We jumped on board Tram #12 for a good look at the city. The tram stops near popular attractions such as Vigeland Sculpture Park, Aker Brygge, City Hall, Christiania Torv and Akershus Fortress.

Astrup Fearnley Art Museum

The Oslo Waterfront

We explored the Oslo waterfront and nearby sites by foot. The waterfront looks out onto the Oslo Fjord. It is bustling with lots of water traffic from ferries serving nearby islands, sightseeing boats including historic replicas of old time wooden sailing ships, cruise ships and small boats. The waterfront is lined with lots of restaurants and tourists in a strip called Aker Brygge. The City Hall looks out onto the water with a fountain and sculptures in front and a welcoming flower garden along side.

The sun does not set till 10:30 pm here and gets up again at 4:30 am. We left the water front at 10:45 pm and the twilight was still quite bright. That doesn’t help us get on a regular sleeping rhythm but makes for long, fun days.

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Oslo Grand Hotel

The historic Grand Hotel in Oslo is where the Nobel Peace Prize winners stay. The cafe within the hotel has a wall length mural that feature Norway famous literary and artist personalities from a century ago. One of the artist is Edvard Munch who is famous for the “scream” painting.

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Just down the Karl Johans Gate (street) from the Grand Hotel is the Palace. The King and Queen were in so there are two guards in front. One of the guards you may recognize. We also happened upon a formal military drill on the palace grounds.

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Vigeland Sculpture Park

Vigeland Park is a huge sculpture garden within a short tram ride from Oslo’s ciy center that contains the lifetime work of Norway’s greatest sculptor, Gustav Vigeland. There are 600 statue figures in all, each nude and unique. The sculptures focus on the cycle of life from birth to death and capture about every conceivable human emotion. The tall, center piece sculpture shown below has 117 human bodies wrapped and stacked upon each other with a baby at the top. To my interpretation, it represents the dependence of each generation upon the ones that came before. We tried as best we could to get into the emotion represented by a few of the sculptures.

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We closed out our Norway vacation with one last day in Oslo. It’s was a beautiful summer day so we wandered about and took in a few sights we had not seen earlier at the start of our trip.

Along the way as we walked through a section of the old town and came across an interesting sculpture. We just could not put our finger on the feeling and emotion it evoked.

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The Oslo Opera House is a striking building with a modern ship like architecture that fits right in with it’s location on the bay. We joined lot of others and walked to the top for a nice view of the city and our final goodbye. It was truly a magical adventure in the lands of fjords and trolls.

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