In Oslo, Norway, Day 1 (AKA: The post that takes forever to load)

So I decided I was going to head over to the palace, and see what it was like, and then from there perhaps check out a museum or something. I have to say, for so little planning, things went really well!

The first thing I did was look at the view from our hotel, the Radison, which is the highest building in Oslo.

I headed out of our Hotel in the direction of Main Street. I was told if you got to the church, you would find Main street. It was, actually, quite easy. And while Main street is rather touristy, it is also really pretty, with street musicians and nice buildings... and really great sculptures! I went a little trigger happy with my camera (but then, when do I not?)

I took several pictures of this lady at different times of the day, because the shadows around her kept changing.
The church was quite beautiful, or at least, what I could see of it, because it looks like it's under restoration.

Pretty buildings!The quite talented street musician. There was a really neat couple that was watching him that I wanted to photo, but they kept looking at me strangely and I didn't want to seem too weird.


Oh god, the amazingness! *drools*
Oh, come on. You know your inner child wants them so badly!Ok, so the first picture you see here is the view of the Palace, and I'm still not so good with my camera so it's blurry.

To the left are gardens... and the National theater. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

To my intimidate left (you can't see it in the photo, is the Parliament Building, which is GEORGEOUS!

I'm SO planning to go there.


Here you have one of the lions out in front of the parliament building, which I'm going to go take a tour of on Saturday... since that's the only day they let you in. Isn't he cute? I always like the daydream I have where the statues come to life in a city, and it tickles me pink to think of this guy roaming around Mainstreet.













You guessed it, the Parliment Building.
























When I first saw these deer, I thought they were real. Surprised the heck out of me.



So I was just starting to get hungry (it was just after noon, when I came by this place. They were doing some type of promotional gig, and they were giving out free soup. God, It was AMAZING soup. The Beef was nice and soft, the vegetables well flavored... if you're ever in Oslo, and want someplace that has good food, this place is what it says, fast good wholesome food. YUM.

NOW I can talk about the National Theatre!

This place was surrounded by statues, the most prominent being three of Norway's biggest playwrights, one of which is Ibsen (*loves on Ibsen*)








I took a picture of my favorite statue.













I then proceeded to make my way up the hill that leads to the Palace. This is a picture of the view.












And this is my attempt to photograph the roses that are still in bloom. (Are they aware that it's cold out? )


















And finally, I made it to the Palace!














MORE PALACE!













So after looking at the palace, I was just about to leave when something started happening! I really don't know what it was, but it was cool:



After the palace I went to the Ibsen Museum, which is the apartment where he lived out his last years. It was a really cool place that I could write a whole post about just in and of itself. It was really sweet because when I got a tour of the apartment, I was the only English speaker, so they gave me my own tourguide, who not only was really nice, but tolerated me peppering her with questions.

On the other side of the lake

Today we went to the other side of the lake, where relatives from the other side of my Grandmother’s family lived. Hanah Maria Eriksson, Grandma’s mother’s mother. She was the one that emigrated to Proctor, Vermont with her three children. And a year after (14 months) after she arrived, she died. She was buried in Proctor, Vermont, in the cemetery by the house I first lived in when I was born. (How creepy is that... the house was built on the site of the hospital, and when we moved to the area before I was born, my parents had no CLUE that she even came to that town. Mom didn’t start doing Genealogy for our Swedish family until later) Creepy creepy creepy.

So we went to Visnums-Kil Kyrka (church), which was the place my mother re-established three gravestones the last time she was here in Sweden, 2002. The graves where Hanah’s Mother and Father and Brother. (Emma Christina Carlsdotter; Anders Erik Eriksson; Otto Eriksson) It’s sad because when Otto, the baby of the family, went to America to go see his sister’s grave, and on the way back got sick and died, leaving his young family behind. Visnums-Kil was quite neat… They had some 13th and 14th century artifacts there that we could look at and read about, which was quite neat.

From there it was just a short drive past the new school and the old school (about a mile) to the Homestead Museum. We went to the Homestead, where we suspected that there was some information or buildings about Hanna’s mother, Emma. Emma stayed behind in Sweden even when all her family had emigrated to America, staying… somewhere. We suspect the house on the Homestead property, which was converted into a home for the old people, is where Emma spent her last days growing old. The couple there was very nice. We also got to see a bakery that had been moved from Kilsby Farm, where we know the family worked. On that farm, in Kilsby, is where Hanna was born in 1869.

After that we went to the Old Schoolhouse, where we know that all the children from Kilsby farm went to school. We know that Emma and her daughter Hannah both went to the school. The school was built in 1840.

From the schoolhouse we drove out to Kilsby and drove through the farm. There were a lot of little houses, all in various states of disrepair, but the timber was still there, so we could get an impression of what the farm had been like, if we could imagine away the forest.

On the way out of Visnums-Kil we stopped and took photos of someone who was raising (instead of cattle, goats or sheep)… deer. Or if not deer, then some type of reindeer. They had big racks (antlers) and were quite beautiful. I took pictures. Then we grabbed some icecream to hold us over because we were starving, but wanted to keep going. Besides, the food at the rest stop was rather… sketchy. My mother used the word… questionable. (generational differences in semantics)