This trip was taken between May 22, 2014 to June 10, 2014.

We leave our apartment early and jump on the T-Bane for the harbor to catch the ferry to Bygdoy for our Norwegian maritime history lesson for the day.  After a delightful ride we exit the ferry right at our destination, 3 separate Norwegian Maritime Museums.

First up is the Fram Museum, which tells the story of a Norwegian Polar Expedition. The ship, the Fram, was commissioned by explorer Fridtjf Nansen and built in 1891 by Colin Archer. The museum was built in 1936 to house the ship and explain the 5-year polar exploration of 12 brave men. The 36’x128’ double ended ship was built with a shallow draft, a 24”-28” thick hull, 3 masts, and a rounded hull to ride up on the ice flow. It was also supplied with a wind generator to supply electricity to power the experiments and men’s needs. It was amazing these men survived the trip frozen in the ice flow for so long with no means of resupply. The map attached shows the extent of their voyage. It was very interesting to walk the decks, inside and outside, and see how these men lived and survived during that voyage.

Next door was the Kon Tiki Museum honoring Thor Hyerdahl’s adventures aboard the Kon Tiki and Ra II. The Kon Tiki a balsa wood pre-Columbian design that sailed in 1947 from Peru to Polynesia.

The Ra II was built of reeds based on ancient Egyptian design and sailed from North Africa to the Caribbean.

What interesting people the Norwegians are, they love the outdoors, travel and exploration. When I hear my distant relatives probably have Viking blood it is no wonder my family loves to explore and travel to see new and interesting destinations.

The last Museum we were to visit was to learn of Norwegian Maritime history, trade and coastal culture. This interesting museum displays ships and vessels (in model form), photographs, videos, a short feature movie, ship and boat drawings, charts, books and periodicals telling of 150 years of Norwegian maritime history. A very memorable place to visit, I so enjoyed reading about the history that I forgot to take any photos.

We jumped back on the ferry to finish our days adventure but first we need to sit for lunch and fuel our bodies. We had been snacking all morning but our stomachs were empty.

Back in Oslo proper we decide to eat something familiar today and stop at TGI Fridays. Every once in a while your body craves something familiar and this was the day. All of the outside tables were full so we decide to eat inside on the ground floor. It seems we were the only ones downstairs and that meant we had a wonderful waitress all to ourselves who talked with us through most of our lunch. We were both asking questions about each other’s cities, countries and travels. The food was good and the company excellent, a good choice for lunch.

After eating we walked to the Nasjonalgalleriet (National Gallery). Jodi wanted to see The Scream and we enjoyed walking through seeing the rest of the paintings and sculptures throughout the museum. It was required that we place all bags and cameras in a locker, they said they have too many people using flash and that it destroys the paintings, understandable, I wish people would learn how to turn automatic flash off to preserve the scene and the experience of other patrons.

We left the museum and walked along Karl Johans Gate toward the train station, finding our T-Bane stop we head back to our neighborhood. We drop a few items off at our apartment and walk across the river to the Mauthallen food hall to check it out. We walk inside and wander all along its hallways investigating all the stalls and eateries but do not see anything that strikes our fancy, we are still full from a large lunch. So we head to the store to pickup a few snacks for tonight and tomorrows journeys.

(Learned something new in WordPress: how to add links to the sites we visit. I have gone back to the older posts and the added links to the posts.)