Oslo Day 1

Kristin here - we had two really awesome winter weekends and then completely ran out of time to post about them, so I hope I get all the pertinent details correct, nearly a month later!

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We decided to head to Oslo for my birthday weekend, hoping to see some snow and some blue skies (so far England has pretty much just been cloudy and rainy, no matter what time of year). We sure got it!

Once we got into Oslo and dropped off our bags, our first stop was the polar ship museum, where the Fram and the Gjoa are kept. These ships were used to explore the extreme north and south seas. The Fram was built in 1892 and travelled further North and further South than any other wooden ship. It was made to be strong enough to let it be surrounded by ice, float above it and then drift with the ice! The ship was really advanced for the time (including electric lights!) but I think the sailors who boarded it for a three-year journey to the arctic were a little bit nuts (and definitely not claustrophobic!) This was the ship that Roald Amundsen used to make the first successful journey to the South Pole.

I always find it hilarious looking at 'primitive' medical instruments. I'm pretty sure that's my dental kit in there! Also, this was the size of most private rooms on the ship. Men had a couch/bed and their dressers and chests in these tiny things!

The museum buildings were A frames, a custom fit to each ship, and next door they had the Gjoa, built earlier in 1872. This was the first ship to sail through the Northwest Passage, and this was done by the same Amundsen, the first man to reach both poles. Considering he died at the age of 55, he didn't waste much time!

Really interesting facts about the sled dogs in these expeditions - they were obviously well cared for as the men's lives were in their 'hands', and were their companions on the long boat journey. I think they gained about 20-30 dogs on the trip down to the Antarctic as they bred on board. However they were completely expendable - they set off for the South Pole with 55 dogs and returned with 11, since they had planned to slowly kill them for meat. Also, the dogs that survived the journey all died of distemper when they returned home. Cheery!

View from in front of the museums, towards downtown Oslo and the harbour

We also toured the Nobel Peace Prize museum (while the other four prizes are awarded in Stockholm, Sweden, Alfred Nobel stipulated that the peace prize must be given out by a Norweigian committee - no one seems to know why), which was interesting but a bit dry. Guess there aren't a lot of laughs to be had at a museum dedicated to ending wars and strife. However, if I knew someone going to Oslo, I'd probably recommend skipping this one. Luckily we had the Oslo Pass (great value - basically every attraction and unlimited use of all of the transit in town - buses, trams, metro, and ferry) so it wasn't a big deal to leave after an hour.

After this, we toured around downtown Oslo a bit and had some fun with random sights. The weather was sleeting on and off so we tried to stay inside as much as possible.

Christiania Torv square, with the 'pointing finger' fountain. After the town burned to the ground in the 1600's, the king apparently pointed to the map and said 'the new town will lie HERE!' (Not included in the anecdote, but true - and it will be named after ME! ~ Christian IVth)

Think these pigeons are used to being fed?

Scandanavian countries and their trolls!

We also saw Oslo Cathedral. We've seen some pretty awe-inspiring churches on this trip (and in Quebec as well) so at first I was a little underwhelmed. However, when I remember that this church was built in the 1600s, it's easy to imagine how absolutely flabbergasted the people of the time would have been!

I loved the ceiling painting, and the organ and royal box are pretty impressive!

These glass decorations were so plain it was almost refreshing

The first day was pretty short, since we left in the morning (in fact we got up at 3am, yuck!). This flight was out of Stansted (we have 9 airports within a 2 hour drive, so we haven't had too many repeats!) and considering Ryanair flies into Rygge Airport (over an hour away from Oslo by bus) we only saw a few things before the sun went down! We headed back to our AirBNB and turned in early so we could get up and start exploring early the next day. Time for me to head to bed too! More tomorrow - this was a 4-day weekend, so lots to come!