Oslo

So everybody I know went on a trip without me at half term as a result, I went to Ryanair and found a cheap flight to somewhere.  I chose Oslo, Norway! It was £30 round trip which was quite good because Oslo is one of the most expensive cities in the world.  I also couch surfed for the first time ever. 

Norwegian Flag.

Incase you didn’t know, here’s where Oslo is located.

Here’s some Norwegian money.

 

The history of Norway is interesting because it got around as a country.  In the 1400’s, it went from being an independent nation to joining up with Denmark of all places.  Denmark-Norway continued for 500 years till the 1900’s.  Then, it joined up with Sweden after loosing in a bunch of wars.  In 1905, Norway became independent again and they asked the second son of the king of Denmark to become their king.  He accepted and went from being Carl to Haakon.

Wednesday

I was very proud of myself, I made it all the way to Norway, and didn’t get terribly lost.  Till I got to the train station and tried to find the information booth.  Turns out it was outside!! Who does that?  I finally asked someone and she pointed me outside.  Yay! When I got outside, Oslo looked great!

Cool tiger outside of the train station.  The grass was dying!

Cool fountain going down the stairs.  I loved it, it looked so cool

This white building is the opera house.  It’s really cool and you can walk up on to the roof above the windows. I enjoyed hiking up the steep walls and eating my gelato at the top.

I bought the 72 Hour Oslo Pass which got me into museums free, free transport, and also allowed me to take a free mini boat cruise tour.  I was at the pick up spot for the time and this was what showed up.  There was a huge crowd so I thought this was the boat I was supposed to get on.  I showed my pass to the guy and he let me on.  Five minutes later, an employee came up to me and asked if I was supposed to be on the mini boat cruise.  Apparently, I was on a private tour, not that it was noted in any way.  So I got off and they apologized.  I didn’t mind because the other boat showed up shortly after.  The boats they are on are very cool looking.

This was a weird sculpture that was in the water. 

Here’s me at the top of the opera house.  Yay for cool buildings.

And here’s the top of the building behind me that you couldn’t get to.

View from the top.

Here was the actual boat I was meant to take!  Excitement!

Here’s me on the boat! Nice and sleep deprived and warm. The weather was supposed to be cool 60’s and cloudy.  It was beautiful every day that I had been in Oslo, only started raining when I was on the plane to go home.

There were a huge amount of cruise ships in the bay.  This was one of them and it made me laugh because of the face.

I have no idea what this building is but it looks really cool!

The giant silver slide up there is a ski hill.  It is clearly massive as I was miles away.

While on the boat cruise, I was shown the museum part of the bay.  As I was on the last boat tour of the day, I didn’t get off here because I didn’t know how to make it back to the main part of the city.

This boat made me chuckle, it says Jesus for Life.

City Hall which has lots of art work outside and around the building.

 

There were also a lot of old cars around so I took lots of pictures of them.  My Grandpa D would have enjoyed seeing them.

The end : )

 

I thought this was a cool picture because the cars were all electric and they were just plugged in.  For some reason, it really made me laugh.

Here I am on the outside of the castle.

Here is the outside front of the castle.

This is the view from the side of the castle where you can see the water.  It was so pretty.

 

Yet another museum in Oslo.  This is the Resistance Museum for World War 2. It was pretty cool but quick to get through.

This was one of the first things you saw when you got into the museum.

This sign made me laugh because it says slut and fart.  I know, very juvenile.

My first night in Oslo, my host Liz took me to her friends’ apartment and we celebrated a little boy’s birthday.  It was so much fun.Strangely enough, none of the people there were Norwegian. 

 

Thursday

Flowers I found on my way to find City Hall.

I went to a lot of those museums that I saw from the boat on Wednesday.  This was at the Maritime museum.  It was very slow.  When I went through the line, the guy told me that they had a really good movie starting at 11.  I went to the beginning of the movie and fell asleep in the dark.  It was a nice half hour nap.  I tried to stay awake but it was literally just clips of different parts of Norway.

The also built a little wooden ship out of toothpicks.

 

And of course there was a fish tank at the maritime museum because that makes sense.

The next museum I went to was the Kon-Tiki Museum. This one about four guys who decided to go from South America to the Easter Islands.

Me and the ship!

I also got to go through a “cave”.

This cave clearly wanted to be a person as it had a face popping out of it.

 

After having some food, I got lost walking from one set of museums to another set of museums. I finally decided to get the bus and I got on it going the wrong way!  At the end of the bus route, the bus driver made everyone get out and then he turned around the circle and let everyone back on.  I had to laugh a little. 

