I woke up quite early today and read the papers and caught up on the NHS cyber attack news while I was waiting for the rest of the crew to get ready. Finally by 930 we left the hotel. The cafes were not open yet and so after a quick breakfast at McDonalds we headed to the promenade opposite the City Hall.
There are sightseeing ferry boats every twenty minutes to take us to the museums. It does two stops and then returns. I, in my wisdom, decided to get off at the second stop and go to the first one on the way back without realising that it’s a round trip.
At our stop we visited the Fram, Kon Tiki and Maritime museums, each taking us through the history of Norwegian explorations. We only had a quick look around each of them. The Fram houses the Gjoa, a ship, which was the first to safely navigate the icebergs of the Northwest passage to reach the Pole.
Kon Tiki houses the Kon Tiki raft and the reed boat RA II used by the explorer, Thor Heyerdahl.
At the maritime museum the 2 exhibits that caught my eye were a 2200 year old dug out boat, which was essentially the outside bark of a tree and a painting of three children enjoying their summer holidays. A picture that captures the essence of an idyllic summer holiday.
We had a few minutes to kill as we waited for the next ferry. On the ferry, I realised my mistake and so we had to stay on it to do the round trip again to the first stop, which was also essentially somewhere we could have walked from the second stop. So more time wasted. There were a couple of main museums at this stop. But to reach both we had to walk quite a distance from the ferry port.
The Folk museum was an open air museum depicting Norwegian life from 1500 to the present day. They have relocated about 160 historical buildings, from all over Norway to this museum. We could have easily spent the whole day here.
Time was of the essence now. We had another sightseeing boat trip booked for 1530 and so the Viking museum trip was cancelled.
After a quick lunch break we headed to the pier once again to catch our two hour boat trip to see the Oslo fjords. The guide described the islands and stories behind it as we passed them.
When we got back it was almost closing time for most of the museums. The nearest one was the Nobel Peace Centre which tells the story of Alfred Nobel and other Nobel laureates and their works. Another quick browse and it was time to go back to the hotel for a bit of relaxing before dinner.
Dinner ended up being in the same restaurant, as we were too tired to go restaurant hunting. The service was pretty slow as it was a busy night, but the food was worth waiting for. This concludes our second day in Oslo. Tomorrow we leave for the airport around lunchtime and so may not be able to do much.