Day 8: Walking Around Oslo

After checking into a hotel in Oslo the night before, Elaine and I slept in and pretended we were on vacation. Our hotel featured a nice little breakfast buffet which had, according to Elaine, the best bread we had in Scandinavia. And that's saying a lot, because we got stuff from quite a few good bakeries.

From there, we spent the day touring Oslo, without a camera (oops!). The highlight was definitely seeing the statues at Frogner Park: lots of human figures in interesting positions, and a far, far more extensive collection than anything I'd seen. It was also pretty amusing to see several groups cascading along the pedestrian walkway: first a band, advertising the Oslo Jazz Festival, and then floats with dancers from several Latin American countries. Salsa dancing was not something we expected to see in Norway, but we were certainly charmed by the whole thing.

In the evening, we ran by the old city, got to have some yummy (and pricey) seafood at Lofoten Restaurant on the nice (and touristy) waterfront, and watched an American play sax at an Oslo Jazz Festival event.

Day 9: More Oslo

Sunday morning featured the much-anticipated rematch of Mike and Trond on the squash court. We'd played many times in Melbourne, with Trond usually coming out on top, but I was eager to try my luck again. Although I would hardly claim to be in top form, I'd been playing a lot more than Trond, and it showed, as I finally extracted my revenge.

After the match, we picked up Trond's girlfriend, Camilla, and went to a science museum. There was some interesting stuff about the wood industry in Norway, which I read in English, and no doubt some other cool stuff, which was only in Norwegian :)

After dropping off Adam at the train station, Trond, Camilla, Elaine and I went up to the ski jump spot which was used for the Oslo Olympics, and continues to be used both for that purpose, and for concerts in the summer. We then sampled Norway's Indian food, which was actually pretty good. The Chinese food we had in Bergen wasn't quite up to snuff, but the Indian in Oslo was't bad at all.











This water is snow in the wintertime, and cleared out for concerts and such in the summer.















The area around Oslo is dominated by evergreens.















Elaine and me with Trond.



Trond and Camilla.







Elaine's going to love me for not editing this one out. Elaine, I think your closed eyes go well with the sod roof in the background :)



Oslo is surrounded by sculptures, and we finally had the camera on hand to get photos of a few of them.











The sun setting, around 10 PM.