Flight Diary Stats

My Flightdiary.net profile

29 August 2015

Norway 2015 – Day 8 / Oslo

Well – that’s it!!  Vacation over and it’s pretty safe to assume that I won’t be back - not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because I can’t imagine the circumstances that would ever bring me back to Norway. Places like France, Italy, Switzerland are guaranteed for return visits – but Scandinavia…. who knows.

I really enjoyed the tour – it was very comprehensive and very complete.  I feel like I saw the best that Norway has to offer.

The people on the tour were also great – we met a lot of nice people and had lots of interesting conversations.  Ironically, we also felt that this tour also included more slow people than ever before, people who could not keep times straight, could not follow simple instructions, were easily confused and for whom getting on a bus was so strenuous that it exhausted them.

Today we had an included city tour that included Frogner Park (a.k.a. Vigeland Park) and it was  amazing.  Having a local guide showing us around was invaluable!!!!  She explained the story behind the art, the meaning of the sculptures, the theme of the statues… SO WORTH IT! I’d recommend a guide for a visit through this park to anyone. It was a highlight for me.

IMG_8508 IMG_8516 IMG_8527 IMG_8528

 

We stayed with the tour to visit the inside of City Hall and then dumped them to go off on our own and hit the places that were left on our list.

IMG_8533

IMG_8531

First on our agenda was to visit the Norwegian Resistance Museum which was very interesting.  It’s SO PACKED full of information that you could easily spend 2-3 hour there; all day long if you can read Norwegian!  Not all the exhibits were translated into English, but nevertheless we enjoyed it and felt like we learned something. 

I loved the setting too - it looked like a quaint villa in the woods. Best of all: it was FREE!

IMG_8535

We were done around 12:30 and had to decide if we’d have lunch first and then go to the second museum on our list (Viking Ship Museum), or do it the other way around.  My guidebook recommended a nice place to eat near the museum so we decide to take the ferry over, eat, then hit the museum…  but we never found the restaurant so we just grabbed a hot-dog to stop our stomachs from grumbling, visited the museum, took the ferry back and THEN had lunch…  it was after 3PM by then!

IMG_8536

The Viking Ship Museum was just OK as far as I was concerned.  Nice, but not worth the detour. 

IMG_8545

IMG_8549

We could have visited this museum and two others (The Kon-Tiki and Fram museums) with the group, but we didn’t want to spend all day indoors.  We also saved money doing just one museum on our own this way, because the price of the ferry and the museum entrance combined was less than 150 NOK and the group excursion was over 500!

What we saved on the museums we quickly “invested” in lunch. It was a GREAT meal in the Aker Brygge area which is the old shipyard turned trendy area with shops and restaurants along the waterfront. We had a wonderful full-service outdoor meal, but it cost a FORTUNE!! I know I’ve been complaining a lot about sandwich stops and buffer dinners, but Norway is SOOOOOO EXPENSIVE that I have to be honest and admit that it’s really the way to go because having “nice” meals everyday would mean mortgaging the house.  The prices are really prohibitive. 

My guidebook warns: “Think in kroner and avoid converting the Norwegian price into your home currency, otherwise you really might wind up emaciated”

IMG_8554

After lunch, my husband needed a rest so I set off on my own to soak up as much of Oslo as I could! I did manage to twist his arm to go out for one final nightcap after dinner.  No pictures to show you of that because I took them all with my Iphone so you’ll have to wait for Picasa to see them.

And so, that’s it, vacation over.  I’m really to go home now – I feel satisfied with everything we did.

I leave you with a picture of the Parliament building to tie you over….

IMG_8556

No comments:

Post a Comment