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Tuesday, July 1-Oslo-5:21 a.m.
On Monday I was again awake from 2:30-7 in the morning...ugh. Thank god the internet works. Finally back to sleep until 10:30...time to get ready for the bike tour of Oslo! I take the short walk to the tiger statue outside the central train station where I meet Graciela, the tour guide and sole proprietor of AlternativOslo, a bicycle tour operation specializing in showcasing off the beaten path neighborhoods of the city in addition to some of the more traditional sights. Graciela only lives here (where her boyfriend is from) for three months during the summer (smart girl) running this business and the rest of the year she lives in her home country of Argentina. We are also joined on the tour by a Kiwi couple that currently lives in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. Don't hear that combo everyday. They were very nice. The four hour tour (cue Gilligan's theme) took us all around Oslo starting at the train station and moving essentially in a counterclockwise oval around the entire city. Some of the highlights included a medieval fortress (Oslo aka Christiana was founded in the 11th century), the House of Parliament and the royal palace
(buildings I saw on Sunday but didn't know what they were), beautiful architecture, both new and old, in trendy and aristocratic neighborhoods, respectively, and my favorite, the Vigeland sculpture park. Gustavo Vigeland's life's work is on display in this park containing 214 human sculptures made of both bronze and granite. Every statue represents some aspect of life and human relationships. The center piece of the park is a giant obelisk carved from one single piece of granite containing 121 individual human beings climbing and writhing one on top of the other in a giant mass of humanity. It was breathtaking! The tour continued with a ride through some of the more bohemian and immigrant neighborhoods on the east side of the city and finished up at the famous Oslo opera house-a beautiful, modern piece of architecture designed for people to walk on the roof! I have to say that I struggled a bit on the tour as I'm not the most confident cyclist and I'm prone to awkward clumsiness and a low tolerance for discomfort. But Graciela was very kind and patient and I hung in there...and I have the sore ass, legs and hands to prove it! It seriously
hurts to sit down right now, lol. It's a weird feeling to travel to a place, get to know it and then leave knowing it's highly likely I will never be there again. Thus, even though I was exhausted and sore after the bike tour, I forced myself to climb up the slope to the top of the opera house and enjoy the view of the fjord for awhile. I eventually made my way back to the apartment, stopping by the bus terminal to confirm the 4 a.m. departure time of the airport bus tomorrow and picking up some yummy Thai food at a restaurant in the immigrant filled neighborhood of the apartment. Then...another poor night of sleeping - a combination of several factors - and here I am, re-packed and ready for the next leg of my journey. Now it's a little after 9 and I'm sitting at the London Stansted airport waiting for my 12:30 flight to Palermo. Goodbye Norway (until July 22 anyway), sorry to leave so soon, but there's a beach in Sicily with my name on it.
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