I got to the Viking Museum which wasn’t as interesting as I had hoped it to be.  There were three viking ships which were really cool to look at and stuff that was found in a burial mound. 

The thing I found most interesting was the sleds they had built and buried with this family.  These were all carved by hand!  It is quite impressive.

Observe.

 

Then I went to the Culture Museum which I really enjoyed because it showed the art and clothing through out the ages. 

A lot of the stuff in the museum was very colorful.

They had examples of old houses and this one reminded me of a giant birdhouse. When I was all museum out, I took a public boat back to City Hall.

This was their house of Parliament. I sat on their front lawn and read a bit.

Then I hiked a hill to go see the Palace which I could not find on my little pop up map until I googled the name of the palace.  Silly British people left all the names in Norwegian on their maps instead of putting the names of things in English!

You could get really close to this palace.  I was very impressed!

And the view from the top of the castle lawn.

Guard in his little guard box.  There were two of them and that was it.

In the back, yes that’s right, you could go behind the house, there was a little park.  A little duck family was enjoying the sunny weather!

And I took a picture of the path and then read and fell asleep here too. :)

After I left the pond, I was walking around and found of course, a Mc Donalds.  This is what they were selling!  Those chips, by the way, are Doritos!  Gross!

Thought this was a cool fountain.

This made me laugh because the word on the top says protect but then it’s a gas pump.  Oh graffiti.

When I got back to Liz’s place, she had dinner all made and this was what we ate for dessert.  It was goat cheese that very strangely tasted like peanut butter!  We ate it on a cracker with jam.

After, we went to a theater to see a movie because Liz had talked this place up.  It was very cool.  This is the  Colosseum theater.

One of the theaters is underneath the dome, no clue where the other three are.  Liz wanted to see whatever was playing in theater so we saw Prometheus.

This is the inside of theater one.  The seats were very comfy.

Friday

This is the cathedral of Oslo.  Unfortunately, on Fridays, it doesn’t open up until 4 in the afternoon which was not when I wanted to be there.  I had to entertain myself until 4 so I headed to a park that Liz told me about. 

 

They had these trolls everywhere in the souvenir shops but much smaller.  I really enjoyed them but I couldn’t justify spending £15 on one.

Here’s a picture of the cathedral that didn’t open till 4!

Liz told me I should check out Frogner Park because it had interesting statues.  It sure did!

For example. WHAT THE HECK?  No idea what this is supposed to be going on here.

There were people statues everywhere.

And they had naked people on the gate.

And then these were everywhere going up the steps to the piece d’resistance.

Ta da! Isn’t that strange?!

After seeing the strange statues, I went to read a book under a tree.  A woman came up and asked me if she could sit next to me.  I said yes and she started talking to me about her life.  She told me that she goes to all different countries when God tells her to and converts people to Christianity.  Definitely wins points for having the most interesting conversation I’ve had while on holiday.  She took me to a market over by City Hall and left me there to go talk to people.

On the way, she took my picture for me in front of this cool fountain!

The food was yummy.  Although it was expensive!  The piece of food on the grill was mine and it cost me £13! The dark meat in the back, for your information, is whale meat.  I did not try that.

After lunch, I went into the Nobel Museum.  It was really cool being able to see their exhibits.  One was a really amazing and moving photo journalism piece about Afghanistan.  Covering both the women of Afghanistan and the soldiers who were fighting over there, it was very emotional to see the pictures about these people and read the stories behind them.  You also got to go to a room where all of the Nobel peace prize winners had their pictures up surrounded by blue lights and you could learn about them.

I finally got to go to Akershus Castle!  This was the courtyard!  I enjoyed this tour because it was an audio guide and it also included ghost stories!

The Norwegian coat of arms.

A drum turned into chandelier.

This was the shortest doorway I had ever seen in my life!

 

The Royal Mausoleum.  It was built in 1948 and houses King Haakon and Queen Maud, who were the first Norwegian monarchs in over 500 years, his son King Olav, who was the first prince born on Norwegian soil and crown princess Maud. 

This fireplace was from the castle but was sold off when the owners fell on hard times.  Someone found it on auction and returned it to the castle.

I finally go to go to the Oslo Cathedral!  The ceiling was very pretty.

It was mosaic and painted murals in places.

 

The Royal box.

The altar which I thought was very pretty as well.

 

When I was going home, our plane was delayed for 25 minutes because we had no plane.  Then when I got to Stansted, I had to wait in line for over an hour and a half to go through customs.  DO NOT COME TO LONDON FOR THE OLYMPICS!  You will never get anywhere.