Boring title I know but what else can I say? Norway was quite simply the most beautiful place that I have ever been in my entire life. To be honest before we got to Norway I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew about Norway were brief spiels from the Eurovision Song Contest and the fact that it had Oslo and Lillehammer, a few moose and reindeer and got bloody cold in winter. Not really all that much to go on before spending nearly 2 weeks in a country I know.
So, from Stockholm we drove to Oslo. A long drive and I was starting to get a touch sick of the bus now. Anyhow, we arrived quite late to Oslo and went straight to the Holmenkollen ski jump. It is kind of at the top of the town on a big hill and was pretty scary looking. From the bottom, looking to the top I can quite confidently say that the people who are brave enough to jump off that thing are absolutely amazing….and completely bonkers.
The next day we had a free-ish day to look around Oslo. I think that Oslo has some of the most fantastic museums I have been to. Firstly we went to a sculpture park which had hundreds of sculptures all by the same guy. Good thing he was a damn good sculptor.
Next we went to a Viking museum. In it they had 3 Viking boats. All of them had been buried with important people and 2 of them were extremely well preserved. It was crazy to think that these boats were built over 1000 years ago. I don’t need to tell you hopefully that that is a bloody long time! Needless to say I liked it quite a lot. After that we had the option of going to the Kontiki museum or the Fram Polar museum, or going straight into the main part of town. Of course Nadia the big nerd went to both museums. I went to the Kontiki museum first. This museum was all about this guy and all these voyages he had made around the world. One of the boats he used was the Kontiki. It was made out of balsa wood or something. He did all these strange expeditions in reed boats, and other ‘traditional’ type boats to prove that it was possible for certain peoples to migrate how he hypothesized. It was definitely science in action. It was really, really interesting.
After that I went to the Fram polar museum. It was all about arctic and Antarctic exploration, finding the Northwest Passage and stuff like that. They had one of the polar ships there that had been on one of these famous expeditions and you could go on board to have a look. I did, and spectacularly fell down the stairs. I was of course my usual graceful self in this monster stack. Lindsay, a Canadian chick I was with was very sympathetic of course…. She couldn’t stop laughing!
After this we were definitely all museum-ed out. Too much learning and brain overload! An executive decision was made between the three of us; Lindsay, Mark (a cattle farmer from Victoria) and I to go back to the ski jump because we wanted to go up the top to see the scary view- it had been closed by the time we got there the day before so we could only look from the bottom. After picking up one stray person on the way, catching the world’s noisiest ferry and a very steep train we reached the jump and went up the top. It was worth the trip! Oslo is such a spectacular and beautiful city. I can only imagine how it would feel being up the top of the jump there, with an absolutely beautiful view, in the winter, on a pair of skis in a lovely tight ski suit. ….and then going down that bloody great slope and jumping off the end. Once again, absolutely bonkers!
After that it was a little wander in town, a trip to the Oslo opera house (pretty cool building, you can go up on its weird sloping roof- not the nicest view though- lots of shipping containers and associated stuff). We ended up having a lovely (and cheap) dinner in a wonderful Irish pub. Kinda sad I know but they had good beer, great food, and it was there when we were hungry! Norwegians make a bloody good Irish stew!
The next day it was off from Oslo to head further north.
