Oslo

The ship arrived in Oslo before breakfast and docked near the fortress.  There was a huge Royal Caribbean ship in the primo spot a little closer to downtown.  After breakfast we met with our group and boarded a bus for a drive-by tour of Oslo.  There is a lot of building going on with streets torn up impacting traffic.  The guide said the population is over 600,000 and growing.  They need to build housing but are restricted from building any further out in the forest so now they must go up.  A strip of new skyscrapers along the harbor are called "the barcode".  We passed the red brick city hall, Nobel Prize headquarters and royal palace on our way to the Holmenkollen Ski Jump.  The ski jump was pretty interesting and if we had had more time I might have enjoyed the ski jump simulator.  We watched a few people zip-lining along the ski jump and there was youth biathlon training going on below our view point.

We also visited Vigeland Park with hundreds of sculpture by Gustav Vigeland.  Apparently he worked out a deal with the city to create these sculptures to decorate the park for the citizens.  One question I thought of later was did he bring a proposal to the city of Oslo or did they approach him?  Seems like he got a sweetheart deal.

After the morning tour we returned to the ship for lunch just as it began to rain.  Later in the afternoon it hadn't let up so instead of walking we took a taxi to shop a little downtown.  It was easy to find a taxi rank among the shops even though the guy at Viking's customer service desk said there weren't any.  Hm?  Maybe Viking needs to give staff a little refresher.  If you go to Norway there is no service by Uber which is not allowed here.

Our ship spends the night Oslo so we have a full day to explore more on our own tomorrow.

 Oslo's new skyline

I like the movement expressed in this sculpture

 

What?  Vigeland left no titles for his work so we'll never know what he was thinking.

 Vigeland's centerpiece

Holmenkollen Ski Jump

The grey building will be home to a new Munch museum next year.

  It seems a lot of people were off the ship during dinner tonight which made the dining room quieter and allowed us a seat in the Explorer's Lounge to listing to a string duet.