Off to Iceland, Day 18, 08/20/26 Round and about Oslo

High clouds, Mostly sunny;
Hi Temp 68;
Sunrise 5:43, Sunset 8:57

We had the morning off but set the alarm anyway so I could get some work done.
Breakfast was another one of those feasts, though the best news is that they have the makings for the yogurt/granola/fruit that is my normal breakfast in the real world.

Back in the room I finished up my work and we headed out to find lunch.
We had seen several options at the train station so we headed back there and found a great little Asian place that had excellent orange chicken with lots of veggies.

Back in the room we got ready and were downstairs at the appointed hour for our bus tour of Oslo.

This tour was less about touring by bus and more about visiting two museums and a sculpture garden.

First came the Kon Tiki museum. Thor Heyerdahl was born in a little fishing settlement near the mouth of Oslo’s fjord. We learned about his early life, his ambition and his desire to ‘try it out’ to see if it made sense.

In the museum they had two of the rafts that made him famous.

The first Ra (Ra I) sailed from the ancient Phoenician port of Safi headed for Barbados. After a few weeks the boat began taking on water and the voyage had to be terminated. After consulting boat builders in Lake Titicaca in Bolivia (whose boat building techniques were similar to what Heyerdahl was attempting to accomplish) he built a second Ra (Ra II seen here) and used it to successfully cross the Atlantic in 1970.

We also learned about a third raft Tigris that set out to prove that sea-borne commerce could have been carried out in the middle east at an early age. Tigris sailed down the Trigris river to Bahrain, then on to Oman, then to Pakistan. They intended to finish their voyage in Eritrea, but there was a war for independence raging there at that time. There were also wars going on in neighboring Yemen and Somalia. They finally ended their voyage in Djibouti. There they burned their raft in protest of all the bloodshed in the region.

Our next stop was the Fram Museum across the street.

This museum was built to house the ship (the Fram) that was used by Norwegian explorers in expeditions to both the North and South Poles between 1893 and 1912.

The ship was designed to be locked in polar Ice thru a winter – withstanding the pressure of pack ice on its hull.

We Learned some about the expeditions of Fridtjof Nansen (1893-1896), Otto Sverdrup (1898-1902), and Roald Amundsen (1910-1912) and were able to board the ship and see the displays of life on board.

Our last stop of the tour was the Gustav Vigeland sculpture garden. Over the course of 20 years Vigeland created a series of 214 sculptures dealing with the theme of ‘the circle of life’ by depicting people in all phases of life.
All sculptures are portrayed in the nude – demonstrating that without clothing we are all equal. We were given an hour to wander thru the garden. As always it deserves a much longer visit. But here are a few of the sculptures we noted.

Leaving the park Cheryl pointed out the ski jump at Oslo’s winter park.

As we were leaving the park a rain shower moved in – the first honestly bad weather we’ve seen on the trip.
Back at the room we waited a little for the rain to subside before heading out to dinner.

At lunch today I extracted a promise from Cheryl that we could find an Irish pub for dinner. I’ve seen a couple in our wanderings and have developed a yearning for Bangers and Mash.
So we headed out in the rain for a short walk to The Wild Rover (where they have Guinness but not Murphy’s Stout-sigh, and where the Irish Stew was on special but they were out-double sigh)

By the time we were done, so was the rain (mostly) so we took a little walk to see some of the sights in the area.

Then it was back to the room to read, write this up, and prepare for tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the last day of Phase 1 of our trip.
We fly to Hamburg to meet the Schelds (and daughter Zilka) for dinner
Saturday we begin Phase 2 as we fly to Athens to board the Viking Sea.

Many more adventures to come.

Till then,
R