Featuring a whole lot of baby-flinging.

Ok then!

Let’s begin a full day half day (I took too many photos) in Oslo.

I started my morning with a fluffly- but unfortunately a bit tasteless- cloud, and some truly terrible coffee, which was later remedied by a top-up at Tim Wendelboe, aka the home of third wave coffee in Norway.

And then I walked through literal autumnal perfection, not quite believing my luck.

First stop, Æreslunden cemetry. aka, the place they put all the famous dead Norwegians.

I managed to find the grave of Munch (of ‘Scream’ fame), and spend a bit of time wandering around looking for the likes of Henrik Ibsen, while also probably encountering other famous people who were not famous enough in my mind to quite matter.

It’s worth noting that I was accompanied not only by perfect weather, but also by some extended hours of voice message podcast from my friend Nadia, which thoroughly entertained me as I mooched through the cemetary.

I surfaced at the Royal Palace, and then veered to the right (North east?) to duck into the Kunstnernes Hus- a smallish locale for contemporary art.

Big shout out here to the fact that I had bought the Oslo Pass, which gives 24, 48 or 72 hour access to the city’s museums and art galleries.

Once I was sufficiently stuffed with culture, I took a brief break to stuff myself with other things. In this case, reindeer preserved meet, and the Terrifying Norwegian Brown Cheese.

The latter is definitely an experience- tasting somewhere between cheese and toffee, and having the peculiar ability to stick to the roof of your mouth in a pretty unpleasant way.

Would buy again. But mostly just to prank my friends.

The next stop was the very famous Vigeland Park.

Over 200 sculptures.

All of them by Gustav Vigeland.

Most of them weird.

(And some of them really quite ‘anti baby’)

Because I had the pass, I also took the opportunity to pop into the assocaited museum across the road from the park…

.. which contained a nice mix of background info on the artist, combined with various artworks.

Among the mix of figures…

(^that one with the cool cloak is Beethoven!)

were a whole lot of prototypes for some of the more famous sculptures in the park:

.. which also served as a nice opportunity to see some of the larger and more distant pieces close up.

For example, I had been straining to understand if one of the statues on a huge column really did look like a weird armadillo creature was cudling a naked-busted woman.

Turns out yes, yes it did.

October 14, 2023