Fram

Oslo is a Nautical town. You can hop a ferry as easily as you can a tram. In fact, it's often much faster since the Fjords tend to go on for a while.

There's a few museums easily accessed by boat. This is where the Kon-Tiki museum is- the original raft and artifacts from Thor Heyderhal's trip of 4,300 miles across the Pacific. There's a real Moai from Easter Island sitting out front.

We headed for the Fram museum. I've gone on and on about my fascination with Antarctic explorers in the past and this was a good way to feed it. Norwegians aren't known to shy away from cold and ice and snow and daring explorations, and there are many places devoted to their foolish ways.

Oddly, the entire museum was devoted to the English team led by Captain Scott (in English!), despite the fact that a team of Norwegians beat him to the south pole. I have no idea the logic behind this choice, but I'm sure the Norwegians have a great story to tell as well.

They did have the Fram ship, the boat built to withstand pretty much everything. It made it to the Antarctic and it was also the first ship to go for the Northwest Passage successfully.

The ship was enormous and the A-frame building was built to house it and the artifacts from the voyage.

We also went to Akershus Fortress, a picturesque medieval fort on the waterfront where the Kings and Queens would take up residence.

Norweigian history is dullsville. They didn't seem to have any tabloid fodder that the French and English royal families gave us. Most of their Kings were from Denmark anyway, so a great deal of the artifacts the museum had weren't even from Norway. Yawn.

They did have lots of gorgeous tapestries from Brussels.

It was too nice of a day to spend any more time inside, so we headed to Vigelandsparken to get some sun.