This morning we are leaving Oslo and headed to Bergen via Flam on the “Norway in a Nutshell” ticket and it seems like the perfect time to catch up here.
While we were waiting for Tim and Nan to arrive on Thursday, we visited the Oslo City Hall where they present the Nobel Peace Prize. The great hall where the ceremony is conducted is impressive, but tells the tragic story of Norway during the German occupation of WWII through a mural. The idea that the winner of the prize accepts it facing this wall is very emotional.
The mood lightened considerably with our next stop, Viking Planet. The Viking Museum in Oslo is closed until 2026 while they are building a new facility (which is a major bummer for us in 2024), so this seemed like a fun alternative. Let’s say the “cheese” factor was pretty high. We started with a VR game where, as a Viking, you are staving off invaders by shooting them with arrows or fighting with swords, and followed it with a holograms and movies of the history of the Vikings. The whole thing was topped off with a VR movie (which was kinda laughable).
By the time we finished that excursion, Tim and Nan had arrived and we met them at the hotel to store their bags until they could check-in. A short walk around the neighborhood to stretch their legs after a long flight some how ended up with a beer (!) back at SALT. It wasn’t long before they could get settled into their own room and we took another walk down to the water to a place we had read about called Vigga. Vigga is a very cool warehouse turned into a food court with decks and seating overlooking the water where we ended up staying longer than planned as we watched the sun set.
Dinner was at an excellent ramen place down the street from our hotel, with everyone feeling quite pleased with themselves for managing to stay awake until 10 pm.
A quick word about our hotel, CityBox. We’d highly recommend it for the location and the price, but if you are lucky enough to make to Oslo and stay there—make sure you don’t stay on the 6th floor. It gets quite hot and our room at least had a sloped ceiling which made contact with heads more than once!
Anyway, Friday morning was a bit of slow start but we eventually made our first stop of the day at the Vigeland sculpture park. Gustav Vigeland is a famous Norwegian sculptor from the early 20th century, and he designed all the statuary in the park and even the layout of the park itself. The statuary reflect his deep fascination with the human condition – work and play, birth and death, love and grief. We found his work very moving.
It was a beautiful day in Oslo, so after spending a couple hours at the sculpture park we headed over to the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History. While they had some more formal indoor collections, we opted to wander the grounds where they have collected historic structures from the past – old farmstead buildings, farmhouses, smithies, barns, storage lofts. The highlight was a Stave Church from the 13th century, which had been purchased by the king and moved to Oslo around 1885. Robin has a new phone, and the camera took some amazing shots inside the very dimly lit interior. Tech does some amazing things these days, and the detail and color in the photos was not at all what we could actually see inside.
We spent so much time at the sculpture park and cultural museum that we barely had time to grab a quick beer at St Bar, a local dive bar just around the corner from Smalhans, the Michelin recognized restaurant where we had dinner reservations. It was an epic feast – 9 courses over 2 ½ hours, with the wine and beer flowing freely. Much to his regret, Tom was so full he couldn’t even manage the dessert course.
