We left on an early morning train from Stockholm's Central Station (which was right around the corner from our hotel, thanks to Dan's great planning) and made our way to Oslo. It was a 5.5 hour train trip that flew by with the pretty scenery. The Mystery Mosaic coloring books and corresponding pencils that I bought the kids prior to our trip were a great way to occupy their time during all of our traveling between locations. I highly recommend them when traveling with kids.
Our Oslo hotel was also near the train station, so we easily checked into the hotel and headed out into the drizzle. This is the pedestrian street Karl Johans Gate with the Royal Palace in the center background.
Lyndon had been looking for these cute backpacks that we noticed people wearing all over Europe. We finally found a store full of them...at a very hefty price. Dan quickly searched E-bay and found some brand new at half the price of retail, so she will be waiting to order one when we return to the States.
There is a beautiful park near Parliament and City Hall. I insisted on a picture, so the kids and Dan humored me.
This is the Oslo City Hall building. It was built in the 1930s. The Nobel Peace Prize is presented here every year on December 10. The art both inside and outside is amazing. There are painted woodcarvings hung under the porticoes that depict scenes from Norse mythology and amazing murals inside the building.
Here is one of our favorite woodcarvings of three valkyrie swan maidens.
This is a small portion of the murals inside City Hall.
Here are two panoramic views of the murals, photography credit to Sidney.
After City Hall, we headed to the Nobel Peace Center, which celebrates all 127 Nobel Peace Prize laureates, granted since 1901. This was a fascinating exhibit, filled with information about each recipient. You are given the name of a recipient to locate while you are touring the exhibit, which makes it extra fun. Dan was disappointed to receive Henry Kissinger.
After you read all of the amazing things these people have fought for, kids have a forum to share their thoughts about injustices in the world. We captured the thoughts that our three girls shared while they scrolled across the screen.
After trekking around in the rain, we were all getting hungry, so we headed to Kaffistova, another cafeteria-styled restaurant. Dan and Jack chose reindeer as their meat, so we all sampled a bit of it. It actually just tasted a lot like the venison we have at home. Of course, we had to make several references to eating Blitzen, though.
The next morning, we awoke to sunny skies. We knew that this was our one pretty day in Oslo, as the weather forecast called for rain on our last morning there, so we had to make the most of it.
We began with a stop at Akershus Fortress and Akershus Castle. (It still makes me chuckle that this is the name of the Norway restaurant in Epcot at Disney World.) The first fortress was built here in 1299 and was reinforced in 1640. We stopped to admire the view, because we had no clue as to the beautiful views we would be seeing throughout the day.
Akershus Castle was originally built around the year 1300, but has been greatly refurbished over the years. We decided to take a quick tour, as admission was free with our Oslo Passes. (If you plan on visiting Oslo for at least 24 hours and taking in several sights, I highly recommend purchasing the Oslo pass. It saves you lots of money in the long run.)
Here is a picture inside the castle walls.
This is the hall of Christian IV, named in his honor, as Norway was included in his sovereignty during his reign. If you recall the Copenhagen portion of our trip, we visited his castle, which was way more opulent than this sparsely decorated room. The contrast is very interesting.
The kids and I are posing in one of the prison cells in the castle dungeon. One of them was known as the witch's pit in the early 17th century. Spooky!
Dan wanted a picture of the royal mausoleum, of course. Maybe we can write this trip off as a business expense after all. Ha!
The castle church has been used since the early 16th century, although most of this has been updated over the years. The altar piece and pulpit date back to around 1750.
This dining hall can seat 180 people for official banquets. We joked that we don't know 180 people to invite to a banquet. Rumor has it that the room is haunted by peasants who helped rebuild this wing after a fire in 1527.
Norway's Resistance Museum is also located on the grounds of Akershus Fortress. It details Norway's resistance efforts against German occupation during WWII from 1940 to 1945. It was great to be able to experience this, after missing out on the Danish Resistance Museum in Copenhagen. We learned so much about how the Norwegian people worked together to fight against the Nazi regime in any way they could.
The first part of the exhibit is a sculpture made out of German rifles in the shape of a swastika, which represents the unexpected Nazi assault on Norway on April 9, 1940. The Germans had information that the Allies were planning to land in either Norway or France, so they invaded Norway to eliminate that option.
One of the great examples of Norwegians banding together in resistance is in their teacher workforce. When the Nazi regime insisted that Norwegian teachers instruct students in Nazi propaganda, almost every single teacher banded together in defiance. The Nazi administration closed all of the schools and arrested every tenth teacher. When they still did not give in, many teachers were sent to a forced-labor camp on the Arctic coast of Norway. I can't believe we've never heard this before.
This is a diorama of 500 teachers being loaded onto a boat to be shipped to the interment camp.
One Norwegian arrested by the Gestapo in 1944 kept a diary in prison on sheets of toilet paper that he had pricked with a pin. They were discovered after the war in the prison air shafts in which he had stuffed them. He died in the prison, but his memories live on. I know it is hard to see in the picture, but the pinpricks form letters in the paper.
After the Resistance Museum, we had a picnic lunch in the park near the harbor, which we purchased at local food trucks.
Here is one of the many pretty views of the harbor.
