Start with putting my feet up in a once-grand apartment in Oslo, after a good day but a lot of walking. I had an interesting visit with a Norwegian woman at the breakfast buffet. She came to the table with a plate LOADED with bread and cheese and sliced meat and butter and fruit. And ate SIX slices of bread, each spread with a whole pat of butter and with meat and cheese on top. Very nice, grandmother, mother of six, plays the viola in an orchestra. And then I landed, got to Trond’s apartment, and took off again. He walked me to the bus stop, helped me buy tickets, and showed me how to return.

And I went out to Bygdoy island to see Kon Tiki!! One of the reasons I wanted to go to Norway! The real thing. And also Ra II, both at the Thor Heyerdahl museum. This was a real thrill for me. I begin to think maybe the vision of Heyerdahl going across the ocean to the South Pacific on that raft was one of my earliest incentives to travel.

I caught the bus to the Viking ships nearby. Again, these were things I’d wanted to see forever! A couple of them have been pretty much restored, and they were burial ships, not sailing ships, but the carving, the grace of them was fantastic.

I then went to the nearby folk art museum but it was a lot of walking and my interest in folk art is limited. Trond booked me into a lovely pension, Cochs Pensjonat, to protect me from the noisy hoards he expected on the street tonight, and I am going over to his house for dinner shortly. Tomorrow is National Day with many parades and many national Costumes. I got a hint of that today at Bygdoy island.

Tonight he cooked dinner for me and the other guests, who are from all over..currently Sweden, Amsterdam, France, Canada, the Phillipines,, and Nepal. Some live there, some stay for a few weeks, some are like me, only for a couple of nights. And we finished off dinner with schnapps! Trond is a great host, loves to cook, but I think he was right to put me up in the pension a couple of blocks away. Visiting with the others, particularly an older woman and a couple of daughters from Amsterdam, was very interesting.