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Published: October 5th 2010
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Although I have labelled this as Oslo my adventure with Belinda began in Copenhagen 4 days ago. It was my second visit to the the great city but I knew it would be my last visit when I fell asleep on the boat tour lol. I did a few of the same things as last time. The canal tour from Nyhaven and an evening visit to Tivoli. I could not believe while on the canal tour that the little mermaid was not in it's usual location because they had sent it to an exhibition in China for a short time. One of the most popular tourist sights the country has and they are borrowing it out! go figure!
This time we had the opportunity to take a look inside the newly renovated palace of Prince Frederick and Princess Mary. Scince their marraige 7 years ago restoration and reconstruction has been taking place on the part of the palace that once belonged to Fredericks Grandfather. It is a wedding gift and they really have combined the modern with the old. The palace is only open until the end of August when the family move into it. I also got the chance to
The weather machine
Whats the proper name again have another Danish hot dog which smell fills the air wherever you go and in Tivoli, Belinda and I indulged in a massive rack of ribs each and a pint of beer. We decided we required training for the Oktoberfest in Munich in mid september.
Although it was a great start to our tour our time in Denmark will forever be marked by the death of Belindas grandfather which we were in formed about on the morning of our final day. Although he had been sick recently I don't think anything ever prepares you for hearing that a close family member has passed away and you are on the other side of the world, away from family and feeling helpless. Bel did very well considering all this, better than I ever could, she still made efforts to keep busy and we had lots of great chats about the good memories she had.
That evening we took an overnight cruise liner to Oslo. The ships are incredible and do everything to make sure your 16 hour journey goes as quickly as possible. We arrived rather early the following morning and headed to our hostel, which was packed. Not wasting any time
we got straight onto exploring, walking the streets and visiting the National Museum where we saw Edvard Munch's 'The Scream' in real life. The rain did not hold out for us and we found ourselves putting the umbrella up and down constantly. We made our way to Vigiland sculpture park only to have the heavens open and so we left and we headed to Bryggen for dinner and ice-cream. The following day we needed to be up early to catch the train to Bergan. I can't say that anything stood out as extra special about Oslo. I do remember that lots of recommended restaurants had closed for the summer, which I find really strange considering summer is usually peak season everywhere but I can tell you that we returned their 3 days later after our trip to Bergan and the rain had been replaced by glorious sunshine and we finally had the bare legs out. We went back to Vigiland Sculpture park and enjoyed walking through the life like statues. The park covers 80 acres and features 212 bronze and granite sculptures created by Gustav Vigeland. Vigeland personally sculpted every figure out of clay and individual craftsmen were contracted to
fabricate the pieces into what they are today. We went back to Bryggen for coffee outdoors and we visited the Nobel Museum. I never knew that Alfred Nobel actually invented Dynamite to help build railways. I think he was a very clever man to identify the Peace prize and promote his invention in a positive light considering it has led to so much war a destruction.
Late in the afternoon we took a boat across the water to see a few more museums. The Viking Museum was our first stop and I am very intrigued by the history of the Vikings. Maybe because there is little known about the period. The museum displays the Viking Age Oseberg ship, Gokstad ship and Tune ship alongside sledges, beds, a horse cart, wood carving, tent components, buckets and other grave goods. It has many Viking ships that have been found, very intact. Its most famous ship is the completely whole Oseberg ship. The second museum I went to was the Norsk historic farm museum. It's an open air museum that shows early scandinavian life. The employees are dressed traditionally and they have brought loads of old housing from across the country. They had
displays of pottery and traditional dance. It was very funny to see the uncoordinated dancing but I think I enjoyed the sunny weather most of all. It is amazing to me that weather can be such an important factor in how much you enjoy a place you are travelling to. Lets hope we get some good stuff from now on!
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