Five years ago, Becky and I were traveling around Britain. We had wanted to see James Blunt in concert for years, but always missed him in the US. We checked to see if he was performing in England. He was not, but he was performing in Oslo—only an hour and $100 away from Stansted Airport.

We leapt (or flew) at the opportunity and booked airline and Airbnb. The concert was all we could want—a two plus hour performance by James and his band singing our favorites. We sat in the balcony rather than stand down on the floor jumping up and down like maniacs. It was a highlight of our entire trip.

We also managed to see a lot while in Oslo: Vigeland sculpture garden, Ekeberg sculpture park, the old Munch Museum, the Royal Castle grounds, history museum, and a fair share of walking around enjoying the warm spring air and flowers in a beautiful city with a mix of historic and modern buildings. When we started planning the Scandinavian trip, Oslo was high on the list for a repeat visit.

We were booked into Comfort Hotel Express; we call it Compact Hotel Express because the rooms are so small. The bed was surrounded by three walls, one held the outside window. The floor space was about as big as the bed with a chair and desk. The bathroom had all the necessities in a compact arrangement.

The location was excellent, directly across the street from the Central Station—a sprawling hub for buses, trains, trams, and transport to the Lufthavn airport. In fact, the transport system in Oslo is the easiest of all cities to navigate with electronic signs and graphics at stops so you are sure where you are and where you are going.

The first afternoon, we took a tram out to the Frogner area where we had stayed in the charming Airbnb. Queen Sophia was sponsoring a fine art/craft exhibit from the royal collection of furniture, clothing, auto, silver and gold items, china and the Coronation Chair. Each item featured the name of the craftsperson who had created or restored it. Yes, it was royal finery but more about the crafts and craftspeople than the royal family.

We tried to find our charming Airbnb but think the entire block has been knocked down and is under construction. Our walk back toward the hotel took us past the National Theatre and royal gardens. A large group of protesters were supporting Ukraine and berating Russian terrorism. This was the first of several protest demonstrations we observed.

We stopped outside at a busy Thai restaurant to read the menu. The two women sitting at a street table raved about the food. We went in and had a wonderful meal of prawn fried rice and green curry chicken. It was delicious and too much to finish.

That was the good part. For most of next two days we suffered from intestinal distress—me first, then Becky to a lesser extent. Being sick on the road is not fun. We bought some OTC medicines and slept a lot.

An article from NY Times suggested “what to do in Oslo for 36 hours,” but that would require non-stop motion for 36 hours. Rushing is not our travel style. We had two priorities for Oslo. First we wanted to spend more time in Vigeland sculpture park. The tram took us to the park early and we wandered through the huge statues.

The sculptures are monumental bronze, granite, and wrought iron figures of men, women, and children at play. All of the figures are nude to keep them universal in time and costume.

Did you read about the principal in Texas who was fired because the third graders in an art lesson were shown the statue of David, Michelangelo’s masterpiece? NAKED! PORNOGRAPHY! (Third graders in Texas somehow have managed to get to age 10 without ever seeing a penis?) The morality police would need a lot of cloth to cover all the naked parts of over 200 gigantic statues.

As we were walking out, a father was holding a three year old at just the right height for the child to be holding the penis of one of the sculptures. The father looked at us, we all smiled and shrugged. Find more info at Vigeland.no

In addition to dozens of families with strollers and toddlers and hundreds of tourists, the park was full of runners for a 10K run. Twenty to thirty teams each with 50-100 runners were socializing, stretching, kicking, and eating carb snacks. Each team had matching T-shirts with their business name on it.

By the time we were leaving, the racers had taken over the park and streets. The tram system was closed down, and we had a moderate hike out of the race area to a train station.

The train landed us back to central station and to the hotel for a long nap. Later, I went to the station again because part of our train trip to Stockholm had been cancelled due to track work. We needed to know when/where to show up for the substitute bus.

Our second focus was the beautiful new Munch Museet. Five years ago the Munch was located in a building that one guide called “remote.” Remote meant “impossible to find.” The old Munch museum had only a couple of galleries, and one was a show we had seen at MOMA.

You cannot miss the new museum, 11 stories tall, modern, and leaning out over Oslo Fjord next toward the Opera House. The new Munch Museet is stunning inside and out.

These two public buidings were the stimulus for renewal of the old dock areas into fancy apartments and eateries.

The new museum has six floors for exhibits. The first exhibit featured American Abstract Impressionism with many of my favorite painters: Still, Frankenthaler, Rothko, Krasner, Pollock, Gottlieb, Louis, and others from the New York school of the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. That set the tone for Munch’s work with the connection being “trying new things” as Munch always did.

The first Munch gallery covers the entire floor space of the third level. The huge exhibit is organized around themes central to his work such as Love, Death, Self, Loneliness. The themes give the viewer a lens for seeing the paintings and understand more about the artist.

Another huge gallery was labeled Munch Monumental—the paintings monumental size as in 20 feet by 40 feet. Some of them represent commissions for public buildings. In another gallery, Munch’s house and personal possessions are on interactive display. His woodcut printing workshop was of special interest to me. He did such wonderful wood cuts.

Link to museum – http://www.munchmuseet.no

There were two other exhibits: a retrospective for Marianne Bratellli, a contemporary abstract artist, and a room for children’s imagination and play with soft stuffed objects, costumes, and weird, wonderful places to sit. It was called the Museum of Chaos.

We were there for 4 intense hours with a break for lunch in the museum cafeteria. I had tomato, basil, and burrata on focaccia. Becky had a white fish smorrebrod.

Exhausted and exhilarated, we walked to the tram for our now regular afternoon naps. We noticed a small cafe along the route named Munchies. We woke around 5, were hungry, and walked back to for a hamburger and loaded fries way outside our standard fare.

We left the hotel at 6:30 am on Monday to find the bus that was replacing the train. The bus was scheduled to leave at 7:04 but we like to get ourselves in the right place with plenty of time. The bus carried us across the Swedish border to Karlstad for about two hours where the train met us for the last three hours. Both legs were a beautiful ride through vast forests and lakes.

Goodbye Oslo, hello Stockholm.

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