Norway

Another Travel Retrospective from our trip to Scandinavia in 2015. This post follows the one on Copenhagen and the one on Sweden.

This is Oslo, the capital of Norway.

This is the    Oslo train station. The tiger is an emblem for the city.    

This is t  he Oslo City Hall. Amazing murals. This is where they hold a reception for the Nobel Peace Prize. (The other Nobels are awarded in Stockholm.)

   Frogner Park in Oslo has a permanent sculpture installation created by Gustav Vigeland between 1920 and 1943. Often called the Vigeland Sculpture Park.     We took a tram out of town to get there. Absolutely amazing!!

The Angry Boy is one of Vigeland’s most famous pieces.

We went to the Munch Museum in Oslo, named for the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, famous for his painting The Scream. They had a special exposition called Van Gogh + Munch, which was fabulous. It was a joint production of the Amsterdam Van Gogh and Oslo Munch museums. The two artists developed in the same time period, and they matched paintings from each artist that were strikingly similar.     No photos allowed, unfortunately. You can get a sense of the exhibit here or here.

   Why does Oslo have French-themed public toilettes?           

On our way to see the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History      , we saw these girls selling muffins.

The Museum of Cultural History had a magnificent stave church, moved from the hinterlands to this Oslo park.

The    Oslo harbor    

The    Oslo Opera House    , an architectural masterpiece on the water.

   Sculpture in the water outside the Oslo Opera House.

      Our next stop was Sognefjorden, the largest (and most beautiful?) of the Norwegian fjords.

We spent several nights in the small town of Balestrand.    

   This is    Balestrand’s church.    

Inside    Balestrand’s church. The rope goes to the bell tower.

   The Balestrand natives were upset that this yacht from the Cayman Islands was moored in their fjord, and obstructing the view.    

   This is Kviknes Hotel, the Grande Dame hotel in Balestrand. We stayed in a simpler place.    

   We took a day trip up to the Fjaerland and the Jostedal Glacier. Any boat ride is good in this area!

Seagulls were following the boat, asking for snacks.

I really like this photo:

The boat landed at Fjaerland, where we caught transport to the Glacier Museum and then the Glacier.            

      Susan at the Glacier Museum.

   The Jostedal Glacier. Notice the blue ice formed by compression.    

This was 2015. I wonder how much of the Jostedal Glacier remains today.

        We had a nice dinner at Ciderhuset (Cider House), a place that makes cider and has a rustic locavore menu.     After the meal, we sampled a flight of ciders.

   We picked up a rental car for two days in Sognefjord.     (This was our only car rental. We got around by train, bus, and ferry.)

We spend two nights in the small village of Solvorn. We stayed at the Walaker Hotel, a splurge for our anniversary. (Yellow building on the right side of this distant picture, also next pictures.)

   We took this tiny ferry across the fjord to get to the small town of Urnes…    

   … because in Urnes there is an amazing 12th-century Urnes Stave Church.

      Local Urnes produce, on the honor system.    

   The next day we took our car onto a ferry that crosses the fjord and goes into the Naerøyfjord (narrow fjord) to Gudvangen. The Naerøyfjord is truly amazing, listed on the list of UNESCO world heritage sites.     The views from the ferry were amazing!

Susan was cold on the ferry…

       We drove our car off of the ferry and went to the tiny village of Undredal, which is famous for its goat cheese and goat sausage.

There were goats everywhere…

   We bought some of the wonderful Norwegian brown goat cheese….    

         .. and had a wonderful picnic of goat cheese, goat sausage, and local strawberries.    

Nice picnic spot, too!

   Three days earlier we had taken a bus that went thru the Lærdal Tunnel, the longest road tunnel (15 miles) on earth. Today we drove over this mountain, on the Aurlandsvegen. Single lane road (traffic both ways) with many switchbacks and fabulous views of the Sognefjord.    