After 6.5 weeks of travel, we’d had our first night of the trip staying in a hotel. Prior to this it had been all apartments….. and self-catering. This meant buffet breakfast this morning! The kids made the most of it and ate enough for 10 people, and made enough mess too. We found some nice British people to chat to during breakfast, and by the time we’d eaten our way through about 9 courses the sun had finally come up.

Feeding the ducks….

Soren decided he couldn’t finish his breakfast…. well at least the last couple of plate fulls, and put a lot in his pockets to take to the ducks across the road. There was a river just next to our hotel, full of ducks. They were fans of people feeding them left-over breakfast so we went across to the snow river bank to check them out.

The ducks were not at all fussed by all the snow and ice floating in the river, and gratefully received Soren’s breakfast leftovers!

The forecast for the day was 0 or 1 degrees all day. After some very cold temps the last few weeks, this initially felt ‘warm’ when we first ventured out. First on the agenda was a visit to Frogner Park. This is a 45 hectare park in the Frogner neighbourhood, which is an affluent residential and retail suburb in the West-End of Oslo. We caught the tram from our hotel to Frogner, and passed some very nice looking houses and Townhouses on the way.

Vigelund Sculpture Park

On main reason for visiting Frogner is to check out the Vigelund Sculpture Park that sits within Frogner park.

Frogner park is the largest park in Oslo and popular recreational park for running, picnics, BBQs and enjoying the Norwegian sunshine. This may well be the case in the Summer months, but it was currently very much under snow. There were still quite the number of people around, including some groups of school children in their bright coloured vests.

Today most people were not there to check out the rose garden or the open-air swimming pool (brrr!) but the Vigelund Sculpture Garden, one of the most popular attractions in Oslo. I had been keen to visit here since the planning phase of our trip. It turned out to be truly remarkable, and definitely worth visiting if you are ever in Oslo.

Frogner park is free and open 24 hours a day. The Vigeland Sculpture garden takes up a large proportion of the park and is a permanent art installation. Sculptor, Edvard Gustav designed the park and created the over 200 sculptures in the park from granite, bronze and wrought iron. The park was completed in the 1940s and is the world’s largest park dedicated to sculptures by an individual artist. Vigelund also designed the park which contains geometric walkways and tiered platforms connected by staircases.

The statues in the sculpture garden are all naked (so they can be timeless) and represent different stages of life, from infancy to old age. The 212 statues depict human beings of different ages, sexes and sizes, stuck in different and sometimes perplexing poses. Vigeland wanted his statues to capture all the aspects of a person’s life, both in a literal and in a metaphorical sense.

There are some very famous works in this park and some amazing statues. We spent quite a bit of time walking around, just admiring the statues and the beautiful Winter light and snowy vistas. Trying to figure out the meaning of some of the statues was amusing and we did resort to google more than once!

The kids had a great game going of who each statue reminded them of. There were a lot of tantruming children in the statues… 😉 They all claimed they never tantrumed like that but we begged to differ.

The sculptures lead to a fountain, which is one of the centrepieces of the park where the 20 statues surrounding the running waters represent a different stage of human life, from toddler to old age. 

The giant monolith is also hard to miss as it stands at the highest point in the park and is 17 metres tall. It has 121 human figures intertwined, reaching skyward. The monolith is carved out of a single stone block and it is both incredibly detailed and impressive.

The park has amazing views, and although most of it was under snow it was still stunning.

Soren and Zinnia thought they could give cuddles to each other as well as some of the sculptures, but Astrid was not keen to participate in this venture!

From the high point in the park you could see over to the ski jump, which was perched up on the hill with views over the city.

With so many sculptures to look at there was plenty of ground to cover. I’ve seen photos of the park in Summer and it looks entirely different. The snow certainly added to the atmosphere and the sculptures stood out against their white backgrounds, but maybe one day we’ll return to enjoy the greenery and gardens of the park and see how different it looks in another season.

After running around in the snow and having fun with the sculptures we found a play equipment near the Vigelund Park entrance. There were also giant piles of snow that had been scraped up and proved too tempting for the kids!

There was a small ice skating rink but we sadly we had no skates with us for the free rink, so Anto made do with his snow boots, while the kids played in the park.

A foggy harbour…..

We caught the tram down to the harbour with the intention of going on a ferry ride around the fjords. You can book a cruise or just use the public ferry. By the time we got to the harbour the fog had rolled in and you couldn’t see much. There was a definite thick coating of fog and the ferries 10 metres away were hard to see, so beautiful fjord views seemed unlikely.

We decided we would can the ferry sightseeing idea and hope the weather is better tomorrow, and caught the tram and T-bane (metro) up to the Royal Palace.

