Screams, statues, and ships, oh my!

I've met up with Jeanne (Kinder-3rd teacher from New Jersey) and Breanna (7-8th from Lion's Head, Canada), and checked in with National Geographic/Lindblad!

It turned out to be a beautiful day, so it was really nice getting to tour around Oslo. We started at the National Gallery, which is a great art museum that features, among other things, Edvard Munch's The Scream.








We then went to Vigeland Sculpture Park, a huge outdoor park that features 212 bronze sculptures by Gustav Vigeland depicting various humans. Some were hilarious, like this man being attacked by babies:












and the most famous of the Vigeland statues, the Angry Boy:












After that, we went to the Fram Museum which celebrates polar exploration. Inside are two original exploration vessels, the Fram (which went on several Arctic and Antarctic expeditions between 1893 and 1912) and the Gjoa (which traversed the Northwest Passage led by Roald Amundsen in 1904-06). You can explore inside the Fram, and it was interesting to see how those old polar explorers lived for years at a time in harsh conditions. Their rooms were teeeeny tiny, and their beds looked like miniature coffins. Guess when I go aboard the National Geographic Explorer, I really can't complain about anything!

Even though we only had an hour total, Jeanne and I wanted to see the Kon Tiki which is housed in a museum next door, so we decided to rush over for a quick peek. Not only did the museum have the Kon Tiki, but it had the Ra II (a reed boat a la the ancient Egyptians, which Heyerdahl sailed from North Africa to the Caribbean).

The Kon Tiki

The Kon Tiki expedition was really an experiment - a 1947 journey by balsawood raft across the Pacific Ocean. Norwegian explorer/writer Thor Heyerdahl wanted to prove that people from pre-Incan Peru could have originally populated Polynesia around A.D. 500. It was amazing to see what the actual raft looked like...  101 days on board, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean! Now I REALLY can't complain about conditions on board the Explorer... (not that I ever would!)

Interesting fact - Heyerdahl almost drowned as a child and didn't really know how to swim when he set out to cross the Pacific aboard the Kon Tiki. That takes some guts!

We headed back to the hotel to pick up Breanna (who stayed back to take a nap), and set off for a dinner. We walked down to Aker Brygge to see the shops along the harbor. We had dinner at Louise's, a waterfront cafe - I had to try the "Taste of Norway" starter (which included reindeer pate, aquavite sausage, cured lamb, duck, and cured ham), as well as Norwegian fish soup.

Naturalist Tom, speaking to the group

We got back to the hotel right at 7, in time for the National Geographic/Lindblad reception. The ship holds 148 guests, and they seemed to range from retirees down to a family with a 7-year old kid. Tom Ritchie, one of the National Geographic naturalists, gave a short talk and asked how many people had been to Antarctica - amazingly, around 1/3 or more of the people raised their hands!! This is definitely a group of adventurous explorers...

We'll be flying to Longyearbyen tomorrow, so it's off the bed early for us! (of course, we first had to enjoy the fruit plate that was left in our room... it's nice being in a first class hotel!)

My roomie Breanna, with our evening gift