24a: Oslo - Norwegian museums

We left late on Thursday night (11:15 pm) to go to Oslo. We were on the bus forever.  After transferring buses 2 times we were finally it to Oslo at about 7 am.  I found that the more comfortable way to travel was laying sideways on two seats.  Then I would put my back on those two seats with my head towards the window and feet towards the aisle.  Then put my beanie on with my music plugged in and hope for the best.

There have been multiple times that I have taken long bus rides and they have always been the same.  I feel like I am on the bus forever.  If I try and sleep normal sitting it usually doesn’t work.  I need to lay across the two seats and try that.  The interesting thing is that I keep forgetting that each time I get on a new bus.

We waited around a little bit in the bus station because we really weren’t sure what to do.  Nobody was really taking charge either.  Also we all didn’t have to do the same thing.  We did have a little bit of time to figure out what we wanted to do though since there aren’t many things open at 7 am.

I took the time to look at the Oslo map that I got back in March when I flew through Oslo to Bergen the first time.  I decided on some things that I wanted to do and Nate was interested in what I was doing.  We both had backpacks so we were game to just go at it.  So we left all the girls behind to fend for themselves and it was just Nate and I.

We set out to find Tourist Information because they would be able to tell us about the Oslo card and we would be able to buy it there.  We find it but it doesn’t open until 9am and it was like 8:15.  So we just sit in these chairs that are inside the mall and in a café that is closed.  There wasn’t anybody around so we didn’t think anything about it.

We decide that we don’t want to stick around and decide to leave and try and get our bearings by walking the city.  We also had a couple addresses for sweater shops that we wanted to go to.  About a minute before we leave there was a security guard that told us “You can’t be sitting at the table that you are sitting at.  This café is closed and you have to buy something.”  It just so happens that we were about to leave anyways so we stood and that was the final thing.  We decided to leave and walk the streets.

Right outside the train station there was a tiger.  Nate wanted his picture with the tiger so here it is.

One of the first things we found was this church.  It was pretty cool.  We wandered the streets waiting for more stores to open because I guess 9:30am is too early to be able to go into stores.  We found this café place and bought a quiche and also used the bathroom.  We stopped by a couple sweater shops but weren’t really impressed by any of them.  Also they were also quite expensive.  So we ventured onward.

We found the palace.  It was there.  There were guards outside.  It was a nice open area but there really much to see there.

University

After the palace we walked down the street to the university. The National Theater is there as well.

About this time we decided that it was a good time to go back to tourist information and look into the Oslo card as well as getting into the four museums that I had picked out early today.  At tourist information we found out that the Oslo Card was going to be our best bet because we were planning on taking public transport and also going in to like 4 museums.  We ended up buy a pass that was good for 24 hours.  Because we are students we got a 20% discount so that was nice.

School room

 We jump on a 30 bus that takes us to the first museum.  The Folk Museum.  The Open-Air Museum.  It had a bunch of names.  It was the same idea as the open-air museum that I went to in Riga, Latvia.  What happens in these kinds of museums is they identify very old buildings from all over Norway and then transport then to a central location.  It just so happens that they were transported to the capital city being Oslo.   It was cool to look at the really old buildings.  Some of the highlights were the school (1866) and also the Stave church (ca 1200).

Nate was telling me about how Elder Allphin told him something interesting about the Stave Church.  It is interesting that you can see the dragons carved into the church that represented one time period and one culture.  Then also there are some crosses that show the Christian conversion.  They recognized Christ and the symbol of the crucifix.

 There were other cool buildings that had beautiful carvings on them.

The next museum that we went to was the Viking Ship Museum.  This museum was not very big.  It wasn’t very elaborate but I really liked it.  It was really cool to see the two full ships and the wrecked third ship.  There were also some sledges in the museum as well.  I was glad that I pulled out my phone and listened to the extra explanations about the ships.

There was the Oseberg Ship which was used as a burial ship for some important woman.  It was Viking tradition that they would send of their dead off in ships with lots of food and drink along with various objects.

The Gokstad Ship was also found in a large burial mound.  It was a burial ship for some important man.  Not much is known because the place was looted of all gold and riches before researchers could investigate.

Before going inside the next museum we ate some food at a café of the Maritime museum, though we didn’t actually go inside that museum.  Our third museum of the day was the Fram Museum.  That one was pretty awesome.  Just like the Vasa Museum in Stockholm there was a huge ship in the middle of this museum.  The whole museum was about the travels of that ship.  It traveled to the North Pole and to the South Pole.

Fridtjof Nansen designed the hull of the ship in such a way that the ice wouldn’t crush the bottom.  But instead it would make the ship rise in the water.  Very innovative!  The captain of the ship was Roald Amundsen from Norway.

It was cool to be able to go on board.  It was a reminder that people probably weren’t that tall back then.  The ceilings were low and I had to remember to duck if I was going to walk through doorways.  I was however able to stand up just about the whole time.  So that was alright.

The last museum for the day was the Kon-Tiki Museum.  I was pretty tired of museums by this time and so I didn’t pay too much attention to this museum.  The idea was that there was this man, Thor, and his crew that were on a raft that drifted from Chile or Peru to the Easter Islands in the middle of the South Pacific.  It was something that was thought to be impossible.  But that was proved wrong.  There were six men on the raft.  There was a really cool exhibit about how the stones on Easter Island were set up.  They just packed a ton on rocks under the big rock and that slowly allowed the rock to be raised up.  Again I don’t remember much about the museum since I was pretty tired at this time.

The Kon-Tiki raft inspired some similar rafts.  The Ra expedition was Thor setting sail from Morocco on a reed boat across the Atlantic Ocean.  The third raft was the Tigris across the Indian Ocean.

It was at this time that Nate met up with his uncle and then we didn’t see each other until Saturday night.  But Nate’s uncle was kind enough to drive me from the Kon-Tiki museum back to the center of the city to the palace where I would meet up with Sarah and Julia.

Once I had met up with them we walked around for a Norwegian Sweater shop because Julia really wanted to buy one.  The good news is that we found a sweater shop.  The great news is that I found one that I liked.  Guess what!  It was on sale! 50% off.  I was pretty excited about that.  I decided that I was going to buy the sweater.  Julia ended up buying a sweater as well.  We were both pretty happy.

Next door there was a Frozen Yogurt shop that we went into to get some recommendations.  The guy had a very extroverted personality and was funny.  He told us about a lot of the stuff that I ended up doing on Saturday because it did sound cool.

We went into a café place and Julia and Sarah shared a dessert item.  They were nice to share a piece with me.  I didn’t want much more because I hadn’t had dinner yet and so I didn’t want to be filled up on dessert.

We look at going to Hard Rock Café for dinner but it was really loud and the prices were really expensive so we decided against that.  Just down the street was TGI Fridays.  That is where we ended up going.  It was really expensive.  But oh!  It tasted so good.  I got a Friday’s burger and fries with a Sprite that was free refills.  So I got a couple refills and had no leftovers.  I was very full and very happy.

Then it was time to be heading home because it was getting late.  We got on the bus 151 because that is the one that takes us to the bus stop that we needed.  Unfortunately the display in the bus wasn’t working and so we had no idea which bus stop we were at.  So then Julia and Sarah made me go and ask the bus driver to tell us when we got to our bus stop.  They wouldn’t do it themselves so I had to do it.

We ended up finding the house.  It wasn’t hard for the girls because they had already been there that day but it was the first time for me.  It was a nice house.  There was a lot of room and it seemed like almost everybody had a bed except the one person on the couch.  But that is good considering there are a total of 9 of us.