Oslo - Old City (August 9)

We took an organized walking tour of the old city area this morning and there was light rain coming down for the entire tour. The good news is that the rain stopped when the tour ended, and it hasn't rained since and it now looks good for the rest of our time in Oslo. Here are some photo highlights of the tour. The photo at the right is Christiania Torv (Square). Oslo dates back to the Viking days, but it was destroyed by fire in 1624 and was rebuilt on a slightly different spot when King Cristian IV dropped his glove, hence the statue of his glove. The city was named Cristiana until Norway gained its independence and the city was renamed Oslo in 1925.

To the left is the National Theater and a statue of Henrik Ibsen, the great Norwegian playwright. 

To the right is the City Hall which is now famous as the site where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded each year, starting in 1901. All the remaining Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm. Our walk back to the hotel took us right by the Waffle place we ate at yesterday so we each had waffles again for lunch.

In the afternoon we went to the newly located Munch Museum, which opened in 2021.

Edvard Munch is Norway's most famous painter, and the museum has a great many of his paintings. We hadn't seen too many of his paintings before, except of course for "The Scream" (year 1893). There are actually four versions of this painting, but the one on exhibit in Oslo is the most famous.

We walked back to our hotel, passing right by the Oslo Opera House. It has a unique design which allows visitors to walk on the roof all the way to the top and people seem to be there at all times of the day. To close, we had a nice dinner at a local place which seem like kind of a Norwegian version of a pub. Beef with gravy and vegetables, along with some Lingonberry on the side. I also tried the local beer they had on tap - a Ringnes. Everything was very good.

One final note. I'm finishing this post at around 9:30 pm and it is still kind of light outside. I'm really not sure when it becomes light in the morning here, and I don't intend to get up to find out.

Traveling to Norway (Aug. 7-8)

We left home on Monday, August 7, around noon and arrived at our hotel in Oslo around 2:30 the next afternoon. No need to add that it felt like a super long trip. We were fortunate to leave Newark before the storms rolled in that cancelled many flights on the east coast. We took an 8-hour flight from Newark to Stockholm and then a one-hour flight from there to Oslo, spending what seemed like forever in airports. We arrived to rain in Stockholm (see picture on the right) and then overcast skies in Oslo with off and on sprinkles. They had so much rain in Oslo earlier that the rail link from the airport to downtown was flooded and we had to take a substitute bus.

Rain is predicted in Oslo for the next few days, but after our nap it wasn't raining so we went for a short walk to see the Oslo Cathedral (Domkirke). The church dates back to 1694 and is used for Royal weddings and other state events.

Neither of us was terrifically hungry, so we decided to just try some local foods. First stop was a waffle at the Waffle Wagon (Vaffelvogna). Waffles are a thing here and the one we tried was filled with sour cream and raspberry jam. Very good. 

Next stop was at the Coop market to buy some Norwegian foods we saw recommended on a YouTube video, so we took that back to your room to have for dinner. There was Jarlsberg and Brunost cheese (the brown block in the front) and dark bread, some Solo soda, some Friea chocolate - note the "quick lunch" (Kvikk Lunsj) bar which is the Norwegian Kit Kat bar - and a few other items. It was actually quite good and a very local way to start out our trip.

Scandinavia

In two days, we start our trip to Scandinavia. This is a trip that we had planned to take in 2020, but of course COVID-19 derailed that trip. It is actually a modified version as the first trip included a cruise which had a stop in St. Petersburg, Russia. While we would still like to visit the Hermitage and see some of the other sights there, it doesn't seem wise to travel to a country at war right now, so Russia is off the itinerary and the cruise was replaced with several flights on SAS and a roll-your-own set of travel plans.

So why Scandinavia? The easy answer is that it is an area of Europe that we have never been to so why not? We start with an eight-hours flight from Newark to Stockholm, Sweden, and then a one-hour flight to Oslo, Norway. We spend three nights in Oslo and then fly to Copenhagen, Denmark, for another three nights. Then a flight to Helsinki, Finland, for a five-night stop. We substituted the visit St. Petersburg with a daytrip to Tallinn, Estonia. It takes slightly more than two hours to cross the Bay of Finland on the Eckerö Ferry to get to Tallinn, so we'll have about seven hours on the ground there before we have to head back to Helsinki. Enough for a guided walking tour and a couple of meals.

When our time in Finland is done, we'll take an overnight Ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm across the Baltic Sea on Viking Line's MS Gabriella (seen on the left). Of course, we could have flown, but where's the adventure in that and taking the ferry seems like something we wanted to try. We have our own stateroom on both ferries, so it's like taking two mini-cruises. We will spend three nights in Stockholm and then fly home the next day. Seventeen days and five countries later.

So, the next question is what are you going to do? With so little time in each country, we are limited. There isn't time to go far outside any of the five cities so we're just going to concentrate on seeing as much as we can in the cities by taking guided walking tours and riding Hop On Hop Off buses. We plan to see the Kon-Tiki and Munch Museums in Oslo, Tivoli Gardens and the Little Mermaid Statue in Copenhagen and the ABBA Museum and the Royal Palace in Stockholm, just to name a few of the more well-known places. We're also looking forward to trying some unique Scandinavia food, which we'll report on in future blog posts.

One final clarification as I've never been sure which countries are considered Scandinavian, so I looked it up. In short, Denmark, Norway and Sweden are part of the Scandinavian Peninsula and only the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish people refer to themselves as Scandinavian. Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark are all Nordic countries with Scandinavian roots and cultural ties.