I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, but I thought I'd check what the Munch Museum is like, so I stopped at that Metro Station. Turns out the museum is closed on Mondays. Oh well, too bad. I got back on the Metro and decided that next I would check out the royal palace.
I got there and wandered the grounds a bit, taking a few photos. There were some guards standing at a couple different posts. They were much less regimented than the other ones I've seen. They did stand at attention, but they would look around from time to time, and when people asked if they could take a photo with them, they actually answered with words!! I thought it was kind of funny.
The palace.
After I had gotten back to the front of the castle, I noticed that there were a whole bunch of guards lined up in front of one of the little buildings. I stopped and watched for a while, but they didn't do too much other than stand at attention. Then all of a sudden a whole bunch of guards came marching across the court! It turned out that they were doing a changing of the guards ceremony. It was incredibly elaborate and took a great deal of time, but I watched the guards switch out. The funniest part was that three soldiers would go and stand by the guard to change (one to each side and one in front), and if you blinked, you would miss the guards switching out with the guy standing in front of him!
After the castle, I headed back to the Opera to check out the inside (I had failed to do that the first time I went to the Opera). The inside was pretty beautiful too.
Inside the opera.
I wandered for an incredibly long time trying to find somewhere I wanted to eat, and eventually I got too tired of looking and decided to eat at the T.G.I. Friday's that I was standing next too.
After my meal, I decided to see if I could look around City Hall. IT WAS AMAZING! I couldn't believe it was just a City Hall! Some parts of it look like a castle, and other parts looked like it should be a parliament.
Outside City Hall.
Just inside the front doors.
Where the action happens (as far as I know).
Random pretty room. (There were lots of these.)
Before I went home, I stopped at a gift shop and bought a fantastic book on Norway, filled with beautiful photos. I had a pretty quiet evening trying to upload more photos. I finally got everything uploaded and went to bed pretty late.
I got up fairly early Tuesday morning and decided to go all the way up to the big ski jump on the hill. It was a little confusing finding the bus to take, but I got on it and we started going up the hill. It was really neat because it immediately seemed like we were eons from the city (except you could still see it down the hill). I knew the ski jump was closed, so I didn't get off at it, but I got off the bus when the rest of the people did. I had no idea where we were, so I just started walking down the hill hoping to find a bus stop. I went past the ski jump (it was huge!), and continued.
View from the top of the hill.
Ski jump.
I ended up walking about 45 minutes before I found a bus stop to take me back to the metro station. I took the metro back to one of the stations downtown and decided that I needed to go buy my ferry ticket.
The ferry terminal was a bit of a walk, and I found out that the ferry is actually more like a cruise ship, so you can't just reserve a seat, you have to book a room. Fine by me, I'd rather sleep in a bed anyway, and at least my Eurail pass got me a discount on the fare.
I went back home to pack and try to get some food before I had to leave for the ferry. I took quite a while getting a blog post up, so then I really rushed packing.
I ran out of the apartment and hopped on the Metro, ready to go. Unfortunately, a few stops later I realized that I had forgotten to bring my Danish and Swedish phrase books. Fail. The only consolation is that I probably wouldn't have used them a whole lot anyway (and there are enough similarities between them and Norwegian, that the little broken Norwegian I know is probably mostly sufficient).
Next up - on the ferry to Denmark.
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