Anna & Elsa are on vacation

Bottom Picture is the Akershus Fortress in Oslo.  It is on the coast of Norway, defending the city of Oslo.  It’s been there for 700 years, and has never been taken by force.
The top picture is the castle in “Frozen” movie where Anna and Elsa grow up.  The word is that the Frozen movie is based on Norway’s landscape, including this castle.

But, since it’s currently all melted and warm in Norway, the princesses seem to be on vacation. We haven’t seen them 😉 We did our best to look for them!

City of Sculptures

Oslo has this great, free, open park full of sculptures.  It’s called “frogner park” but nearly everyone calls it by the artist’s name “Vigeland”.  There are 212 sculptures in 80 acres of the park, but a lot of them are centered on this beautiful bridge and fountain area in the center.  I was super excited to visit… and then we got there to find out nearly every sculpture is a naked person.  Seriously.  How am I supposed to put that  on my Pastor Blog?

There are other great sculptures all over town, though.  Maybe because of this park (which was designed from 1927-1943), there are now fountains and sculptures everywhere – and they’re all clothed.  Most of them are Norwegian people we don’t know, but we thought these looked fun!

Pearl Seaways – a floating hotel

We splurged a little on a great overnight ferry ride between Copenhagen & Oslo, based on a friend’s recommendation.  This cost about the same price as a hotel room or transportation, but it was both in one!

We got to float for about 17 hours between the cities, see the landscape of Norway, Sweeden, and Denmark, swim in the hot tub, sleep, shop, eat, use wifi 🙂 Overall, it was very fun.  Definitely recommend it!

This is the “Hamlet” castle, on the tip of Denmark, and a city in Sweeden on the coast. 

Icebergs & Vikings

The Oslo Opera House is a new construction – only about 10 years old.  It is designed to look like a giant iceberg, and tourists can walk on its roof any time of the day or night!

There is a glass viking ship sculpture in the water just next to this (the marble of the Opera House glides right into the ocean).

And, while I was feeling very happy to be here, I decided to channel some of my inner viking, just for kicks:

 

 

The cruise ship people seemed very friendly, actually.  I’d recommend a Scandinavian Cruise – if you don’t mind the cold!  (it’s probably just barely warmer than an Alaskan cruise).