We travelled by train from Bergen to Oslo.  Some of the train ride was back tracking to our Nutshell trip, but once we were beyond Myrdstral (no idea on that spelling, and that is probably wrong, but you don’t have editing privileges so deal with it.) it was all new.  And still beautiful.  Really beautiful country.

Once we got to Oslo we were pretty beat from the long train ride (I think it was about 7 hours to cross the country from West to East) and the early wake up.  It sure was nice to have assigned seats in the komfort car.  Well worth the extra $10 or so dollars.  That night after an early group dinner Dave and I walked 3 miles to the Vigeland sculpture park.  Apparently Soren and Kaisa did not like the park when they were there before Bergen because the nude sculptures were “weird.”  I get that.  It was good to go for a long walk after sitting on the train all day, and the park was pretty.

The next day we walked down to the Opera House.  One thing we’ve noticed is that just about city in Scandinavia has an opera house to boast about.  After being blinded by the sun (which we hadn’t seen in days) on the white marble, we headed to the National Architecture Museum.  It was a last minute decision to go there, and what a pleasant surprise!  It ended up being our favorite museum visited so far.  The little models were incredible.  The building itself was pretty neat.  And we had the best cup of coffee we’ve had since leaving Brookline.  We hate to say it, but it *might* be better than 4A!

From architecture to modern art.  We headed along the water to the Astrup Fearnley Museet of Modern Art.  The museum is in a Renzo Piano designed building right on the water.  We decided to have lunch there (in general we’ve found most art museums have really good restaurants these days, Jackson, MS was no exception BTW) but unfortunately the menu was based on the current special exhibit, so everything had a Chinese flair to it.  As someone who doesn’t eat Asian food I decided on the bread and butter and olives.  Delicious.  (But it should be noted that the butter had some flair of its own, in the form of added seaweed and fried shrimp eyeballs.)  We sat facing the water and really enjoyed seeing everyone enjoy the little beach area outside the museum.  The collection and exhibits were fine, but honestly nothing we were uber impressed with or inspired by.  But so it goes sometimes.  We had lunch late and enjoyed a leisurely walk back and popped into a few shops before turning in early.

On our last morning in Oslo we went to the National Gallery (free on Thursdays!) right when they opened so that we could see the Scream without elbowing our way through tour groups.  It looked just as you’d expect it to.  But the real discovery in that museum was Peder Balke.  Neither of us were familiar with his work before, but both of us were really taken by it.  It seems as though he was using a reductive technique.  There were several of his works, including several smaller paintings that seemed almost like studies for a larger painting.  The way they were grouped in a cluster was really neat.  I found one post card by him and I am going to search out a book.  Great discovery!  After the quick visit to the National gallery we were off to get the train to Gothenberg, Sweden (apparently that city is spelled several ways depending on who is spelling it, but I am using the spelling I can remember, which is not the Swedish spelling) and then a rental car to Jonkoping.  Good bye Norway.  I feel as though I hardly knew you, but got a pretty good taste of things.  What would I have liked to do more of?  Hike.  That is one thing I don’t think we did enough of.  We spent lots of time walking and sight seeing, and saw some incredible things, but it would have been fun to hike more.

(notes on photos: top = a sign in the architecture museum that seemed appropriate for our journey; second: Vigeland sculpture in the park; third: Oslo opera house (or opera husset?); fourth: architectural model, love love love those trees!; fifth: the harbor outside the Astrup; last but not least, ok, bathroom selfies are super weird.  But this bathroom in the architecture museum was incredible.  That coat rack is in the stall! SO I just had to get a photo of that place.)