Planes, Tranes and Viking Ships - Norway Part 1

We started our journey on July 9, Bryce's 35th birthday. It would be his shortest birthday ever!  We left St Louis at 9:45am after my dad took us to the airport (my mom was up first to watch the kids!). Once in Chicago we met up with the Woolard's and had layovers until our flight left for Amsterdam around 4pm. We were invited on this trip by Anne and JD as it was his sabbatical from Epic.....otherwise known as the best work benefit ever!  Our flights were covered by his company and we got a daily stipend to cover mostly our hotel costs.  Incredible.  We feel so lucky that they wanted us on this adventure with them!  The flight was very smooth and outside of a mysterious wet spot on Bryces seat we had no problems!  He was able to sit in an empty seat next to him :).  We arrived in Amsterdam around 6am local time to layover for a flight to Oslo at 9:20 am. While waiting at the airport I took a nap and Anne did the Ab challenge!  We got some breakfast and waited for our flight!

Oslo (2 Nights)

We stayed at the Hotel Christiana Theatre. This was an awesome hotel right in the middle of a very popular area of Oslo with a beautiful park right across the street and off Karl Johans Gate area.  After arriving we explored the area a bit, saw the Palace, City Hall and Oslo Cathedral.  We also saw the Harbor and Parliament, all within walking distance.  After a quick nap (JDs idea of course) we went to dinner in the Harbor at a restaurant called Lofoten.  We had an awesome seafood meal to start off our time in Norway. The Strawberry pie was amazing!  Ending with a nightcap (first of many on this trip) ended our first day. We quickly realized Norway would be quite a bit cooler than any of us realized!  We also needed ponchos and an umbrella for the first few days!  Unfortunately several had sleep issues our first night in...it would be a couple days before we were all fully adjusted!

The next day we had a packed agenda!!  Goal: see as much of Oslo as possible!! We had breakfast at the hotel which consisted of lots of cured meats, cheeses and a really cool nutty bread!  We started by riding the ferry to Museum Island after buying the Oslo pass in the Harbor.  The first museum we visited was the Viking Museum.  Here we saw 3 reconstructed Viking ships that were discovered from archeological digs in Norway along with the artifacts that were found with them.  We learned a ton about the Vikings and it's always so amazing to see things from so long ago!  From here we moved onto the outdoor folk Museum.  This was a really cool outdoor Museum where we saw many reconstructed buildings from hundreds of years ago.  We saw one of the oldest reconstructed log cabins in the world!  It was time for lunch so we got a really fancy sausage dog from a food truck in the Harbor called the Sausage Factory. It was amazing. A quick bus ride and we were up at the Fortress looking over the Oslo Harbor.  This place had some really interesting modern history as the Germans invaded Norway during world war 2.

After the fortress we desperately needed a nap so we took a bit of a break back at the hotel.  Anne and JD were working off only a couple hours of sleep.  After naps we took off to find a cool lookout over Oslo. We had to take a train and got off by Olympic park and the ski jump.  We were looking and looking for a sculpture park that supposedly had the best view.  We never found it but we did find our way to the ski simulator and got to climb down the ski jump stands. It was crazy high!  We headed back to town and ate at The Scottsman for dinner. JD declared this was Bryces birthday celebration so he got to decide where to go from there. We hit up Magic Ice Bar and drank in a bar made totally of ice!  After some memorable Mango vodka shots we went back close to our hotel for a night cap before bed. This as a tough night of sleep for me....I was wide awake until around 3am. We had an early start so I still had some adjusting to do for the time change!

The next day we would continue our adventures in Flam!!!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad