Wednesday, August 29, 2018: Train to Oslo, Vigeland Sculpture Park, Hollmenkollen

Today we take the train from Stockholm Central Station to Oslo.  Along the way David Scott Silverberg, our National Geographic geographer, leads explanations of the geography, government and history of the Nordic countries and, in this particular instance, an in depth discussion of the role Norway and Sweden played in WWII.

We pass Swedish farmland ...
and lakes ...
before arriving at Oslo Sentralstasjon.
It is a seven hour train ride so we don't have an over abundance of time in the afternoon so we make our way to Vigeland Sculpture Park,
containing more than 200 sculptures all made by a single artist, Gustav Vigeland.
All of the sculptures are nude because Gustav didn't want the sculptures to be tied to a particular time or era.
The sculptures depict Gustav's vision of the circle of life from babies, childhood, adults, elderly, death and rebirth in further children.
I particularly liked the sculptures depicting a grandfather and a grandchild.
We had previously visited this park on a March day in 1999.  It is much warmer with much less snow but a lot more people today.

We then visit Holmenkollen ski area, still in Oslo, and the site of Olympic ski jumping in 1992.
The ski jump has been rebuilt even bigger than when we visited, watched a World Cup event and skied here nearly twenty years ago.
The view from the top is still impressive.  Now one can zip-line down but, alas, this isn't allowed on our tour.
Dinner tonight is in our hotel ...

where we dine on carpaccio with quail eggs ...
pork fixed ??? ...
and creme brule.
Goodnight.

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