The kids had a week off school before Easter, and T took it off of work as well. We didn't feel like doing a 'big" trip but decided we could handle a short road trip. Warmer weather would have been nice, but I couldn't come up with a short drive that would get us any warmer, and in the end we decided their were some things we'd like to see to the north.
This area of Sweden is much hillier than where we live. We live on the flat marshlands. The west coast is rocky with lots of hills and forests. It actually reminded us all of home (SW Virginia) but with more water. Sometimes we'd see an inlet from the ocean (we were driving up the coast) and there were also many lakes. We drove through a number of tunnels and over some cool bridges.
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| A very typical Swedish village |
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| Crossing a cool bridge |
After about another hour, we stopped in a small village called Tanumshede. This area has an amazing collection of bronze-age rock carvings. We were able to see a number of the large panels. It is interesting because they are carved into big panels of rock on the ground-- I guess I'm used to carving on walls not the floor. :-) You'll see in our pictures that they paint the carvings to make them easier to see. They say they date from 1500-500 BC and they show many people, animals and boats-- lots and lots of viking boats! We went for some nice walks around the hillsides to see the panels. It was a bit chilly (about 5 C) but bundled up we were comfortable and we lucked out-- no rain or wind. We had beautiful sunshine throughout the trip.
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| Lots and lots of boats |
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| I love the detail on this boat-- the people with their paddles, horns and weapons and the heads on the ends of the boat. |
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| This man is the largest carving of a man in Europe-- or something like that |
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| The paint has been added by conservators to make the carvings stand out better. Here is what one looks like unpainted. You can see a few animals if you look closely.The information said that the carvings were intentionally done on rock surfaces that often had water running over them. Then when wet, the carvings would shine and be more obvious. |
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| A sea battle and an interesting animal. |
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| The museum for the area wasn't open (only open in summer) but we were able to walk around this outdoor representation of a bronze-age Viking village. I love the thatch roof that goes almost to the ground. |
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| The interiors reminded me a lot of wigwam reconstructions in Virginia with a big firepit in the center. |
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| Welcome to Norway! |
After the rock carvings, we drove the last 2 hours to Oslo, arriving at our hotel around 6 pm. Oslo driving was very interesting. They have tunneled extensively under the city. Pretty much all major roads go under. So we didn't see much of the city coming in. And it could be a bit scary in the long tunnels because our GPS would lose its mind and there were multiple exits in the tunnels.
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| So many tunnels. Here you can see an exit breaking off to the right. |
Also interesting, many of the roads are "automatic toll roads." There are just signs warning you that they are toll roads and that you will be charged but no booths or anything. Apparently they take pictures and then send you a bill later. We tried to avoid them at first but then found it was impossible. We're a little scared at how much we ran up-- once we went to the hotel, there was no restaraunt handy so we had to roam around a bit looking for food and got lost a few times. I guess we'll find out when/if a bill shows up in our mailbox.
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| Not a great picture, but the hotel lobby had this really cool wall that was decorated with live moss. |
The hotel turned out really nice. When I'd looked I was scared to find that Oslo was the most expensive city for hotels that I'd priced yet (worse than Paris, Rome, Amsterdam and Athens). Food is also really expensive there. It seems to me that everything is expensive in Norway. Anyway, I was seeing hostels with shared bathrooms for over $200 a night. I finally ran across a Quality Inn/Conference Center out by the museums on the water (where we wanted to go anyway) for the amazing price of $150. I snatched it up even though I knew the kids wouldn't be thrilled-- it said we'd get one double bed and one sofa bed (they hate sharing and sofa beds are particularly bad) and it said breakfast wasn't included on the site I reserved through. When we arrived, we found it was an enormous building and brand new. They were still working on the landscaping and such. The lobby was extremely swanky. We checked in and then went out to find food without even looking at our room but so far it looked promising-- didn't want to deal with paying for parking twice. (Yes, you usually have to pay for parking at European hotels.)
Finding food was challenging. Norway isn't part of the EU and has its own currency-- Norwegian crowns. We couldn't find an ATM so we had no cash. That limits where you can eat. And we were out in suburbia so there weren't many restaraunts. We tried to have the GPS find us food but after too many in and out of tunnels and hundreds of "go right on the round about and take the first exit" we gave up on that and started roaming on our own. We finally decided to try a little kebab stand-- if they took credit cards. They did, but for some reason none of mine would work in their machine (even though I've used them all over Europe). Luckily we tried to pay BEFORE he prepared our food. We decided to try a little grocery store. Since we were scared about our cards, we bought just a candy bar first. Then when that worked we shopped for real. :-) The cashier probably thought we were nuts. We bought ham, cheese, rolls and some drinks and brought them back to our hotel for dinner.
When we went up to our room we were pleasantly surprised to find that we had a kitchenette-- sink, refrigerator and range top (could have bought some different foods if we'd known that.) Only trouble was, we had a double bed and one cot type single bed-- one short. Before I could do anything about it, the phone rang and it was the front desk. They'd realized the error. They offerered to come up and see what they could do (that in itself is amazing-- a hotel employee coming up to the 3rd floor for you!). They looked at the room and said-- "There is probably enough room for a second cot, or we could move you to this other room. Come see." She took us down the hall and showed us two adjoining rooms-- one with a double bed and kitchenette and bathroom. The other had two twins and a bathroom. We happily moved our stuff. The rooms were very nice-- everything new, big bathrooms, flat screen tvs. They even had little stereos with ipod docks. The kids were thrilled to have their own room and own beds (all for that original price).
After we ate our little dinner, we went for a walk. The hotel was in a business park area right on the water and there were nice walking paths.
