts, dioramas, maps and newspapers which tell the story of the Norwegian resistance and eventual triumph.

Our next day was spent dodging raindrops on the Bygdøy peninsula. We took a city ferry from the Oslo waterfront across the fjord to see the four museums established on this side. First was the Norsk Folkemuseum, a collection of historic and representative buildings from Norway's past. Some were reconstructions, but others had been moved from their original locations and reassembled on site here. The buildings spanned the 13th century to the early 20th, and several were open for exploration. We visited a viking stave church bedecked with a mix of Norse and Christian symbolism, a medieval house with a fire going right in the center of the floor, and we had some delicious flatbread made fresh in one of the kitchen houses.

Moving further back in time, we came to the Vikingskipmuseet. This museum holds the remnants of three Viking burial ships from the 9th century. The ships had been looted centuries before, but the framing and some of the artifacts were still intact, and we saw wood, leather and fabric items that had been pulled from the same clay that preserved the ships.

Fast-forward to the 20th century: the Kon-Tiki Museum holds Thor Heyerdahl's reed boat of the same name, as well as the Ra II. Heyerdahl used these boats to illustrate his theories of human migration, sailing the Kon-Tiki across the Pacific and Ra II across the Atlantic. The museum showed films of the expeditions and their supporting evidence for Heyerdahl's theories.

Next door to that was the Fram-museet, named for the research vessel used by Nansen and Amundsen for their polar explorations. The whole ship is inside the museum, and the gallery walls are lined on two levels with artifacts and photos. The ship is open and can be explored, but it's rather cramped below decks. I can't imaging spending any amount of time confined down there, so it's astounding to realize that this small ship has reached more than 80° latitude both north and south. What journeys those must have been!

Just in case we'd somehow missed that Norway is a seafaring nation, our last stop on Bygdøy was the Sjøfartsmuseet. This was a general maritime museum with an extensive collection of ship models and exhibits on technological advances in navigation and shipbuilding. The highlight of this museum was a panoramic movie of Norway's coastal scenery. We decided on the spot that we needed to come back to Norway on a coastal cruise. Norway may be the most beautiful country on Earth.

We spent some time outside the museum watching the harbor and the birds before taking the ferry back over to the city. There we met cousin Christopher and his girlfriend Marit for diner. We walked around the Aker Brygge, a renovated waterfront area of shops and restaurants not unlike Nyhavn in Copenhagen. It took us a while to find a place to eat, as most of the restaurants were packed and incredibly expensive. Oslo, we'd been told, is the second-most expensive city in the world (after Tokyo) and we believe it.

After dinner (Cajun food, of all things) and coffee and tea at a nearby café, Christopher took us to NRK (Norsk Rikskringkasting, the national television and radio broadcasters) Studios, where he works. He showed us studios (one made up for a cooking show) and control centers and the carpentry shop and some digital video editing suites. Christopher is working as a production manager on promotional spots for NRK's broadcasts. Sometimes he even does voice-overs, which his parents can hear on TV at home.

Taking a break from tourism, we spent the next day at an equestrian competition. Frederick was competing in two jumping events, 1.1 and 1.2 meters, which were being contested at the national level. Out of 88 riders, Frederick finished 17th in the first event, not so highly in the second. It was fun to watch the horses jump (or not jump, it's their choice), and we had Bob nearby to explain what we were watching. Probably the best part of the day was that we spent it sitting in the sun. As such, we were a bit pink, but well rested.

Uncle Bob was gracious enough to play tour guide on our last full day in Norway. With cousin Alexander riding shotgun, we drove around the vicinity of Holmestrand, south along the Oslofjord. Our fist stop was a Viking burial site, the location from which the ships we'd seen at the Vikingskipsmuseet had been taken. There were many burial mounds left, remaining undisturbed. We walked around for a bit and enjoyed the cool air.

We then visited the H. family's summer cottage. It's in Hvasser, a town on an island in the fjord, the last island in a series of four connected by bridges to the mainland. The rocky shoreline scenery here was spectacular, but the high wind made it difficult to stand and admire it for long. The wind did provide excellent propulsion for a windsurfer out on the chilly water.

From there, we went to Tønsberg, the oldest town in Norway. The oldest structures are on top of a hill with an excellent view, but the buildings themselves are little more than foundations. This shouldn't be a huge surprise, since the town was settled 1100 years ago.

On our departure day we woke up to a downpour. Our luck with the weather had to run out sometime. We lazed around the house until the rain showed signs of letting up, then we went back into Oslo to see the Nasjonalgalleriet. Due to the strike at the Louvre and the closure (due to remodeling) of the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam, this was the first art museum we'd been to since Italy. In addition to Norwegian artists like Edvard Munch, the museum also holds a large collection of European art, so we were able to see works by Gaugin, Monet, Manet, Degas, Cezanne, Rodin and Van Gogh. (Ha! Who needs the Louvre, anyway?!) Many of the paintings were realist landscapes, so even though it was gray and dreary outside, we could still see beautiful Norwegian scenery.

We took advantage of a break in the rain to go back to Akershus Slott and see the rest of the castle, which we toured from dungeon to banquet hall. The interior layout of the rooms was very interesting; rooms had floors that dropped away to become stairs that could the be covered with bulkheads that had stairs on them leading up to provide a split-level effect. Even in such a big castle, not an inch of space was wasted.

We left Oslo to go back to Holmestrand for dinner and farewells, then Bob drove us south to the port of Larvik, where we boarded the M/S Peter Wessel. Somehow, on this ten deck behemoth of a ferry, we found the bar. We ordered a couple of beers while we sat and listened to the most clichéd lounge band of all time (sample repertoire: "Feelings" and "You Were Always on My Mind") with a singer who sounded like a cross between Bob Dylan and Speedy Gonzales. We tolerated the band as long as we had to to watch Norway recede in the distance, then, finally, when it was out of sight, we headed to our cabin. We settled in and prepared to wake up in Frederikshavn, Denmark.