Oslo Day 2

We have a lot planned today! So we set off first thing in the morning. We pick up breakfast from a bakery on the same street and eat it in our hotel. Afterwards we take the bus to the Bygdøy peninsula west of the city. We want to visit a few museums there and decide to buy a 24-hour Oslo Pass, which includes entry to several museums and some ferry rides. First we go to the Fram Museum, one of the best-rated museums in Norway. The exhibition tells the story of the polar expeditions of the explorers Amundsen, Nansen and Scott. We learn a lot about the history of the three men and their voyages to the polar regions. The museum also houses two of the expedition ships: The Fram and the Gjøa. With the Gjøa, Amundsen became the first to sail through the Northwest Passage. He learned a good deal about the Inuit and was able to show that the magnetic North Pole does not stay in one place but moves. Nansen also sailed north on the Fram, and when the ship could go no further, he and a comrade continued alone with a few sled dogs. We find these adventures fascinating. We can even go aboard the Fram ourselves and look around inside the ship. But we can’t spend too long here, as we still have a few museums ahead of us. Next we go to the neighbouring Maritim Museum, where we see some records, replicas and paintings of ships. A corner window also offers a great view straight out to sea.

We only stay in this museum briefly and then visit the Kon-Tiki Museum right next door. It is a rather small museum, but it impresses us all the more. It houses the real (restored) Kon-Tiki. It is a huge balsa-wood raft with a sail, on which a Norwegian and his crew were the first to travel from Peru to French Polynesia. In doing so he showed that the islands there might once have been settled by South Americans as well. The voyage was one long adventure and lasted 101 days. But the whole crew survived. The museum also displays some statues and figures from Easter Island. Afterwards we want to visit the Viking Ship Museum and the Folk Museum, but both are closed today. So we take the ferry back to the city centre. We arrive at the City Hall and walk to Akershus Fortress.

Unfortunately it too has closed in the meantime, but we can still look at the fortress from the outside. Our last stop for today is the Royal Palace.

There we watch the changing of the guard and walk through the palace gardens. We rest for a while on a small bench and then walk back to the hotel. On the way we buy some food at a supermarket and eat it at our hotel.