The view from our room, overlooking the castle

Today was a half day stop in Oslo, Norway. I woke up early at 5:30 to the sight of the fjord leading to Oslo slipping by the window. This far south in Norway, the fjord is not very steep sided. It was a very grey, misty morning and the view was very reminiscent of home and Puget Sound. When the ship docked, we found ourselves directly overlooking the castle. It was right across the street from the ship—what a nice view we had!

We could leave the ship at 7:00 am and had to be back on the ship by 1:30. We did not sign up for any tours, as usual, so we saw no reason to be off the ship too early since nothing was going to be open until 9:30 or later. After leaving the ship, we walked through the castle grounds and then headed for the famed city hall, which is where the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony is held.

The murals lining the main hall are quite beautiful, and we also really enjoyed the series of carvings on the exterior of the building that illustrate many Norse myths.From there, we made a series of literally jaw-dropping observations on the streets of Oslo. We were looking at restaurant prices! The lecturer had prepared us the day before for the high prices, but I guess you just don’t believe it until you’ve seen it for yourself. So here we go: a McDonald’s burger- $20, basic burger in a restaurant- $28, nicer burger in a restaurant- $40. Pretty much any lunch entrée was at least $30 to $40 or more. You would easily drop $100 for just a very basic, minimal lunch. Sheesh, it was truly astounding.

Other items in stores were also expensive, but not to quite the same extent. We figured that restaurant prices were 3-4x the prices we’re used to and other items were 2-3x our prices. We didn’t even get any money out. We just wandered around looking at prices! And then decided to just eat lunch on the ship and save ourselves a bundle. Will Copenhagen be this expensive?????

Oslo was a nice city with some nice, old architecture, but also lots of modern buildings. There are lots of statues and sculptures and great building decorations. The 17^thof  May (Norwegian Independence) celebration is just around the corner and there was a military tattoo apparently going on in honor of that. We kept hearing a tattoo band playing somewhere in the streets, but we just never got any closer to it. We did see lots of kids wearing red pants with Norwegian flag patterns on them. We had fun speculating on what the pants were for, and never found out the truth.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay...

I've been meaning to tell you...

We can guess what this says, but thought it would be more fun for everyone to contribute what they think it says!

Back on the ship, we found time to attend the Copenhagen lecture since we will be spending a few days there. I also had to hurry up and finish the book I had checked out from the library. Hard to believe I only managed to read three books in over two weeks—what’s the matter with me! We also had to pack our bags and get them out in the hallway by dinner time. It’s a little sad to realize that this portion of the trip is over, but we are also very excited about the next stage. As I was packing, I came across three of my favorite purchases, which others might find kind of odd. Ever since I was a kid I have always had a thing about flags from other countries and places. Can’t explain it but there it is. I like to collect unusual flags from places we have been and research them before we go so I know what I want to look for, so here’s a picture of the three flags I picked up on this trip, top to bottom:

Cornwall, Normandy, Amsterdam

Cornwall, Normandy, Amsterdam. I’m getting enough now that we need to design a new scheme for flying them all.

It took about three hours to travel the entire way out of the fjord that leads to Oslo. It was very pretty and again reminded us so much of the northwest. It was funny to me at one point because as I was out on our balcony watching the scenery go by, our neighbors, the ones who needed bundling, were out exclaiming about how fantastic the scenery was. And it was, don’t get me wrong, but they had clearly never seen such scenery and it is just what we have at home, so we suddenly felt like we were home again!

Heading to the North Sea

Just like home

As we exited the fjord and entered the North Sea, we hit some high winds, gusting to 65 knots. We got some good motion going on the ship and some great choppy waves. It made walking around problematic, and at one point they even closed the outdoor decks. For a while we were quite heeled over at times—I took a picture of a glass of water to try and show the angle of the floor. It would have been fun to see what the pools were doing—they really got sloshing pretty well in some of the other active, but milder, weather we’ve had. We enjoyed the drama, but there were probably others who were not so enamored.

We have also noticed today that there are a bunch of new people on the ship. How can we tell? Well, my first clue was when I realized that many of the people standing around us as we entered the dining room did not have silver hair! And we also started noticing a lot of different languages, many of them Russian or Eastern European sounding. It seems odd that they are joining the ship before Copenhagen, but we also know there are a fair number of empty cabins. I think the tone of the cruise will change quite a bit from here on. Well, and we’re leaving, so obviously there will be more food available!

-T