Our trip to Oslo

Edvard Munch's Dance of Life

Edvard Munch's Scream

Sculpture in the Eidsvollplass

Norwegian Parliament

This morning we left our hotel in downtown Brussels early to fly to Oslo.  Despite my usually meticulous vacation planning, I had not quite figured out that the from airport 35 miles south of Brussels from which Ryanair flies to Rygge near Oslo was not the same as the airport 6 miles north of Brussels into which we had arrived from London a few days before.  Happily, I learned about my error at breakfast instead of upon arrival at the Brussels airport, and we went to the Gare du Midi instead of the Gare Centrale, got onto the right airport bus, and thence were off to the right airport.

Other than that, our flight was uneventful and we dozed on the airport bus into central Oslo.  We checked into our hotel and walked off to see the town.  Oslo is a fairly small city, slightly fewer people than DC, and much more easily walked and easily digested.  Our first stop was the National Gallery, a tidy collection of paintings by Norwegian artists, such as a roomful of Munch works including those pictured above. We paused in a park in central Oslo, the Eidsvollsplass, to snack on bread, sausage and fruit, looked at local buildings including the pictured Norwegian Parliament, then walked up to Frogner Park where saw a huge collection of odd but gentle sculptures by Gustav Vingland.  After an Indian dinner we figured out how to negotiate the local subway and came back to our hotel.

As I am writing this it is 11 PM and only now getting dark.  The extended daylight is something we will have to get used to.

Many thanks to Public Citizen colleague Craig Holman for his extended thoughts on how to spend our days on a trip to Norway.