We are all suffering from jet lag and woke up briefly at 4 am to someone’s snoring (H) and then woke up again at 1:00 pm this afternoon. We were bummed to lose the day but it was so nice to be able to sleep in!

While researching Oslo, multiple postings had mentioned Vigeland Park. The Vigeland Park is the world’s largest sculpture park made by a single artist, Gustavo Vigeland with more than 200 sculptures in bronze, granite and wrought iron. H wasn’t that excited by the sound of it, but on arrival to Oslo we asked 3 random people what we should see here and it won unanimously. 

We stopped at the store and grabbed lunch and had a picnic before we started exploring. 

   

Our first meal of the trip! 

From there we started enjoying the lush green Frogner Park which also included the Vigeland Sculpture Park. There are 650 radical sculptures created by Gustav Vigeland throughout the garden including the 55 ft high Monolith that is made up of 121 intertwined human bodies. (Caitlyn was very clear that she thought they were very inappropriate and needed to get some clothes on! ) 

Some random pics from the day:

 

 

 

After walking around the statues we headed to a play area at the local park.  It was a mini adventure park with several really challenging obstacles.  Cat played for about an hour and loved challenging herself on the different stations. The place was amazing.

  

I now understand why there are so many beautiful and “in-shape” people in this country. They start them young! Kids were very active; running around and taking so many more “risks” than kids do at playgrounds in America.

It is also amazingly lush and green here. Flowers are blooming and beautiful. I have never smelled such fragrant flowers before!

We were talking to a man at the park who explained that the switch from winter to spring was very quick this year and within 3 days blooms blossomed, leaves grew and the dark days ended almost instantly.

     

     

We took the bus back to the train station to make our reservations for the next leg of our trip.

 Afterward, we stopped at the Oslo Opera House. The angular architecture appears to arise from the waters of the Oslo Fjord.

We climbed to the top and enjoyed the views of the many ships in the fjord.

We capped the night off in the middle of the town square enjoying a messy kebab while people watching until we realized it was 11 pm! We lost track of time as it was still light out.