Last Day

It was the last day of the tour. I don't know about anyone else in the group but, I wasn't thrilled about that. The 2 weeks had gone by incredibly fast. Today, we were supposed to do a tour of Oslo. Like Copenhagen and Stockholm, a local guide showed up to tell us about Oslo. The reason they had a local guide tell about the city was because they'd be more knowledgeable about it than Arvid would be.

We were supposed to visit City Hall and Frogner Park but city elections prevented us from seeing City Hall. Frogner Park was interesting. This park is filled with nude statues by Gustav Vigeland. They are definitely more laid back in Norway than we are in the states. Some of the statues were suggestive too. Vigeland apparently was fascinated by the circle of life and showed it in a fountain he created at the park. It shows nude children playing in the tree of life progressing to mature men and women to men and women with children and finally elderly men and women before beginning again with young children. It was an interesting series of statues.

Our guide whose name I can't remember took us to a spot where we could get good pictures of the harbor. We also visited one of the piers where the Akershus Fortress is located. The fortress houses the Norwegian resistance museum, the Norwegian Armed Forces museum and a joint headquarters for the Norwegian Ministry of Defense and their Armed Forces. It's an impressive fortress. Incredibly, the cruise liner Star Princess was docked right next to it. The Star Princess was HUGE. The letters spelling out its name were over a foot long which gives you and idea how big it was.

After the city tour, we had a 90 minute break for lunch before the optional tour of the viking ship museum, the Fram museum (an arctic exploration ship) and Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki museum. I used the time to dash to the Oslo Hard Rock Cafe to buy some of their t-shirts. I also bought some of their pins to give to Joyce La Chapelle, Carolyn Clancy and Greta Paulsen. The three ladies were our ladies from North Dakota. They were super nice. Joyce had given me a pin from North Dakota so I felt I had to reciprocate. I don't know if Maryland has any pins (I plan to keep an eye out for one and if I find one send it to her) so I decided to get them Hard Rock Cafe pins.

Diane Porch of our group requested I get a Hard Rock Cafe menu for them if possible. It seems they collect them. I said I'd try. I had no idea what I was getting into to. It turned out I had to speak with the cafe's general manager (I think his name was Jimmy). I told him the situation and he very kindly said he'd see if he could find an old menu. He succeeded. Only the menu didn't say Norway in it. After all the trouble he'd gone through, I wasn't able to appear ungrateful about that. I thanked him and offered to pay for it. He said that wasn't necessary. I also asked him about the Reykjavik Hard Rock Cafe. To my surprise, I found out it's gone. He didn't know anything about what happened with it. I found out that the company that owns the Oslo, Gothenburg and Stockholm cafes is trying to get the licence for Finland, Latvia and Estonia. There might be new Hard Rock Cafes on the horizon in those countries. More t-shirts for me to collect.

I returned to the hotel and dropped of my t-shirts. Our city guide returned to take us to the viking ship museum. The museum has 3 viking ships that were buried with important viking nobles. Two of the ships were in outstanding condition. It was something to see them. The museum showed artifacts they'd found with the ships. Some of those were also very impressive.

After the viking museum, we visited the Fram museum. The museum is built around the Fram which is a pretty big ship. You can actually go onboard the Fram and explore it. The ship made 3 exploration voyages and helped enormously in mapping these previously unknown areas.

Thor Heyerdah's Kon-Tiki museum was our last stop. It was something to see these fascinating ships. We also got to see an 8 minute film on Heyerdahl's voyage on the Kon-Tiki. It was quite a voyage.

The last thing we had on our itinerary was the farewell dinner. It was held at the hotel. The hotel did a nice job. The food was superbly presented and was very tasty. We made chit-chat one last time with those we'd become friends with. Around 8:30 p.m., the dinner broke up. We had to get up early the next morning to catch the bus to the airport. Everyone shook hands or hugged one last time. I very much doubt I'll ever see any of these people again. They were wonderful people. They made my trip to Denmark, Sweden and Norway far more enjoyable. I very much enjoyed meeting them. I wish them all the very best.

The next morning, I quickly packed (I was getting pretty good at it by now) and went down to the reception area. The hotel kindly provided us with a box breakfast which I ate in the reception area. At 5 till 7 a.m., it was time to board the bus for the airport. The airport was 35 minutes away. Once there, we waited for the Continental Airlines check-in to open up. Once they did, those of use flying on the flight checked out luggage in and made our way to security. That's where I found out I should've packed my large jars of vitamins, fish oil tablets and fiber pills. Because of those, I had to open my carry-on bag so they could inspect it. At the game, security was doing random checks. Harvey got tagged and I ragged on him about looking like a suspicious character. The flight to Newark was uneventful. Thanks to the Sudoku game Harvey told me about, I was able to waste 4 hours of the flight playing it. When we arrived at Newark, we had to go through Customs, re-check our luggage and go through security again. That's where I lost a large tube of toothpaste as I guess that was forbidden in carry-ons. I plan to make sure I pack that next time.

That concludes my Scandanavian adventure. The tour reconfirmed my high opinion of Globus tours. I can't wait to take another one. I'm looking forward to their 2008 catalog where I'll be able to see the dates for their France tour. Hopefully, this time next year I'll be on a French adventure. We'll see. Cheers all!