Day 5: Oslo

Up on Holmenkollen
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Well, we arrived at 11:00 p.m. last night.  THE SUN HADN'T GONE DOWN YET!  Because we took a cheapy airline, it flew us into an Oslo airport that was almost 2 hours outside of Oslo.  We took a bus shuttle in.  It let us off at like 1 a.m. at the Oslo Bussterminalen (yup, Oslo Bus Terminal).  We didn't want to wake up Melissa's uncle/aunt (who we were staying with) so we decided to stay the night in the bus terminal.  It was super safe and clean and there were a good amount of people waiting for their buses to arrive so we never were alone in some scary terminal.  We saw the sun rise again at about 2:30 or 3:00 a.m.  (When the sun did set, it never got completely dark... just dim).  At about 4:30 a.m. - 5:00 a.m., we headed on out for Melissa's uncle's house.   As we headed out, we realized that the night before was a Friday night and most young folk still hadn't gone to sleep yet.  We attempted to get directions from a group of friends.. but they were really too drunk to understand us completely.  We found our way (after a bit of a rough start trying to orient ourselves). Luckily for us, Melissa's uncle and aunt's house is actually pinpointed on the map, which helped.  We got in, talked to the uncle and aunt.. and SLEPT.  We slept for about 3 hours, got up, got showered.  Melissa's uncle and aunt took us out.  We went up to see the view from Holmenkollen - a mountain area right in Oslo.  We could see all of Oslo from up there!  We then drove to the island community of Bygdoy (actually the "o" in Bygdoy has a slash going through it, but who knows how to type that?!).  There we visited the Norsk Folkemuseum (The Norwegian Folk Museum). This is an open-air museum.  We got to see all the old homes and farms they used to live and work on, we learned about the indigenous Sami people of Norway, and even got to try a traditional sweet bread called Lefse (pronounced "Lef-seh") that was drenched in butter.  It was super incredibly yummy.  They handed out the recipe and you best believe we're going to try making it when we get back!

Norwegian Folk Museum
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We then headed onto the Frammuseet, which is a tiny museum that is dedicated to the polar ship, Fram, the ship that has sailed the furthest north to south.  The actual ship is inside the museum.  It's huge and amazing.

Right next door to the Frammuseet is the Norsk Sjofartsmuseum, or the Norwegian Maritime Museum.  Here we could see Norway's OLDEST ship.  It really was quite old!

We headed back to Oslo (literally 10 minutes away) and ate along the water near the Akerhus Castle and Fortress.  Melissa's uncle and aunt took us to eat some of the sweetest little shrimp we've ever tasted, mussels that were also incredibly sweet, swordfish sandwiches, and some nice white wine.  This was definitely the only nice meal we'd get in Oslo.  Everything here is SO expensive.  A coffee from 7-11 costs $4.00!!!!!  Thanks to Melissa's uncle and aunt, we got to eat like kings for a day.  We headed on back to try to get to sleep early since we had to wake up early for our Norway in a Nutshell tour the next morning.  We got home and went to sleep at around 10:00 p.m., sun shining and all.