Hoppin' Oslo

The first port on our Baltic cruise was Oslo, Norway.  I had visited Oslo one other time when I was a teenager and the Chapel Choir from Monroe Street United Methodist Church toured Scandinavia. What I remember most about that Oslo trip is that I got lost.  I had left my guitar in the hotel, went back to get it for rehearsal at the church where we were performing that evening.  I won't go into the whole story about how I got lost and what happened, but I finally found my way to the church.  Actually, I think (at a later time) that might make a good blog entry.

This trip was a busy one.  We (Linda, Ray and I) hopped on a "Hop On Hop Off" bus to take us to some of the key places.  We should have taken the advice of some of the reviews about doing this.  The loop was a long one and we got a later start than we intended.  We were given ear buds to use with a recording of all of the places we passed, or where we stopped.  The recording was off a couple of stops, so when we wanted to get off stop 7 to see "The Scream" we realized that it was really stop 5.  We would have no time to go through the loop and then get back in time.  So, we just stayed on the bus and listened to the recording telling us about places we had already passed.

Edward Munch created four versions in paint and pastels of The Scream.  One is in the National Gallery and another is in the Munch Museum.  We we did not get to go to either.

The Scream by Edward Munch.

Another reason we did not get off the bus, was because the traffic patterns were changed a bit because it was also the 50th Wedding Anniversary of the King and Queen.  They were celebrating and some of the roads were closed.  We did not get to see them either, but here is a picture.

King Harald and Queen Sonja

We got to see a lot of the city from the bus and this is a great mode of transportation while visiting cities that have such buses.  It was our fault that we did not start earlier and that we did not have a good plan for the day.  I do not fault the Hop On, Hop Off bus for that.  I do wish that their recording numbers matched the stops.  Here are a few places we did see.

University Aula

Norwegian Capital, Parliament 

Since this was our first port, we did not have our timing down yet.  We probably could have taken the bus for another loop, but we worried about being left in Oslo,when the ship left.  It wasn't until we got back, that we realized that the ship was leaving late, like 11:00 at night.  Oh well, Linda was having major pain from the sciatica (and the bus was bouncy which aggravated the sciatica) and my leg was still bothering me, so walking around and standing in lines at museums, would have slowed any healing we had hoped to have and been quite painful.

                                                     Here are a couple more pictures.

Grand Hotel

And, of course,  A McDonald's 

When we boarded the ship, Ray and I explored the decks.  We had been on this same ship on a different cruise.  While standing on the ship's deck, I was fascinated by this fortress that was right next to our ship.  We could see inside, from our view and noticed that it was opened for people to tour.  Ray and I disembarked the ship again, crossed the street and took the steps into the fortress.  The next blog post will be about this amazing fortress.