( long)

A little glitch today made a couple of plans more difficult, but in the grand scheme of things, did not affect us too much.

Oslo is the only port on this cruise, aside from the beginning and end, in which the ship overnights. For our first day in Oslo we planned to go to a couple of Oslo’s finest museums—The Fram and Kon Tiki. They are on another one of these museum islands, accessible by car or ferry. We had originally planned to take a ferry which would have given a more scenic flavor for the area but The Royal Yacht docked in our expected spot! So Viking had to dock our ship in another location further away, and we ended up taking an Uber to the museums.

We actually arrived early at the museum so we walked down to the pier and saw a few monuments and statues to the explorers.

The Arctic explorers were an incredibly hard and hardy bunch. An introductory movie gave us an overview of the two legendary ships, the Fram and the Gjøa. We loved learning about the explorers, but since they always got stuck in ice for months, or even years, there was much to share about Eskimos and other native tribes as well as their homes and culture.

The first Fram expedition was from 1893 to 1896 and set out to explore the North Pole. It was led by Fridtjof Hansen and didn’t actually make it to the North Pole. However, in September of 1896, the Fram returned in triumph to her port of departure, Oslo, bringing with her a wealth of valuable scientific material from regions of the earth never before visited by man.

The Fram boat was much larger than the Gjøa with many wonderful details of life aboard, including a wood shop, sewing machine and piano!

The Fram was refitted and updated and later used to explore the Canadian Arctic in 1898-1902 by Sverdrup, and was used by Roald Amundsen on his trip to claim the South Pole in 1910-12.

Ronald Admonsen led the first trip on the Gjøa, a 47 ton refitted sloop, in 1903, heading to find and map a route to the Northwest Passage. We walked through the full length boat and experienced the smallness as well as hatches, cabins, food, etc.

A series of mishaps, and a long winter layover where they lived off of reindeer and shared the knowledge of the Eskimos as well as other Inuit tribes gave them many opportunities to conduct extensive scientific research.

In August of 1904, after months of research, small land trips, and living in the incredibly harsh conditions, they finally reached and mapped the Northwest Passage. It took them until 1906 to return and start preparing for the next expedition.

We headed across the street to the Kon Tiki museum. This was much smaller and told the incredible story of Thor Heyerdahl. His theory was that the winds moved from east to west and could propel a small raft across the Pacific to Polynesia.

This original balsa wood raft and the museum which houses original boats and artifacts from his world-famous expedition on the Kon Tiki in 1947 as well as the reed boat Ra II which crossed the Atlantic Ocean from North Africa to Barbados in 1970 was fun and short.

We got back to our ship, took a short lunch break and headed out to our afternoon tour of Oslo and Vigeland Park.

The panoramic ( read " bus") tour pointed out the sights— the Opera Hall, which we unfortunately never visited in person, several beautiful buildings which I’m sure were identified at the time, the Royal Palace, and then stopped at Vigeland Park.

Gustav Vigeland was a prolific sculpture artist who made hundreds of mostly bronze and stone statutes showing people living life. He concentrated on static and active works of parents, children, emotions and the passage of life. This park, constructed mostly between 1940-1949, contains over 200 sculptures created over a 40 year period and represents Vigeland's life's work. The park is free and is always open day and night, year round

The gates at both ends of this large park are also beautiful designs, but were not done by Vigeland.

One of the most famous, small statues is that of "The Angry Boy".

This fountain is surrounded by depictions of the circle of life, from birth through death.

And, up a huge staircase is the monolith, carved from a single block of granite, of intertwined bodies expressing various emotions.

Wendy finally connected with a fellow Facebook friend, another Wendy who was on a Viking Homelands Facebook group!

Before we got back to the ship, our last stop was the Holmenkollen ski jump, where Olympians train in the winter, and people zip line in the summer. And, our first glimpse of many to the incredible beauty of the Norwegian fiords.

OSLO, Day Eleven, second day.

Amazingly enough, this was the only day of our trip that we opened our windows to rain. Jim’s bike trip left right at 8:00, and they go in any weather. Wendy, however abandoned her plans to walk over to City Hall and the Opera house and stayed in. It would have been fun to climb that famous white ramp to see the views of Oslo from the top of the Opera House🥲🥲.

Undaunted by the rain, the bike ride wove its way first to Akershus fortress and castle dating back to to the 1300s

We then continued on into town stopping at city hall (currently undergoing some renovations). This is best known as the site of the annual awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize.

We continued on to the Royal Palace and through its exquisite gardens on the surrounding neighborhood of lovely 19th century homes.

The bike tours then made its way to Vigeland Park where we spent some time exploring. Jim was able to view a hidden garden with sculptures of infants in various poses.

Biking in a remote corner of the park, he also got to see another well-known work, "Surprised", a statue of a girl named Ruth Maier. Tragically she was sent to Auschwitz a few months later where she was killed.

Relatedly, our guide also pointed out some gold markers found throughout the city in the pavement near the homes of other Norwegian Jews who also perished at the hands of the Nazis.

We ended the day with one of the best shows in the Star Lounge, a concert by our tour director, André Gaffney. He is a fully trained musician and performer, despite his main role as our delightful Cruise Director, a multi- faceted and complicated role. Everything from light opera, broadway classics, country and popular songs was included, and his banter and personal stories kept us going way past the usual 45-minute showtime.