Our first stop was at the Vitlycke Museum in Bohuslän, with its outdoor Bronze Age Farm and over 500 Bronze Age images carved into rocks and later highlighted by the museum in red for easier viewing.
The Bus ride from Vargerg to Oslo was 4.5 hours of lush greenery and cerulean waterways. Our lunch break was at a 19th-century boathouse turned restaurant and B&B.
B&B owner Sjobod transformed this traditional Swedish fishing vessel into his electric-powered tour boat and took us for a relaxing cruise before feeding us mussel soup, locally sourced salad, homemade bread, coffee cake, and wine.
Frogner Park is Oslo’s largest park, formerly part of Frogner Manor, Oslo’s largest estate. It is home to the world’s largest sculpture park made by a single artist and is Norway’s most popular attraction. Artist Gustav Vigeland’s fountain and ALL of his monuments and statues are in Frogner Park.
There are over 200 of Vigeland’s statues of people doing ordinary human stuff, like sports, dancing, hugging, holding hands, and whimsical ones like this man fighting off a baby attack.
On our full day of roaming without our Rick Steves’ group, we used our Oslo Pass to explore the city’s treasure trove of museums. The Kon-Tiki Museum was built for Thor Heyerdahl’ balsa wood Kon-Tiki raft. It also houses Ra II, Heyerdahl’s Egyptian boat made from reeds that he used to cross the Atlantic.
The National Museum has over 400,000 works and houses Norway’s largest collection of art and architecture. The museum allowed Karen and me to draw pictures of statues and post them on their wall.
Karen and I are not professional artists, but our artwork was on display in Norway’s National Museum along with Edvard Munch’s The Scream.
Where else, but Norway, could you find an entire wall of reindeer skulls? We also visited the Fram and the Maritime Museums before reaching artistic sophistication overload.
Oslo has a rich history, two-thirds of the city’s area is covered by the Oslomarka Forest, annually hosts the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony, and built the world’s first “Bee Highway” so bees could safely fly across town. It is a diverse metropolitan marvel and full of surprises for wandering tourists.