Fjords and Kilts and Hot Springs, Day 3 -- Oslo, Norway

Day 3 -- Oslo

Mostly cloudy, 70 degrees

This was our first morning on the ship, and so I got up a little early (around 7ish) to hit the gym, and intended to join the Ab Workout session. But by the time I got there, it was pretty crowded, and rather than try to sneak in, I power-walked a couple miles on the treadmill. The treadmill became my morning routine from that point on. The gym, as a whole, is not very impressive. It's one room, and not very large. It has treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bikes, and weights all in the same space. The fitness classes are held in the same place, so as you can imagine, it can get cramped. The plus-side is that the locker room is pretty spacious and the showers are really nice.

After working out, I got back to the stateroom to find that room service had delivered coffee and croissants. This is one of those little luxuries that we love about DCL. Coffee on the verandah to start the morning? Ahhhhhhh. This was our view from the verandah: Akershus fortress:

Well, I don't drink coffee, and a croissant (even a yummy chocolate croissant) isn't enough breakfast. So around 9:30, I hit Cabanas. Had some scrambled eggs. I don't know why I still bother trying scrambled eggs on the cruise. They're always so wet; I hate them. But I got some bacon and corned beef hash with it. There a big meat-carving station, waffles and pancakes, and great assortment of fruit. But I wasn't quite that hungry.

Our excursion for the day was the Walking Tour of Oslo. We've been to Oslo previously with DCL in 2010. (You can read about it in the trip report I did -- the link is in my "tagline".) We did the Viking Museum, the sculpture park and an open-air museum. So this time, we decided to stay in the city itself and see what we could. The walking tour was scheduled for 2 1/2 hours but went almost 3 hours with no break for rest or refreshments. We visited the City Hall, the royal palace, the University, the main theater, and ended up at Akershus. Our guide was pretty good. He had very good local knowledge, and liked to talk about his high school history teacher. He was NOT good, however, at keeping the group together. He walked and just expected that we were all together.

One of my favorite parts of this tour was seeing a statue of King Haakon VII. He was the Norwegian king during WWII. He had been "imported" from Denmark when Norway was without a king. He agreed to become their king and ended up becoming a war hero for his staunch refusal to capitulate to the Nazis. The reason I liked this so much was that we had heard the same story about King Haakon's selection as king when we were in Copenhagen in 2010. And now, we'd heard the Norwegian side of that story; and I just thought it was cool to get both perspectives of those events. Here's the king:

City Hall:

A mural of Norway's history. This portion details the end of WWII (war prisoners being released):

Kathryn and Molly in front of the royal palace:

This is Gunnar Sønsteby. There's a famous picture of a young man (presumed to be Sønsteby) standing next to his bike across from the University, watching the Nazis march through Oslo. He later became an important figure in Norway's resistance movement during WWII. So this statue was erected on the spot from the photograph.

And this is Henrick Ibsen, one of Norway's most famous authors. The statue is placed in front of the apartment where he lived. The tour guide told some funny stories about him: how he always walked at exactly the same time, ate in the same place, how the local boys would tease him about it and sometimes he would joke with them about it.

One of the main streets we walked. The palace is in the background. By sheer coincidence, we happened to meet former President Bill Clinton while strolling this street. There was Bill with two Secret Service guys (and probably more that we didn't see). We called out to say hello and got a small wave in reply.

This is Olso's new Opera House. It's designed to mirror the city itself. It starts at the water, the building represents the city and then it continues up to the mountains behind the city:

Here's a couple of Akershus:

There was a formal event commemorating the anniversary of Norway's High Court going on inside the fortress, so we weren't allowed to get a real tour. We were only allowed to walk around the grounds. Our tour pretty much ended there and then the guide was going to walk us back to the ship. But we were told by the security people that the King was gong to be arriving for the event, and if we stayed, we would get to see him. So we stayed!

People in traditional garb for the commemoration:

The Prime Minister!

Sadly, all we got to see of the King was his car. He drove directly into the inner courtyard of the fortress:

Once we saw the King's car pull in, we headed back to the ship. And I took these next two pictures. When we were in Oslo in 2010, it was a foggy, rainy day. One of the sites we visited was a ski jump that was used for international competition. It was so foggy that when we were at its base, we couldn't see the top of it. But I took these pictures of it from Deck 10 while in port. So you can tell how much better our weather was on this trip!

After our walking tour, we got back to the ship around 3:30. We'd missed lunch, but we didn't want to spoil dinner, so we grabbed a couple of small things from Pete's and Pinocchio's. After a little time to rest our feet and clean up after our 3 hour walk, dinner was in Animator's Palate.

I really like the re-imagineered Animator's. The video screens are very much like the Dream and Fantasy, and as much as I loved the old Animator's, I do think they've improved it. Some shots of the artwork in the new entry to the restaurant:

At dinner, I had black truffle pasta stuffed with cheese and mushrooms for my appetizer, which was ok but not great.

Kathryn had a cheese and carrot souffle (a mix of 4 cheeses and shredded carrots) which she loved, but I hated.

And Molly had a prosciutto plate, which she liked but was too big to finish.

Molly had the pasta bolognase, which was delicious. I thought it could have used a little more sauce, but its flavor was excellent.

One of the things that was new about the menus on this cruise was that each night there 2 or 3 "Local Selections", which changed for each port. This night it was a lemon chicken that Kathryn ordered. It was ok, but not great and a little dry for her taste.

I ordered the pork cordon bleu, which was excellent. I liked this meal a lot. It had great flavor and was not greasy at all. And the cheese kept it nice and moist. The only problem with this meal was that it was too big. I could only eat half of it.

For dessert, I got the trio selection, which was a mango mousse, a blueberry crumble and a cheesecake. I don't really like cheesecake, but the other too were excellent. Kath and Molly both got the chocolate mousse on walnut cake, which they both said was excellent. I think the walnut cake was bigger than the last time I ordered it on a cruise.

And this is the full-sized blueberry crumble when ordered by itself, instead of part of the trio:

The main show in the Walt Disney Theater was the Comedy and Juggling of Pete Matthews. Nobody was interested. I know we're spoiled, but how many times can you watch a funny juggler? We skipped the show and did some shopping. I bought the limited edition pins for the cruise and found out that the Iceland shirt was already sold out. They had started a waiting list in case people returned some of their purchases. I checked back several times, but the only returns were XLs or larger.

After that, we headed to Keys (formerly Sessions) to listen to the pianist Clara Oman. She was also supposed to sing, apparently, but was under the weather. She played a bunch of medleys. I didn't think she great, but everybody else really liked her a lot. She cancelled her performance the next night, so she must have really been sick.

After our pathetic performance in our previous attempt at Team Trivia, we decided to skip it and we called it a night. It was 10:30, but still bright sunlight. I read for a while and then took this picture at midnight:

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