Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Around Oslo : Museums, Akenhus Fort, Shopping

21st Sept 2009 Sunny

Came to Oslo finally and we checked back into the guesthouse we use to stay when we first arrived.

Decided we should at least walk around in Norway before we move down south to Denmark.

Took advantage of the Oslo Pass (around NOK240) where we gain access to few museums.

First went to the Viking Museums

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Passed by a supermarket nearby and decided to buy take away lunch.

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SPAR is very common here. The cashier has no access to the money because notes and coins get slot in like a vendor machine

Quickly head towards The Fram (Forward Museum)

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Fram ("Forward") is a ship that was used in expeditions in the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912.

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After that, we walked across the parking area to the Kon-Tiki Museum

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Kon-Tiki is the raft used by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in his 1947 expedition across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands. It was named after the Inca sun god, Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name. Kon-Tiki is also the name of the popular book that Heyerdahl wrote about his adventures.

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Heyerdahl believed that people from South America could have settled Polynesia in pre-Columbian times. His aim in mounting the Kon-Tiki expedition was to show, by using only the materials and technologies available to those people at the time, that there were no technical reasons to prevent them from having done so.

Then was the Norsk Folkemuseum, the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History.

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More relics building are seen here. Most of these were relocated from all part of Norway in effort to preserve the old world architectural heritage.

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There's a Stave Church and this time it is free to look around side. It looks very small from outside but inside it is quite spacious, can probably sit 50 people or more.

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Traditional sauna, a bit hard to see here.

Arove out then went hang around in Vigeland Sculpture Park

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Vigeland Sculpture Park - Treasure hunting, kih kih

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Poked around the Akershus Festning (Fort) just like what Lonely Planet says.

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Then went to buy souvinirs at Karl Johans Gate, again found that souvinirs shop in everywhere is usually run by foreigners who might be just like you and I, asians, indians...

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Bought some food at the supermarket then went straight home to make dinner.

We had good pre-packed shrimp salad, pan fried salmon and marinated chicken wing.

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Took us a long time to figure out how come we don't see the salmon at the open cold display area when Norwegian Salmon is well known around the world. Apparently all the while you can only find them at the Frozen section, where the Ice cream are placed. Ha!

That concludes our beautiful and expensive Norway trip. Tomorrow we will head down to Copenhagen, let see what awaits us there.

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