Jeg har hatt det veldig hyggelig

(I have enjoyed myself very much)

One final post before I leave town. I hope to return someday relatively soon, where I can do some proper sight-seeing, share the experience with someone, and get out to the fjords for an adventure or two.

Last night, I wandered through the Palace Park after dinner. It’s a beautiful park just outside the Royal Palace (the king was in residence while I was here, but I did not run into him anywhere 🙂 ). The park is so beautiful, with many gardens, statues, ponds, and fountains. I spent quite a bit of time enjoying the weather and taking in the beautiful spring flowers.

The below is the view from the Royal Palace back along the walkway. It’s hard to tell (I am no photographer), but the walk is lined with hundreds of lilac bushes. Oh, the smell is so wonderful!

This is the Royal Palace. The drive is a thick gravel. I expected lush gardens, but it’s this huge gravel drive. This is all right in the city center, a few hundred feet from the National Theatre where my first night’s pictures were taken.

My personal favorite of the statues in the Palace Park. She doesn’t look much like my Martha, but it still made me smile.

This morning I woke up really early to catch a few more sights in town. I liked this plaza-turned-into-a-plant-market. They had huge trucks of geraniums, herbs, peonies, hydrangeas, evergreen trees, and on and on that they were unloading to sell in the city center for the day.

I ventured next to the Opera House. The sloped roof is all marble and you can walk up the roof to get a little higher and see a broader view of Oslo.

This is a fortress you can see from many places in the city, this view is from the Opera House. I wish I had time to go up there and see some of the history.

Another direction out from the roof to a peninsula. There are rock islands covered with beautiful green trees everywhere. I couldn’t find a spot to get high enough and take a picture. It reminds me a bit of the San Juan Islands.

A group of people practicing Tai Chi in the warm sunshine on top of the Opera House roof before heading into work for the day. That’s a nice way to break up the commute!

I laugh, it seems everywhere I travel I run into an E&Y building. S and I always get a giggle out of it. I think it might be a quick humbling reminder as to how I’m able to travel to these wonderful places.

I had to do some extreme zooming and cropping for you to see this. But I made a fatal error on the 2nd night of my trip and didn’t have my camera when I went up into the mountains. I’m hoping a colleague will send his photos soon. This picture below is of a ski jump that is about 20 miles from where I was standing when I took this picture. I have a cheesy little camera with minimal zooming skills, this is not a small ski jump. It was so steep! If I get the pictures of the mountains I will certainly share, the views of the city were amazing!

And…chips. Where are my royalties? 

Adjø, Oslo. På gjensyn.