Norway!

I just got back from an amazing trip to Oslo, Norway. It was short but sweet (and cheap, due to a friend getting tickets from her host family!) To get there we boarded an overnight boat. The boat ride was fun, with plenty of Christmas decorations and cool people to hang out with.
When we arrived in Oslo, the first thing we saw was the Opera House. It was really neat. Basically it looked like a giant sled hill. It was all white and looked like snow and you could see people walking all over it. So we went over and climbed to the roof of the Opera house, which was provided some pretty cool views.

Opera House

Top of the Opera House

Next we walked a little throughout Oslo. We went up some walking streets, which were extremely Christmassy, which was no real surprise considering that Christmas-Spirit is what I have come to expect from Scandinavia. Walking through the streets we realized that Norwegian (at least in its written form) is extremely similar to Danish. We were all pleasantly surprised at how much of the language we could read on the streets. It was especially surprising because I really don't know much Danish at all either!

Merry Christmas

Eventually we made it to the Norwegian National Gallery, which had a whole bunch of paintings. Some of them were of Norway and really impressive. Others were also impressive because I'd actually heard of them, which is unusual when it comes to me and paintings. Among the ones I recognized were a self-portrait of Van Gogh and Norway's most famous painting, The Scream.

Scream (photo from google, no cameras allowed in museum)

Our walk continued to the Nobel Peace Prize institute. We didn't go inside the museum but looked at it from the outside. Obama will be there next week to get his prize, but he'll be in Copenhagen too, so I didn't feel like I accidentally came to Oslo a week too early.

Sign at the Nobel Institute. When I saw it, I thought it said "King Obama" which seemed strange. But upon closer look it says "Fra King Til Obama" or "From King to Obama"

The Nobel institute was right next to the City Hall and a giant ice rink in the middle of a square. There were some impressive figure skaters on the rink, which was neat. And a giant "Julemarked" (Christmas market) that we would make our way back to later. From the city hall, we caught a ride over to the highlight of my day: the Viking Ship Museum. This museum is the home to three 1100 year old Viking ships. When important vikings died, they were buried inside whole ships. And they managed to dig up three of these ships, which are impressively preserved. Along with the ships, there were tons of other things in the ships and now in the museum including carriages, horses, pots and pans, smaller boats, human skeletons. It was really quite an amazing museum.

Viking Ship

Going back to the center, we happened upon the changing of the guard at the royal Norwegian palace, which was my favorite changing of the guard I've ever seen. The guards had amazing furry hats and knives and guns that they used in the ceremony. It was pretty impressive.

Royal Palace

Guards, with their hats and guns

We ended the day walking around that Christmas market. It was really cooly lit and there was a Santa and Christmas music and nice smelling foods.

Julemarked

Eventually we had to go catch our boat back to Copenhagen. Another fun boat ride back. We played people watching Bingo. Our board included such items as "Christmas sweater" and "pants tucked into socks." All in all a very fun day in Norway.