Oslo, Norway

June 13, 2012

Oslo is the capital of Norway and the largest city in Norway. It is located in the south-east corner of Norway.

Vigeland Sculpture Park

Gustav Vigeland, a noted Norwegian sculptor, populated a large park with more than 200 sculptures. The park and the sculptures celebrate the human condition – birth, aspects of life, and death.

Fetus

Infant

Child

Girl diving from the tree of life

Monolith

Holmenkollbakken

We toured Oslo’s new ski jump, rebuilt in 2010. I did not get any pictures of the ski jump that I like well enough to publish here. We viewed the ski jump from about half way up. One thing did catch my eye tho’. A ski jump competitor, waiting his turn, who just happened to look out to the horizon would see a Norse god – Odin perhaps - waiting the competitor's arrival.

Norse god

Oslo Opera House

While the Oslo Opera House has won a number of awards for contemporary architecture, it does not grab me. The reason that we visited the exterior of this building was to enjoy the view from the Opera House roof. You see, the roof rises at an angle from the plaza allowing an intrepid visitor to walk up the roof several stories. Made of Italian marble and white granite, this is no ordinary roof.

On the roof

We could see our ship, the ms Eurodam from our vantage point.

White roof with pedestrians

The Oslo Opera House was the end of the story for Norway. We sailed that evening for the Øresund Straits that, along with several narrow “belts”, connect the North Sea to the Baltic Sea. On the hike down the roof of the opera house, I tripped and fell, skinning my left knee and twisting my right foot. The left knee lost skin over a good bit of its surface. While initially not very painful, the right foot started to swell and became difficult to walk on.

Once aboard ship we took me to the ship’s infirmary. I figured that I needed a large bandage for the left knee and an elastic bandage for the foot. The medical staff agreed with me about the left knee and gave me a very large bandage. However, they advised X-rays for the right foot. It turns out that I had a small crack in my fifth metatarsal. They gave me a special shoe for my damaged right foot. They said, “Don’t walk on it. Don’t put weight on it.”

The trip was half done at that point. We then cruised across the Baltic Sea into the Gulf of Finland for port stops at Tallinn, Estonia, St. Petersburg, Russia, and Helsinki, Finland.

To see images of Estonia, go to Tallinn.

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