Museum weekend

    It was warm in Oslo this weekend, I'm glad I brought along one decent short sleeved shirt to walk around the museums. I went to the Viking Ship Museum and a couple of close by maritime museums. They were located away from the central part of the city so I took a water taxi to get there. The taxi passed 4 cruise ships in the harbor, so as you can guess it was busy.

   The Viking Ship museum was built especially to show 3 ships from the 800 AD era that were excavated in the early 1900's in northwest Norway. They were all working-type boats that were eventually used as funeral ships for local kings and queens. They were on display with some hand carved sleds and a wagon, along with other relics buried with the ships.

   One of the maritime museums housed the M.S. Fram, which was specially built in the 1880's for ice exploration. It made two Arctic expeditions with some (locally) famous Norwegian explorers trying to be the first to get to the North Pole. In one of the voyages, the ship became trapped in packed ice and stayed stuck for 3 years. The crew left with enough provisions for 5 years so they had enough to survive. But with the ship stranded, the members of the main expedition team decided the only way they could make it to the pole was by dog sled. So they set off on a year-long trek over the ice but only got to 86 degrees north before they gave up and turned back south. The sled teams eventually were picked up in northern Russia by another ship and they returned to Norway around the same time the Fram got free of the ice jam.

   The Fram later made a trip to Antactica with Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen who became the first person to make it to the South Pole in 1911. The ship is now housed inside it's own museum and visitors are allowed onboard and even below deck. You can guess how cool I thought that was.  Outside the Fram Museum is the M.S. Gjoa (don't ask me to pronounce it) which was the first ship to make it through the Northwest Passage over the top of Canada to Alaska, in 1906.

   And while I'm not fond of Indian food, I couldn't help but think how great dinner would be at such an authenic ethnic restaurant, so I took a picture.

   The main strip in Oslo is Karl Johans Gate which is pedestrian-only and about 3 miles long from the Royal Palace to the main train station. All along it are tall buildings, shops, bars and cafes and it's always crowded. On Saturday night there were thousands of young people (20 something's) out cruising from bar to bar. Every few blocks there were street musicians, some pretty good but also a couple of gypsies playing mostly unintelligible stuff on acordians and tamburines.

   As I walked down the hill towards my hotel, from a distance I heard what sounded like the entire drum section from the Notre Dame marching band. When I got up close, it turned out to be one teenager with a set of drums and a couple hundred people standing around going crazy and cheering him on; he was terrific. The sound bounced off the tall buildings and you could hear him for blocks.

   With thousands of young people out, many of them drunk long before the bars closed at 3am, you can imagine what the street looked like last night. But this morning I was out at 9:30 and it was perfectly clean; every trash can even had fresh bag liners. There were families out walking with little kids and dogs and the only hint of last night were a few small puddles of water that hadn't yet evaporated from the cleaning crews' excellent work.