Norway Day 2

It's been an awesome day. We walked for over 7 hours today. Our day began with yet another massive breakfast buffet. Yum, yum. We then headed out on foot for the Historical Museum. Wonderful place. Loads of viking artifacts and kid friendly exhibits. I can't post it (I'll email it out when we get home), but I took an awesome snap of Munchkin #1 holding a model of a viking shield and looking ready to go out on a raid. Super fun stuff! In addition to viking bits, the museum had a large 'medieval' area containing artifacts from medieval era churches. The best part was the painted ceiling from an old Norwegian medieval church - Al Stave Church - late 13th century. The postcards I bought to keep of the ceiling just don't do it justice.

After the Historical Museum, we sat outside and had a lunch of fruit from the breakfast buffet and breads bought the day before. A recycled Coke bottle served as water bottle. But, we did manage to find a little shop later for some coffee, and tasty sugary stuff from our country of origin that we had not seen since June (sugary stuff we hadn't seen that is). Sigh, smile.

From there, we walked to the Oslo Cathedral. The building is completely covered up and being refurbished/restored until 2009. Hey Dad, you don't know anything about redoing churchs do you? Ha, ha. But, we did have a lovely stroll through town.

Since we had time at this point, we walked down to the Oslo waterfront and Akershus Fortress. The castle portion first began 700 years ago. Unfortunately, the castle interior was closed (tourist season is technically over here), but it was a lot of fun running around the exterior of this large complex. The first snap posted above is inside a tunnel at the Fortress walking towards the castle section. The second snap is me standing in front of the Historical Museum, and the last snap is Oslo's waterfront taken from atop the Fortress.

After the Fortress, we retraced our steps to a local restraunt. Hardly anything was printed in English inside, and one of the menu choices was patties made from rheindeer. We had pork (surprise), beef meat balls, potatoes, and peas made into this stuff that looked like green mashed potatoes. The peas looked unusual, but man, did they taste great. We bought one 'adult' meal and one 'kid' meal, and we still had food leftover. (FYI: price 240 krohner or $45 U.S. - and this was a cheap place.)

Even with food left on the plate from dinner, as we walked back to the hotel, we just HAD to stop for some desert -two chocolate/chocolate chip cookies and an 'oreo' brownie/bar/slab of yumminess thing. We still have a bit left for tomorrow.

Now that our day is done, we have socks and other clothing bits hanging up over the tub from being washed, Munchkin #2 is in the tub, Munchkin #1 is playing, and the husband is seeing ads on a cable channel advertising shows about where we've been in the middle east.

More joy and happiness to come tomorrow.