Norway--Oslo

When I planned our trip to Norway, I only scheduled one day in Oslo. I expected my kids to be tired of visiting museums and churches and anyway, our goal was to get to the fjords--on the other side of Norway.

What I didn't expect was how quickly our lone day in Oslo would fly by and how thrilled my kids (as well as Rob and I) would be with the few sights we did have time to fit into our short stay in Norway's largest city.

I expected a visit to Oslo's Opera House to be a quick stop. One look at this architectural wonder and you can quickly understand why our visit lasted well more than an hour.

The building was designed to look like an iceberg. This place must be stunning in the winter!

The cruise ships park across the water from the Opera House.

The inside is as beautiful as the outside.

Norway is insanely expensive. Helsinki looks cheap by Norwegian standards! So we made a lot of sandwiches for lunch. Fountains always make a good place to stop for lunch!

On the move again, we arrived at the Royal Palace just in time for the changing of the guards.

Sam served as the family photographer for this event.  I took a few liberties with editing his shots :)

Rob and I would have loved to spend several hours here (the Nobel Peace Center):

But even the ticket sales person said Lily and Sam would not get much out of it.

Our final stop of the day was at Vigeland Sculpture Park.

Vigeland was an extremely prolific Norwegian sculptor. He is also the designer of the Nobel Peace Prize medal.

There are 212 bronze and granite sculptures in the park.  I don't think Sam can look Joey in the eye without laughing!  (Or maybe he was giggling because I asked the boys to copy the pose of the two nude guys behind them?)

I think it's pretty easy to guess what the subject of Vigeland's art was.

Youth...

Parenthood...

Love...

old age...

LIFE...