The Adventures Begin: Oslo

My two week Easter break vacation started with a visit to a friend from home, Dena, who's doing her exchange in Aas, a town just to the south of Oslo. I stayed with Dena in her dorm while my three other travelling companions, Gab, Angie, and David, did the hostel thing.

We arrived from Brussels on Saturday morning and Dena hadn't yet returned from her vacation (theirs was the week before ours), so we went to the Munch museum and met up with Dena when she arrived (straight from the airport!) that afternoon. We took a little walk around the city and then went to the ice bar, where they gave us parkas and mittens to go inside and drink cocktails out of ice glasses! We all went a little crazy with the picture taking.

That night Dena and I ventured to take the second to last train to Aas (10:20pm) only to find out it wasn't running because it was Easter weekend! So we waited in the lobby of the Radisson hotel until the last train 2 hours later. Once in Aas, it was a half hour trek to Dena's dorm. It was actually quite beautiful, I could see the stars for the first time in awhile!

Day 2 had me waiting for another train (we just couldn't quite figure out the Easter schedule), but I got to enjoy a nice morning in Aas and see the little bit of snow that was left. Dena stayed home to work on a paper that day, so I met up with the others in Oslo and we took a boat ride from city hall to the opera house to Oslo's Museum Island. It was a really nice ride, we saw a bunch of little islands with cabins on them, and the scenery reminded me a lot of BC.
On Museum Island we visited the Kon-Tiki Museum, which was all about the adventures of a guy named Thor who built a raft and sailed across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia, and then later took a reed boat across the Atlantic. I learned he was responsible for the whole Kon-Tiki craze, with Tiki hut bars and all.

In the afternoon we visited the sculpture park, where there are a whole bunch of statues of people doing different things, all by the same sculptor. One of the most famous ones is the stomping baby, who seems like he's too young to be throwing a tantrum standing up.

Monday morning I spent in Aas, since our flight was leaving that afternoon and I was already on the shuttle route to the airport. So I walked the other half of Aas to get to the bus station! I said goodbye to Dena and to Norway and met up with the others to catch our flight to Krakow, Poland.

Oslo was neat, but I'm really glad I got to stay in Aas because the small town outdoorsy-ness is what really appealed to me about Norway.