Monday, June 8, 2015
I had trouble sleeping last night. The tremor was completely
over the top and just would not stop so I could sleep. I finally fell asleep
and then was up to pee at 3:30. It looked like it was daylight outside! Sunrise
was to be 3:59am according to Currents, but it was also supposed to be 63F and
partly cloudy. It was substantially colder and partly rainy. So. Clay was up
early. He went to walk upstairs I think and he came back I guess because he
tablet with his audio book on it had not been charged. Anyway, it was 6am or so
by then and broad daylight outside and we were clearly inside a fjord, so I
just gave up on sleeping. Clay retrieved my glasses from between the bed and
the table where I had knocked them sometime in the night and he left again. I
got up and showered.
I went to Horizons after I was dressed so I could have a
forward view of the sail up the fjord to Oslo. I found it almost empty which
was great for me. It was supposed to start breakfast in there at 6:30am but
clearly it was delayed. I got a cup of cappuccino before the guy got a good
start setting up and left it at that. Clay came up not long after. About
7:30am, we headed out, down and back to Terrace for breakfast. The views were
still spectacular. I don’t know if I’ve said it before, but I love fjords!
So we didn’t have any plans today. We will be back here to
begin our Kensington Tour of Norway after Marina reaches Stockholm. That tour
begins with a 5-hour tour of Oslo, so we didn’t really want to pay any extra
money for something we already paid to do later. That said for some reason we
had a hard time finding things today even with a couple of maps and Clay’s
phone GPS! The first thing we needed was an ATM. They are called Minibank here,
so that was the first problem. We probably passed close by a dozen or so but
didn’t know to look for the Minibank sign! Today was our first day in a while where
we needed something other than Euros. The currency is Norwegian Kroner or NOK.
It takes a lot of NOK to buy anything at all. We bought a 100gram bag of Non
Stop (most like Canadian Smarties) and it was 29NOK. Non Stop is a Freia
Product of Norway, but a division of Kraft Foods. Who knew? We found a Hard
Rock Café. I didn’t know they had one! I went in and bought a t-shirt and it
was 245NOK. I bought a patch in a shop in the little dockside building that I
guess passes for the terminal, it is evidently where the free wi-fi was. The
patch was 50NOK. We walked over to the Nobel Peace Center. Admission was 90NOK
and 60NOK for us. This is NOT where they award the Nobel! It was pretty much a
waste of time and money. I would think you could learn more about the Nobel and
the laureates from the Internet. The only really cool thing there was an
interactive projection book. I loved that! I could have played with the
frontispiece all day. The Radhuset or City Hall is where they award the Nobels.
It was free admission and quite impressive. The building is from the 1950’s and
an interesting piece of architecture. It was an easy walk from the ship once we
found the Minibanks! I should also mention that there were red HOHO buses just
outside the ship most of the day. They were selling it hard but I have no idea
if it was well done or a good value as we just tried to dodge the crowds. We
walked up to the National Gallery as it started to rain. I was not dressed for
the actual cold or the rain! I had dressed for the forecast! Somehow, it had
never come up on my radar that the National Gallery was closed on Monday and
that was when we’d be here! I had planned to go there to see the closest
painting of Munch’s The Scream. (Say monk.) When we got up there, it was
closed. That meant to do the 2 things I had planned to do here, see the Nobel
Hall and The Scream, which we had to go to the Munch Museum. That meant we had
to use public transit because it was too far to walk. With the help of 4
different maps, GPS and directions out of a guidebook, we finally found a
T-bane station. We finally bought 4 tickets (for 2 people outbound and return)
at a 7-Eleven. Tickets are good in 1 zone for 1 hour. We figured we’d be out
there for more than 1 hour, but I’m not sure we were. We never saw anyone else
using it tapping in and out and the turnstiles were open and unmanned, so most
of the locals just walked on and off without seeming to use a ticket. I suppose
they must police it though because ridership was sparse. The 2 roundtrip
tickets were 120NOK. We got on at the National Theater stop. We rode to Toyen.
It was pretty easy once we had cash and went to the 7-Eleven. We were unable to
purchase at the ticket kiosk with a credit card for unknown reasons. All the T-bane
metro trains heading eastbound stop at Toyen, so go east and you can’t miss it.
All the T-bane metro trains heading to center city from Toyen go to the center
city, so again it’s hard to make a mistake. When you exit the Toyen station,
look for Munchmuseet signs and follow them for about a winding block to the museum
arrow signs and the entrance. I didn’t find a receipt for entrance here but I
believe mine was 120NOK and Clay’s was 60NOK. They had an exhibit on comparing
the work of Van Gogh and Munch, so that was a bonus. There were a lot of other
Impressionist painting there on loan as well. Amsterdam’s Van Gogh museum must
have been left nearly empty! We got to see one of the Scream paintings. We
headed back to the T-bane station with the thought of eating in town before returning
to Marina by walking down through the Akershus Fortress which was right outside
the starboard side of the ship. We picked the Grand Café from the guidebook
description and recommendation. We got off the T-bane one stop earlier at
Stortinget and walked downhill on Johans Gate for a couple of blocks to find
it. It was crowded around 1pm and we had to sit outside. But, it was okay. We
both had open-faced sandwiches at 125NOK each! Clay had gravlax and I had roast
beef. It gave us a place to sit for a while and take in the local flavor. It
also got us out of the rain for a while. We ate the Non-Stop candies for dessert while
walking toward the water to go through the Akershus Fortress. It is free to
tour the grounds. You can pay to enter the Resistance Museum or the Castle
which we did not do. We came on back to the ship by 3pm or so. All aboard is
5:30pm and we sail at 6pm. It was a nice day. It is pretty easy to walk around
Oslo. There was a ferry dock right around the harbor in easy walking distance
that you can take to the Kon-Tiki and Fram and Maritime Museums. We might do
that when we come back. I picked up a brochure that said you can buy a RT
ticket for 55NOK on the pier.
We have dinner reservations tonight at Red Ginger at 6:30pm
so we won’t have a chance to see any sailaway from the table. Hopefully, we’ll
be out of the fjord by then anyway. I don’t really have any idea how long it
took to sail in this morning. The show tonight is JAR’s One More for the Road.
We have agreed that we’d like to see it again with the new cast and will
probably try to catch all the shows again with the new cast.
