They have an outdoor rink right in the Christmas Market. I rented skates, donned my kneepads and wobbled out onto the ice. Whoa! My ankles were spaghetti. I determined to skate for one hour. My kneepads saved my bones three times. Tired legs the next day, for sure.
The History Museum was next. They have lots of Viking things. Danny was fascinated! Neal and I less so. We left Danny and hopped on a random tram. We rode it to the end of the line one way, then we hopped on the next return tram and rode it to the other end of the line. There was a beautiful sunset! We were in a park that was fairly high, with a view across distant Oslo over the fjord. Then, being thoroughly frozen, we took a T-bane or metro back home.
The next day, I was wiped out, so stayed in and read, and then totally fell asleep. But Neal and Danny went on a really long hike in Oslo Park, in the forest north of downtown. They walked up one edge of a lake, but did they turn around and walk down the other side of the lake? No. They walked farther north. Pretty soon, they want to go home. They kept following signs with a circle around the letter T. T-banen? Trains go all the way out into the forest? But wait, no! This circled T meant "tur" - or hiking trail. Luckily, they figured it out before the sun went down. No search party needed, but it was a long walk on a street back to the nearest T-banen stop.
We had dinner at Helt Vilt (completely wild) in Mathallen, the Norwegian place in Mathallen. I wanted an eastern Norwegian juletallerken (Christmas plate). It consisted of svineribbe (pork ribs), pølse (sausage), medisterkake (meatballs), pickled red cabbage, and tyttebær (similar to cranberries). Here's a recipe from Unileverfoodsolutions.no, with a clear picture. Neal had moose stew, and Danny had a boar hamburger. They were all delicious.
Another evening, Mathallen was our destination because they had Hungarian food. Neal delighted the woman there by speaking Magyarul with her! Goulash, Budapest style, was a thick soup. Yummy. Goulash varies by country, from soup to stew.
Our plan for Tuesday, the 30th, was the museums out on Bygdøy, starting with the Oslo Norwegian Folk Museum. It is an outdoor museum showing the historic farmhouses, barns and store houses from all over the country. How did people live in the different parts of Norway?
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| Yup, it was cold out there |
The stave church, built in the 1300s, and moved to the museum in the 1800s, was a lot like the stave church out here in Bergen.
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| Danny in the stave church entryway |
Lunchtime! We lined up for pølse and hot cocoa. Next in line was a new old friend, Judith! Back on the 27th, we were deciding which bus to take, and this woman helped us. She was a tour guide, on the way to work, and we loved meeting her. She gave me no end of trouble for being from Bergen. "They always have to say that they used to be the capital!" Later, when we were coming home from Vigeland Sculpture Park, Neal and Danny ended up with her and her tour group on the tram. Two times was starting to feel like stalking, but three? There was Judith and her friend Ingrid. That's definitely fate. So we gave our names to each other and ate lunch together, laughing hard at Neal's hiking story.
Judith told us to see Ekeburgpark, so we followed instructions and went to the park with 47 sculptures out in the trees. On the list was "Santa" by Paul McCartney! Let's find that one. We discovered that the artist was American Paul McCarthy, and Santa was controversial.
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| What is Santa holding? XXXmas tree? |
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