Day 16: Vradel - Peach of a day, No.2

Today's weather has been perfect, an absolute peach of a day. We had a bus tour around Oslo this morning and visited the Vigeland Sculpture Park. The parklands there were stunning and the sculptures quite interesting. The park is the result of the artistic obsession and a lifetime of work by Gustav Vigeland. We worked for 20 years on the sculptures and donated them to the city of Oslo.

The highlights of the park include the fountain which consist of 60 individual bronze reliefs representing the circle of life. There is also the monolith, which is the focal point of the park consisting of 121 intertwined human figures. It took him 14 years to complete. It's an amazing piece of art and the park was very popular with tour groups and school groups enjoying it today.

We were dropped off at the Town Hall and decided to leave the tour group and join Adrian to visit the Viking Ship Museum. We are really interested in learning more about the Vikings and so far we haven't seen a lot other than a small section of the National Museum at Copenhagen. To get to the museum we needed to catch a ferry across the fjord and then walk up a hill for about 700-800 metres. The ferry ride was excellent as we got a look at the city from the water and the perfect weather made the trip a great experience.

The time of the Vikings was from the beginning of 700 to 1050. They were outstanding ship builders and skilled navigators, their ships were fast and well suited for long sea journeys. Many Norsemen settled in the lands they had invaded and the Vikings were the first Europeans in North America. The Viking Ship Museum houses 4 Viking ship burials from the Oslo Fjord area, found at Oseberg, Gokstad, Tune and Borre and were excavated between 1852 and 1904. Three of the graves contained ships that have survived to this day, the Oseberg ship was built in 820, the Gokstad ship shortly before 900 and the Tune ship in 920. From the ship at the Borre grave only iron nails remain today. The three ships had been at sea for several years before they were pulled ashore and used as burial ships. The museum also had a movie which was a pictorial depiction of their history and was played over three walls and the ceiling, it was excellent and was a great experience to end our visit to the museum.

We took the ferry back to the city and still had an hour until we had to meet up with the tour bus so we walked up to the Akershus Fortress and looked around it before grabbing a bite to eat for lunch and purchasing the obligatory fridge magnet as our momento for visiting this interesting and picturesque city. We have really enjoyed our short stay in Oslo and would be happy to return to explore more of it in the future.

This afternoon we have had a 4 hour bus trip to the Telemark Area. The scenery has been excellent and just kept getting better and better the further into the mountains we got. Apparently the scenery gets even more breathtaking tomorrow so we are looking forward to that. We found many shades of green in the Netherlands and Denmark but Norway is just another level entirely, what a beautiful place.

We are staying at the Quality Straand Hotel in Vradel which is very nice, it's a ski resort during the winter and in a spectacular setting between the mountains and overlooking a fjord. Tonight's meal was a buffet with many delectable offerings meaning we all ate too much. We dined with Bec and Luke, Adrian, Shamick (from the USA) and Bob and Doris (from Canada). It was an delicious meal made all the better by the company we shared it with. After dinner Bec, Luke, Adrian, Amy and myself enjoyed a few drinks in the bar with Shamick joining us later. It was one of the best nights we've had so far on the tour and it's been great to get to know all these people who are now very much great friends.

We have an early start in the morning and we have a long travel day by bus and ferry to Bergen where we will be for the next two nights. Its time to call stumps on another terrific day.Read more