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| The Fram |
Flush with our success in navigating public transportation in Japan, we figured we could sort it and get to and from museums in Oslo. Turned out we were right, and we did it without a hitch.
We wanted to see the Fram museum and immerse ourselves in Arctic exploration history. It was a good choice giving us in depth histories of Fridjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen. Combining that with the book Realm of Ice and Sky by Buddy Levy and we were primed for things we saw later in the trip. We also enjoyed clamoring around the ship, Fram. That made us appreciate our spacious quarters on our cruise ship.
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| Yep, it was fun to crawl around on. |
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| Oh no, a polar bear |
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| Even the polar explorer dogs got winter clothes. |
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| Amundsen helping out with the chores on the boat. |
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| An industrial Singer sewing machine. |
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| A delux cabin back in the day. |
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| Polar exploring looks like hard work. |
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| Yep, definitely hard work. |
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| I didn't know about Nansen's humanitarian work. |
As we had time that first day, and they were right there, we also visited the Kon-Tiki Museum and the Norwegian Maritime Museum. I have always had mixed feelings about Kon-Tiki, and the museum did nothing to dissuade them. Oh well. On the other hand I really enjoyed the Maritime Museum, but then I like old boats.
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| Kon-Tiki |
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| New boat |
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| Old boat |
On our second day, we started at the Botanical Gardens. Boy did we hit that at peak. It was lovely and filled with birds I could almost reach out and touch. The gardens are part of the Natural History Museum, so of course we had to have a look. It would have been easy to spend several hours just looking at all the different types of rocks, yes I am easily amused, but we hurried though to maximize our day.
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| I got a fancy bird picture of a European Magpie with my iPhone. |
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| Did I mention there were lots of rocks. |
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| I won't make you look at all of them. |
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| Dinos |
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| Things I will never see alive. Ivory-billed Woodpecker |
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| Tasmanian Wolf |
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| Great Auk |
We finished at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, an open air museum showing life from the 16th century to the present. This place is huge and filled with relocated buildings including the 13th century Gol Stave Church. We could easily have spent a whole day here looking at the collections and reading about all the buildings. We got a few hours in before the thunderstorms hit and we decided we were too exhausted to tough it out.
