Row, row, row your boat

It's Friday....our last full day in Oslo. With our Oslo Passes in hand, we catch a tram towards City Hall. From there we hop a ferry to Bygdoynes (Norwegian for "Big Boy Island"), a short ride across the fjord.

Our objective today is to visit 3 museums and then return to the main city to shop. We depart the ferry and have a 10 minute walk to our first museum.

Our museum tour kicks off with the Viking Ship Museum. It contains 2 fully restored Viking ships and part of a 3rd one along with treasures recovered from unearthing the buried ships. The museum is fascinating and popular. At last count, there were 6 tour busses in the parking lot. Off we go to stop #2 . We are on foot and walking through a neighbourhood of beautiful homes. We think Bygdoynes actually means "big money to live here" because some of the homes are massive.

We arrive at our 2nd museum....the Polar Ship Fram....it contains the Ship "Fram" which was built for the express purpose of sailing to the Arctic. The museum is fabulous and, like the Viking Museum, can devour hours of your day. We opt not to spend hours but we do stay quite awhile. Let's move along.

Across the roadway is museum #3....the Kon-Tiki Museum....another boat related spot. Are you seeing a theme here yet??!!!! This museum contains the balsa wood boat "Kon-Tiki" which was built to sail from the west coast of Africa to Polynesia. The trip lasted 101 days which , if you were betting in Vegas, surpassed the over/under by about 87 days. Many "experts" and members of the media gave the boat about a 14 day lifespan. The 5 Norwegian sailors proved them very wrong. The crew filmed their adventure resulting in an Academy Award for "Best Documentary" in 1955. "Oscar" was there for all of us to see. In addition to the boat "Kon-Tiki", there was a second boat made of papyrus.

Time to move on. We found all 3 museums to be well worth our time and we passed on visiting 2 more on the same island. We hopped the ferry and returned to the port area of Oslo. We meandered our way back to the hotel stopping along the way to browse but came away empty handed.

Another great day ended with a wonderful dinner at the restaurant "Louise" down by the docks followed by 2 fabulous desserts at another spot that we had visited the previous day. We were in an area called Aker Brygge, a collection of upscale condos, retail and restaurants. Very trendy, hip and well planned.

Time to start packing as we fly to Kirkenes at 9:00 a.m tomorrow. Stay tuned for more adventures.....no doubt we'll have a story or 2.

Pics.....Viking ship, "Kon-Tiki", "Fram" model, papyrus boat, 5 explorers of "Fram", one large houseRead more