The ship docked in Oslo before we woke up. I saw some lights outside the window and found a fantastic view of the Akershus Fortress right outside our room.
We had breakfast and then readied ourselves for the excursion we had booked - a bicycle tour of Oslo with Oscar.
We met up with our tour guide just outside the tourist shop on the dock. The shop featured some funny gnome statues out in front.
We walked about half a mile to another dock where one of the big international ferries was docked, and the bicycle rental was in a small warehouse on the dock. We chose bikes and helmets while our tour guide helped us get set up. She was a cheerful Scotswoman who had been living in Norway for five years. As she put it, sometimes an experienced foreigner makes a better tour guide than a native because the native may take some things for granted that an outsider notices.
We took a short ride back up to a drawbridge that got us into the Akershus complex. In addition to the impressive fortress building there are barracks and storehouses, walls, towers, and even tunnels all over the small hilltop, all combine to make an impressive fortress.
While the area is still used by the military, people also use it as a park.
Then we bicycled down off the hill and into central Oslo. We arrived at a U-shaped “square” opening toward the waterfront with the Oslo City Hall at the center just before 11:00, in time to hear a long carillon that plays on the hour.
The City Hall is very impressive inside, and is where the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded for many years until 2020. Later in the trip we saw the Nobel Committee’s headquarters in Stockholm. All the other Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm, but the Peace Prize and the committee that awards it is in Norway - here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:
It is unclear why Nobel wished the Peace Prize to be administered in Norway, which was ruled in union with Sweden at the time of Nobel’s death. The Norwegian Nobel Committee speculates that Nobel may have considered Norway better suited to awarding the prize, as it did not have the same militaristic traditions as Sweden. It also notes that at the end of the 19th century, the Norwegian parliament had become closely involved in the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s efforts to resolve conflicts through mediation and arbitration.
The City Hall also has an area displaying various historic artifacts and this piece that I think the city commissioned to celebrate a thousand years of settlement struck me.
There is art on the outside of the building and in its courtyard-like entrance as well.
After wandering around City Hall for a while we got back on the bicycles and rode to the Royal Palace, which I appreciated for looking quite nice but being substantially less fancy than many other country’s royal residences.
After hearing a bit about Norway’s royalty we rode on through the city to Frogner Park.
Frogner Park is a large park featuring a bridge with dozens of statues. Crossing the bridge leads on to the Vigeland Installation - a collection of statues created by Gustav Vigeland between 1924 and 1943. Some of the statues deftly capture emotions and recognizable moments, while others are really bizarre.
The strangest is probably the Monolith, comprised of 121 figures.
We rode back through the town via a different route, passing various points of interest, then returned the bicycles and walked back to the ship for lunch. After lunch we walked over to the docks in front of City Hall. We found another interesting sculpture there.
There were also several old ships that had been set up for summertime dinner cruises.
I was interested to see that the local ferries, which allow people to live on islands or across the bay from downtown Oslo and still commute to work, are all electrified. There were some very large charge cables hooked up to a few of them.
We walked further along the waterfront and saw some shops and indoor malls. We walked around a museum and saw some interesting modern homes being built. Finally we worked our way back along a pedestrian street that came out near the Nobel Peace Center.
The Rotterdam departed a bit before sunset.