We boarded a ferry to get to our next stop of the day, The Viking Ship Museum.
We passed the Royal Norwegian Yacht Club along the way. Not too shabby!
The Viking Ship Museum was interesting to compare to the Vasa Museum we visited in Stockholm, as these ships were built around 800 years prior to the Vasa. All three ships were found underground in Norway, as the Vikings used them as burial ships for important people when they were decommissioned from sailing on the sea.
The Oseburg ship was built around 820 AD. It was a burial ship for 2 powerful women. It is the most intricately carved ship of the three.
A close up pic of the detailed woodwork...
The Gokstad ship was built around 890 AD and was used for long voyages across the open sea before being used as a burial ship for a powerful man.
Much like the Egyptians, the Vikings buried their dead with items that would be helpful to them in the Afterlife. Here are a few of these items: a cart, which was a very rare find from the Viking age, a sleigh, and an ornamental object.
This was an actual burial chamber that was placed over the bodies on the ships. They created it with a slanted roof to withstand the pressure of the earth covering the ship.
Jack found some Viking gear in the gift shop, so I let him put it on for a picture. He is adding it to his Christmas list this year.
After the Viking Ship Museum, we walked to the nearby Norsk Folkemuseum to see a stave church. This is an open air museum that has brought together historical buildings across Norway into one central location so that they can be preserved together.
Here is another historic building. The sod roofs are so pretty!
After a little wandering, we managed to find the stave church. Stave churches were built by Vikings in the Medieval period. Only 28 remain throughout Norway. The woodwork is so beautifully detailed. This church was built in 1212.
The carvings in this altarpiece are just amazing to me.
On the way out of the museum, we saw an area where you could try to walk on stilts. Here are Sidney and Jack taking a shot at it. Sidney was actually able to walk a few steps at a time.
The ferry ride back to the harbor near City Hall was as beautiful as the ride over.
Our evening expedition was taking the Metro out to the Holmenkollen Ski Jump. The Metro, trams and buses here intrigued us in that no one ever asked to show proof of tickets. There are signs everywhere telling you to buy tickets (all transportation was included in our Oslo Pass, so we didn't have to worry about it), but in the Metro station, you can walk right past the ticket stalls through a huge opening beside them (note the big gap on the left side of the picture). You can also walk right through the stalls without inserting a ticket. They just stay open. We couldn't figure out this honor system, or why they even attempt it. We will have to do some research on that later.
After a beautiful 20 minute ride up into the hills above Oslo, we had about a 15 minute hike uphill to the complex. We were guaranteed some great views. Holmenkollen is the only steel ski jump in the world. The first jump championships took place here in 1892 (it wasn't steel then, of course). We had only seen a ski jump on TV prior to this, so we were all fascinated by this structure. You can see it from afar in the top left of the picture below. It is partially obstructed by trees.
This is the view looking down the ramp from the top of the jump. No, thank you! I will not be participating in that.
The views from the top were amazing! The pictures speak for themselves.
We were finally able to get someone to take a family picture, the first one on this trip.
Dan took a few panorama shots, too.
This was the evening of our 19th anniversary (yay!), so Sidney took a few anniversary pics for us, too. What a way to celebrate!
The next morning proved to be as rainy as the forecast predicted, but we weren't letting that stop us. Our first stop was the Oslo Opera House, where you can actually walk on the roof. The kids couldn't wait to do this. Here is a picture in front of the Opera House. You can see the slanted walkways to get you to the roof.
We were able to take two more family pics from the roof thanks to some fellow Americans. I refuse to invest in a selfie stick, so we will just settle for asking people periodically to take our picture.
The inside of the Opera House is quite lovely, as well.
Our last stop of the Oslo trip was to the National Gallery. It displays lots of paintings by Edward Munch, including his famous painting, The Scream. We were all glad that it was bigger than the Mona Lisa.
Jack studied The Scream last year in 1st grade with his teacher, Mrs. Fulton. He was especially excited to see it in person and recreate the face in the painting. He wasn't the only tourist doing that...trust me. It was actually pretty funny to watch people take pictures with it.
We checked out of our hotel in Oslo, which felt a little hip for us at times, but was a great hotel.
We headed to the airport train to board a plane back to Dublin. Tomorrow, we will fly back to JFK and then back to Charlotte. It has been another wonderful trip. Our kids are troopers. Please don't get the wrong impression by all of the smiling pictures. We all have our normal family moments of irritability, fatigue, being "hangry" (hungry/angry), stressed out, etc, but we try to take the time to realize why those moments are occurring and remedy them. If it means we need to miss an item on our "to see" list in order to relax or grab an extra snack during the day, then so be it. There are several things in Oslo that we didn't get to do because of the rain, but we will add that to the "next time" list. We really enjoyed each city that we visited. We would really like to come back to each of these countries in the future and explore more of the countryside in each location. We used almost every possible mode of transportation on this trip, and our kids maneuvered them like pros. I am so glad we each only brought one small rolling bag and one personal bag. It made a world of difference. We owe Dan so much for planning all of this. I think we have successfully implanted the traveling bug in our kids over the past several years. Who knows where our travels will take us next year!?! I can't wait to find out.