The Royal Palace

The Royal Palace is at the end of Karls Johans Gate. We’d walked most of that street the day before, but hadn’t made it up as far as the Palace.

The Palace was somewhat hard to see from a distance due to all the fog, but we could see it emerging on the rise at the end of Karls Johans Gate.

The Palace is home to the King and Queen of Norway. It is more understated than some other royal palaces but still plenty big. It was also very snowy! The foundation stone of the Royal Palace was laid by King Carl Johan in 1825. It was in use as a palace from 1849. It is now used by the head of state and is where the daily work of the monarchy is conducted and where the King and Queen of Norway live.

The inside of the Palace isn’t open for tours over Winter but you can wander the gardens and watch the guards. We had a chat to one of them and they do 2.5 hour shifts. They were happy to show off their marching to us. Mostly to keep warm we think 🙂

The Fram Museum

After our wander around the snow-covered Palace grounds we jumped on a bus and head over to the Fram museum.

When we got to the museum there was so much fog you couldn’t even see the water surrounding the museum. The museum is is on a peninsula of Bygdøy and sits next to the water. Today you couldn’t even tell there was water next to the buildings as there was so much fog!

The Fram museum entrance was also covered on our Oslo Passes and it rated pretty well. Given the average weather we thought it would be a good place to visit and hang out in the warm for a bit.

The museum is all about polar exploration (Arctic and Antarctic) and houses 2 of the original ships – the Fram and and the Gjøa which have been preserved and restored and you can walk on and explore. The cute wooden huts with fake ‘Northern Lights’ were certainly an easier and warmer way to see the arctic!

The Museum isn’t huge, but had 2 interconnected buildings, and plenty of exhibits. We learnt about the three great Norwegian Polar explorers:  Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup and Roald Amundsen. There are also plenty of photos from their expeditions, including of the animals they encountered like polar bears and penguins.

The museum was fascinating. There were short movies and plenty of information and the kids loved going on the ships. The original exploration vessel ‘The Fram’ is well preserved and it was fun to walk around. There was also the Gjøa, the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. We checked out both ships and decided months at sea in the cold and dark on those was not for the faint-hearted.

There is also a polar ‘simulator’ which is a room and tunnels that are cold and simulate being on a ship in a storm. Zinnia was utterly terrified the first time but went back for a few more turns.

The Fram museum was definitely worth the visit and we spent well over 2 hours there and all enjoyed it and learnt plenty.

Once we emerged from the museum, the fog in had no way lifted and it was just as cold. Anto and Zinnia went for an accidental ice skate on some ice outside the museum and managed to not land in too much water, or injure themselves too badly but it was a close call. Sadly I did not get it on video as it was quite comical.

Shuffleboard and Falafel dinners…..

Not up for an hour long walk in the ice and fog we caught some buses and trams back to our hotel. As we were coming back through the city the fog had gotten worse so there was no point bothering with the ferry for the day, as sightseeing was only going to involve seeing white.

We decided we’d go back to our hotel for a bit after checking on our duck friends, who were still swimming in the ice. Probably working off all the breakfast Soren had supplied them with!

It was now around 4pm but there was no chance of any pretty sunsets today. We’d been lucky to get such a great one the day before. It was still foggy and now also dark. All in need of some warmth and quiet time, we hung out in the hotel lounge and all learnt to play shuffleboard as they have a table you can use.

It was our last night of the trip that we could go out for dinner. The next few nights we were either at an airport or in the air. We thought about going to a restaurant for a last big meal but given the prices of food in Oslo, and everyone’s desire to have an easy night we all voted for some takeaway. Anto and Soren found a highly rated falafel restaurant 250m from the hotel so we head over to pick up some takeaway. On the walk there, our duck friends were still out but now mostly sleeping in the snow!

The falafel place was tiny but the lines were long. It was obviously very popular as there was quite a queue of people. Luckily they were efficient, and handing out samples to those waiting. It was worth the wait though as it was another great (and totally different falafel). I think we’ve had as many different falafel meals on this trip (in various countries) as Soren had steak tartares, and Astrid chicken caesar salads!

We ate our meal in the lounge area and played a little more shuffleboard. By the time we were eating dinner it was back down to minus 3 …… but it looked like the fog might be lifting so we had our fingers crossed for some better sightseeing tomorrow.

Up next…

It was our last day in Oslo and the fog did clear so we made the most of it with a ferry cruise of the Oslo fjord, which had stunning views. We then commenced the long journey home….. of to the Oslo airport for our flight to Paris. This was one of our more interesting ones with Paris weather resulting in a GPS guided landing which was not as fun as it sounds 🙂