April 22nd, 2023 Day 109 of 128

Oslo, Norway

Good morning from Oslo. We woke up this morning and enjoying a scenic cruising into the Oslofjord. Ian provided narration via the bow camera tv station in the cabin or you could have gone to listen to it live in the crows nest. Megan and I had tea and muffins and fruit for breakfast in our cabin. We had a lazy morning in our cabin until it was time to get ready for our excursion. We met our excursion group at 11:15am at the Main Stage. We had to wait a bit longer than we wanted to as we had to wait for the ship to clear immigration and my understanding was we had some passengers that had to be medically off loaded this morning as well. Once we got off the ship we had a scenic drive around Oslo. We got to see the City Hall, where they award the Nobel Peace prize, the Royal palace, a fortress built in 1299, and the National Theater. Our first stop we had was to the Vigeland Park. The city donated this land to this prolific artist to be used for the purpose of him placing and displaying his art here for the community to see. He has 221 works here in this park. We enjoyed walking through the park and seeing the sculptures, so many of them displayed so well in such a compact space. The sculptures are all done in granite, bronze and wrought iron. We boarded back onto the bus and drove to the Kon Tiki Museum and the Maritime Museum. They are located right across the street from each other. Oslo is home to the very famous Viking Ship Museum as well. But it is currently closed for full renovation and is not expected to reopen until 2026. The Viking Museum has donated a couple of their smaller boats to the maritime museum for temporary display during the renovation. We got to see the Viking ship and learn about the Klink method of building the boats. The museum has actually recreated a boat in the the exact way it was built by the Vikings, using the same wood, retreating the nails for raw iron ore, using only tools the would have used. It is amazing how they are studying the history of the boats and learning how they were made. There had been no written instructions found to be in existence. In the maritime museum there is a new display showing the remains of a viking ship and its cargo contents that was found just last year when they started rebuilding part of downtown Oslo. It is exciting to think that there are more remains to be found still to this day. We also drove through the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History. This is located in the woods outside of Oslo where many old and historic buildings have been relocated to preserve them and so people could see them and experience them. They have a stave church here that was built around 1000 BC. I had to read about the history of stave churches and there are only 28 of them left. Throughout our time here today we saw piles of snow all around. We were told the last time it snowed here was just two weeks ago. We brought the sun with us here as well and like yesterday everyone kept saying how wonderful the weather was that we were experiencing. It was another day full of historical wonder and education. We were back on the ship by about 4:00pm in time to get ready for our 5:00pm dinner in the main dining room. We were home and back in our Pajamas by 6:00pm. We are both still fighting sniffles and stuffy noses. So we are looking forward to some warm tea, a movie and lovely sail out of the Oslofjord again this evening. We hope to be to sleep early. We shall be sailing toward Kristiansand, Norway this evening and will be having a new adventure there tomorrow. This is the wonderful life we are living right now, go to sleep in one place, and wake up somewhere new. It is fun and exciting and we are living our best life in these last few weeks of this grand cruise.