Oslo has been great fun: two days of mostly rain, followed by three days of sunshine. The campground remains a mud pit in places and we are amazed that people aren’t getting stuck as they leave or come in, dozens per day in each direction. We kept an eye out for neighbors leaving, and after the first night were able to plug in on our side of the road. On Sunday we discovered that in our absence, the electricity had stopped coming in, which scared us in light of our past electrical problems. But we think it may merely have gotten wet because it has worked fine after we reset the circuit breaker in the campground’s outlet box. (David was particularly relieved because the problem was on the level of the elementary sort of things he understands and can do something about with confidence.)
One of the worst things about this campground is the noise from neighbors (probably unavoidable when you’re alongside vacationers whose idea of a good time is to take the dogs along and let the kids run around outside until midnight). One of the best things is the easy access into the city center. Buses arrive every 15 minutes at a stop at the campground’s front gate, and 10 minutes later we are in the sentrum. We bought Oslo Passes which we thought would cost us $80 each but instead found we qualified for the “senior” (Pensioners) rate of $23 apiece. This gave us free access to transportation (including ferries) and most museums for three days-- a really great deal!
Oslo has proved to be better than we’d expected. The first place we visited was the new Opera House, its roof sloping into the fjord and inviting people to walk on it (as they do, in great numbers).
Of course, we also visited many museums, all of them very well done. We have seen Thor Heyerdahl’s actual Kon Tiki from 1947 and Ra II from 1970. We also saw three Viking burial ships more than a thousand years old--not only were the ships and the dead royalty buried, but also the everyday stuff thought to be needed for the afterlife: food, tools, household goods, clothing, sleds, horses! (And not a horned helmet among them.) The ships were huge--100+ feet long.
In another museum we were allowed on Roald Amundsen’s Polarship Fram--the actual ship, enclosed indoors--from his trip to the North Pole in l893-96. It spent three years trapped in ice (by design).
We also went to a third Henrik Ibsen museum--surely all that anyone, even theatre people, should be expected to visit--this one the apartment where he spent the last 11 years of his life. His study is just as he left it, including the portrait of August Strindberg over the fireplace. (Ibsen said he needed his rival’s “mad eyes” staring down at him to motivate him to write.) Since he was a wealthy man by then it was quite a well appointed place--just across the street from the Royal Palace. And of course we also visited the Vigeland sculpture garden, along with everyone else in Norway, who was glad to get out into the sunshine after a few days of rain.
We were thinking these had been pretty impressive days . . . but then came Sunday. We had saved a few free museums because our three-day Oslo passes had expired, so we first stopped at the Rådhus (city hall), not knowing what to expect. We were absolutely blown away. It is in this building’s great marble hall that the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every year. The place is filled with painted murals that are just captivating. We decided it was the best part of the trip so far. (If you visit, it might be worthwhile to wait until a Sunday, when none of the other meeting rooms, also beautifully muraled, are being used for ordinary political business.)
Three times we have been able to end our day in the city by finding a sports bar and watching the end of the Tour de France. It’s a great way to relax after being on our feet so much of the day. And that’s when it rained again today--while we were safely inside.