July 1-2
The drive to Oslo wasn’t too bad, but we also started an amazing thing: Star Wars! Sofia and Liam had never seen the original 6 Star Wars movies and Michael and I have them downloaded on the iPad (obviously), so we started supplementing some of the beautiful scenery with Darth Vader! The drive was beautiful and the kids were in great spirits. Once we got checked into the airbnb in Oslo, we finished up the movie we were watching, grabbed some pizza from around the corner and relaxed.
Tell me this isn’t super cute:
The next morning we were off for another marathon day of sightseeing. First stop:
Edvard Munch is from Norway, hence the museum. He’s the “Scream” artist.
The adults were pretty excited for the museum and it ended up being great for the kids as well.
It wasn’t too big and they had a few things that the kids loved, like giving them some space to draw their own masterpieces:
It wasn’t until we got to the drawing area that we realized the sad truth:
That’s right – “Scream” apparently is not in this museum. It’s in the national art museum down the road that was closed on Mondays. It was still definitely worth the visit.
Here we are walking around town, enjoying the public transportation and the squares:
After that we were off to the Nobel Prize museum. That’s right – there is another one in Oslo because Oslo is actually the city where the prize is awarded. This museum was really well done. The kids had a great time with the interactive exhibits. The info was very thoughtfully presented and it was quite on point.
Plus there was a soccer exhibit associated with equal education for girls – two things I love.
After a street food lunch, we headed off to see a few Viking war ships!
And then the Norsk Folkemuseum. Now, this was a hard sell to some members of the group. We had been to quite a few museums and the next pending activity was the beach. This museum is another open air museum with historical buildings laid out to create replicas of Norwegian villages.
The location contains over 150 buildings which came from all over Norway, including a Stave Church.
Now, we may have gone with our feet dragging a bit, but the museum was cool and very informative. Especially the information about Stave Churches which we saw in a few other locations in Norway throughout our fjord visit.
Stave Churches are medieval wooden churches that use a specific type of timber framing where the load-bearing posts are called “stafr” in Old Norse or “stav” in modern Norwegian. Some of the stave churches in Norway date back to the 1200s.
This church, the Gol stave church, was built in 1212. That’s really old… and really beautiful.
The below was what they’d use as an iron. You just had to push on the fabric a long time. Also – this is what men would give to women when they proposed marriage. They would either carve it themselves or pay someone else to do it. If the woman turned them down, they could not regift it to the next woman. They had to start over on a new one.
Once we checked out the church and did a short tour, we were on our way to the beach! Oslo has a cool city beach that is easily accessible by bus from downtown, so the area was filled with locals who had come out to enjoy the beautiful weather.
Has anyone noticed Sofia and Michael’s matchy shirts yet?
That night we grabbed food at the restaurant below our airbnb and… you guessed it… watched the futbol match. Belgium v. Japan – Belgium won 3-2.
The next morning, we were looking to get on the road quite early to get a jump on the fjords, but Katie and I had a few things we needed to see before leaving, so we went for a run to get a glance at the Royal Palace:
And the Cathedral:
And these huge bears:
Do it. Hug life.
Next off to the fjords!