Quick Trip to Oslo

So this week's outing was a "mini-cruise" to Oslo thanks to an unexpected Groupon deal for $50.  We biked up to the ship harbored just down the street from Nhat's museum after work on Monday.  It was a glorious spring day and we loved motoring out of the harbor with it's brilliant white windmills and snapping flags on board.

 We sailed through the night.  Although there were two discos with a live, cover band and kids and some pretty intoxicated dancers living it up, we hunkered down in the throbbing bowels of the ship and read our books.  It was perfectly calm sailing and we were quite content in our pulldown bunks.

Next morning we sailed the long fjord into the Oslo harbor.  We noticed how much the shoreline resembled Lake Superior and how much topography there was.  There were hills!!!!  Just like home!  (The next morning we really noticed it as we sailed into the perfectly flat, not a hill on the horizon, Denmark).









We had 7 hours to see the town.  We started with their Resistance Museum.  Tons of information to wade through though the exhibit is a bit dated and down at the heels.  We realized it hadn't changed a bit since we saw it 22 years ago when we did this same trip with the kids and Anne's parents.  We then made our way to the Museum for Contemporary Art for a private tour with Kari Skytt-Andersen who is a conservator there.  Great exhibits of drawings.  She told us the inside stories on the art, artists and their foibles. Her role and duties as conservator of modern art were quite fascinating.

After we stopped by the museum cafe where the beer we enjoyed in the sunshine was $11 (for a rather small beer) and we passed on the $30 Caeser salad-  they say that Oslo is the most expensive city in the world--we had a take out falafel pita
and ate it on the plaza in front of Oslo's new Opera house on the harbor.  Stunning building with a huge, crowd-friendly plaza leading up to the roof which gave wonderful views of the city.

So it was time to get on board again, eat our cheese sandwiches and sail home.  We landed at 9:30 am on a sunny, spring day.  Our bikes were waiting for us and we strapped our duffel bag on the baggage carrier and cycled off to work and school.  It would be nice to explore Norway some time.  It has a totally different feel than Denmark and Copenhagen and Oslo felt like very different cities.  A 36 hour dip into another part of the world.  Oh yeah,  had to get a photo of this statue by the old castle.  Says something about the Scandinavian view of woman and how they put those little guys on a pedestal!!!  Poor things.