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| Area around the hotel |
One really weird thing-- one of the big office buildings had a LCD ticker that ran all along the top edge of the building and was running red writing constantly. You expected it to be stock prices or something but as we looked at it we realized it was strange quotes-- very strange ones. Some just quirky. Some with a political bent. I wish I could remember some exact examples. I think one was "Property ownership is the root of all conflict." But anyway, it was an odd variety and some were pretty wacky. We were very curious what type of building it was and whether it always said such odd things or just in the evening when no one was around. :-)
It was really quiet out. There were no other people around. The hotel seemed largely empty. The suburbs we'd explored for food were really quiet too. It made for a very peaceful night. I think it might have been our best hotel night ever-- everyone slept well. (The beds were very cozy). And it turned out that breakfast was included-- a really nice breakfast buffet in the hotel restaraunt with lots of different food choices. We were almost wishing we'd booked two nights instead of one. With two bathrooms, it was more convenient than home.
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| Behind the hotel |
But we stuck with our plan. We checked out after breakfast and headed over to the Viking Ship Museum. It was also in the suburbs and not far from our hotel. They have three huge viking ships that were found in burial mounds. Two of them are in amazingly good condition. The third is more decayed. Then they also have the relics found in the boats, including carts and sleds. We'd seen this museum on a travel show once and thought it looked really cool but we'd never imagined we'd ever get a chance to go there ourselves. The boats date from800-900 AD. We love seeing old things like that.
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| The Viking Ship Museum |
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| The building itself was pretty cool. It felt a bit like a church with its high arched ceilings and there were little balconies where you could climb up to look down on the ships. |
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| The Oseberg Ship-- This was a royal pleasure craft that ultimately was used as a grave ship for a woman of high rank. It was designed for calmer seas and was very ornamental. |
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| Close-up of Oseberg detail |
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| The Gokstad Ship--this is the largest of the three ships and the most robust. It was a sturdy boat capable of sailing the high seas. It was used as a burial ship for a Viking chieftan. |
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| Another shot of the Gokstad. |
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| The Tune Ship-- Would have been similar to the Gokstad but did not preserve as well. |
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| On the left is the burial chamber from the Gokstad ship. They were made to look like a tent. Three small boats were found broken to pieces in the Gokstad ship, probably in connection somehow to the burial ceremony. They were able to reassemble two of them. |
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| A wagon from the Oseberg queen's grave. The detail on all the wood carving was amazing. |
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| There were several funny animals like this that had handles. They think they were carried in the funeral procession. |
About a block away from the museum, we'd seen a bunch of rental bikes next to a bus stop. In Paris, they had them all over the city and you could pay by credit card and just take one. Well, with G's broken arm, it didn't happen in Paris but now...We thought it would be great (based on the day before's experience) to leave our car where it was (free parking even) and bike into the city center. Plus it would be a fun way to see things. So we walked over there and took a look-- no obvious way to unlock and take a bike. I went into the cultural museum across the street and asked at the desk. They said you had to buy a card to use them. Locals bought monthly or yearly subscriptions to use them but they thought they offered a day pass for tourists. The trouble was that the only place they knew of to buy a card was the tourist bureau-- in the center of town. Bummer! There went that plan.
So we drove in and parked by Vigelands Park. It is decorated with statues by a famous Norwegian artist (Gustav Vigelands). The layout was cool but we hadn't realized from the few pictures I'd seen that all the statues were naked people-- all different ages and types, arranged in lots of different shapes and such. It was a bit weird and I can't say that any of us really cared for it. To the artist's credit, the faces of the people were very realistic and varied. I know naked is not uncommon in statues but the sheer volume of it was simply overwhelming. The cutest part was down by a stream there was a little patio that was all decorated with baby statues-- crawling, walking, rolling, etc. They were pretty cute-- and not so disturbing naked. The park in general was pretty-- would have been gorgeous once everything greened up.
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| Vigelandsparken |
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| Some of the statues lining the bridge |
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| The stream didn't look frozen but watching the ducks "walk on water" we realized it must at least partially be. Some were swimming in a section, pushing through the ice like ice breaker ships. |
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| Fire! |
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| Views looking out over the water. |
They had ceremonial soldiers posted around the grounds and we watched the changing of the guard at 1:30. G described it as looking like they were having a staring contest followed by some weird marching and heel clicking.
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| One of the guards |
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| A cannon in front of the Armed Forces museum |
By this point everyone's feet were tired and they were ready to go, so we didn't walk over to the royal palace or Norwegian government buildings. We'd seen pictures and they didn't look particularly exciting (too new for our taste).
We got stopped at the customs checkpoint reentering Sweden-- apparently they have some smuggling issues between the cpuntries-- and had a friendly conversation with the Swedish official. When he saw we were Americans he asked us what we thought of Norway. Of course, we told him that Sweden was much better.
The drive home was pretty-- another sunny day and uneventful until we got near Göteborg again and hit rush-hour trafffic. We'd toyed with dinner at Pizza Hut again and when the traffic came nearly to a stop we decided getting off for dinner while it cleared out was a good idea. We had our pizza and then looked around the mall a little before returning to the road-- and traffic had cleared again. There aren't a lot of roads to chose from in Sweden. I'd looked at taking a different route home to see other things, but there really weren't any options that wouldn't take forever. In Sweden, you either drive up the east coast or up the west coast. And then occasionally you can drive between the two coasts. You really can't drive up the middle-- too many lakes and mountains I suppose?
We got home around 10 that night. So that was our Easter adventure, and now we've been to Norway. :-)
There are a number of museums in there but most were not open that day. So we just enjoyed exploring the fortress itself and looking out over the water. There was a huge cruise ship parked right there at the dock-- it looked like you could shoot it with all the canons. 
