Weekend in Oslo

So after I got home from the train station, I thought about taking a shower, but decided to just crash instead. I had a pretty lazy morning surfing the internet when I finally did get up, and pretty shortly after L had gone to pick up M from a friend's house, we all piled into the metro to head off to L's work where she had left her car the night before.

She works in an office that is right in Norway's national soccer stadium, so it was pretty cool to get a bit of a tour around there. I even got to see the box seats that big companies own to watch games in. We also took a bit of a tour around the conference building that is connected to the stadium since L had been the one to make most of the design decisions for it as it was being built.

A reception desk in the conference centre. L helped make all these design decisions! It was all very modern and beautiful, and very Scandinavian.


After that we headed off to the Folk Museum. We only had about 2 hours to explore there, but it was enough time to see most of what was there. It was a really cool place. They had old buildings that had been brought in from all over Norway on display, and a couple of the buildings had really interesting exhibits in them. My favourite exhibit was the one that showed all sorts of traditional Norwegian costumes. They were all so incredibly elaborate and (new favourite word) beautiful.

There was also a really awesome old stave church there. I think it was built in the 1200's or something ridiculous like that. It was completely different from any church I had ever seen which was really cool (but apparently there's a fair number of them in Norway).

M in front of the church.

Inside the church.

There was even a little house where some women were making fresh lefse. I bought some and it was soooo delicious! Lefse is a traditional Norwegian flat bread that is a little bit sweet. I put some butter on mine, and it was fresh out of the oven (or fire pit...), so it was hot and so tasty.

After the Folk Museum, M was pretty tired, but we headed off to a big park called the Vigeland statue park. It was really neat. There were hundreds of statues there, and it kind of reminded me of when I went to Washington, DC just because of the statues being everywhere. M perked up here because she loved climbing on all the statues.

Entrance to the park.

I thought this statue was hilarious. Soooo random.

After that we went home and had a pretty relaxed evening.

I got up fairly early on Sunday and over breakfast we discussed what we should do for the day. M desperately wanted to go swimming. She loves swimming and I think she wanted to show me the pool. We decided that as long as we got going pretty quickly, we could probably do that and then do something else in the afternoon, so we headed out as soon as we could.

Considering it was a Sunday morning at 11, the pool was packed. There were tons of families and little kids there. There was even a Muslim woman there with full-on head-covered, long-sleeved bathing gear. I had a fun time playing with M (and my Norwegian has improved because I now know the word for "spin").

After the pool, we drove out to a little town about 30 minutes from Oslo called Son (pronounced "Soon") and walked around there for a bit. We saw a neat little art gallery and walked along by the water. I got some ice cream and it was delicioussss.

In Son.

There wasn't too much to see there, so we decided to go visit another little town called Drøbak a bit closer to Oslo. It was really pretty too, everything was right on the water. We checked out a few neat little shops and then walked by the water. We saw some boys catching fish with a little net, and then L&M decided to quickly check out the aquarium before it closed while I wandered a little.

Right near the aquarium in Drøbak.

After they came out, we walked along a path near the water, and I got to hear the story of how a big German warship was sunk right in that harbour during World War II. Even though there were sentries all along the coast, for some reason no one fired at the warship until it got to Drøbak (really close to Oslo). If they hadn't shot it down there, the Germans probably would have been able to capture Norway.

The island that houses the battlements/fortress/cannons.

We found a playground and I played there with M for a while before we went home. M had a play date, and then L&J went out for a bike ride, so I had some quiet time in the apartment. I decided to start uploading my photos, and man did it take FOREVER. I only got about halfway through before it was time to go to bed. I didn't do too much else that evening except hang around and wait for my photos.

Next up - About to leave Oslo.