Author: Chris

We flew a fairly small but very full plane 2 hours north to Tromso, in the northern part of Norway.  I was in the window seat and took a few shots that I felt were blog worthy.  First up, this fjord was shortly after departing Oslo.  The farming of this region is quite obvious.

This fjord was as we were nearing Tromso, about 10 minutes before landing.  Really stunning topography!

This final shot from the plane is about a minute before landing.  Love this gorgeous mountain range shrouded in the clouds!

Tromso sits at just below 70 degrees latitude, so it’s more northern than any part of Iceland.  This makes it the highest northern spot we’ve visited, so far!  Despite the northerly latitude, we had excellent weather, and I think it hit 76 on our last day here!

We walked around town on the day of arrival, and visited the Tromso Cathedral, which is rather subdued as cathedrals go, built in 1861 almost entirely out of wood.

We also hit the Olhallen Brewpub, which has 72 beers available, including ones they brew right on-site.  The local brewery is called Mack, and you can find it pretty much everywhere in northern Norway.  I think they must make 20 different beers!  If you like darker beers, go for the Mack Bayer…it has nothing to do with aspirin, but it might have the same medicinal effect.

The next day we took a hike over the Tromso Bridge to visit a couple of attractions on the other side of the fjord.

First up was the Fjellheisen Tram, that runs up Storsteinen mountain.  The views from the top are incredible!

In every direction!

We will be driving through these mountains when we head to our next destination after Tromso.  By the way, they have decent draft beer at the top, so make sure you relax with the view before heading back down.

We then hiked back towards the Tromso Bridge to visit the Arctic Cathedral, which really stands out on the landscape of Tromso!

It’s supposed to be stunning at night, but since sunset was around 11:00 each night, and it really doesn’t get very dark this far north, we never saw it lit up.  Still a beautiful cathedral which draws a lot of tourists.

I think the exterior is more of a draw than the interior, but it’s worth the fee to go inside.

On our final day in Tromso we took a 2.5 hour boat ride on Hermes II, a restored wooden boat from 1917.  A beautiful boat with an excellent crew!  Highly recommended!

We cruised by the final resting spot of the Nazi battleship “Tirpitz”, which was stationed just off Tromso.  A British air attack with 32 Lancaster bomber planes was able to heavily damage and capsize the battleship at this spot in November 1944.  The vessel was mostly salvaged afterwards, and not much remains.

The views from the Hermes II are excellent!!

Simply a perfect day in Norway!

Up next, we travel to the small island of Sommaroy for some more incredible views!

While we were in Oslo there was a cliff diving event happening at the Opera House.  I couldn’t believe how crowded it was!  We watched a couple of dives and moved on.

I thought this was a better shot of the Munch Museum than in our last post.  Really an impressive building!

The second museum we visited in Oslo was the National Museum, which is filled with Norwegian art!  Here they have the original “The Scream” painting by Munch, dating from 1893.  We were fortunate to swing by this painting first, since by the time we circled the museum and came back to it, there was a huge crowd around it.  To be honest, if you put this one and the one from the Munch Museum next to it, I don’t think I could tell one from the other, but at least there was plenty of space to view this one!

Our favorite painting in the museum was this one, “Winter Night in the Mountains” by Harald Sohlberg.  Trust me, the photo with the overhead reflections just doesn’t do this painting justice.

They had an impressive collection of non-Norwegian artists as well, like this one from Claude Monet titled “Rain, Etretat” from 1886.

As well as one of Van Gogh’s self-portraits, from 1889.

This work is from Pablo Picasso, created during his blue period (1901-1904), titled “Poor Couple in a Cafe”.  I guess the absence of food in front of them is self-explanatory?

They even had one of Rodin’s “The Thinker” sculptures!  The website for the museum is a little vague, but I’m pretty sure this is a replica, although still very valuable as it was made under Rodin’s supervision.

As you can see from the roof of the museum, it was an incredibly beautiful day in Oslo!

Since this was our last day here we decided to visit Frogner Park, the most beautiful park in Oslo.  This was on a Sunday and the park was packed with people!

The flowers were in full bloom!

The section of the park with the fountain and the monolith behind it is known as Vigeland Sculpture Park.  This area was built by Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, who created 212 sculptures for the park, mostly installed between 1940 and 1949.  The fountain was the earliest sculpture in the park, installed in 1924.

The most impressive sculpture is “The Monolith”, carved from a single block of granite.  Standing at nearly 56 feet tall, it has 121 intertwined human figures.  Vigeland’s interpretation is that this represents humanity’s aspiration and pursuit of the spiritual.

We just aspire to take a decent selfie!

The last section of Vigeland’s park is the “Wheel of Life”, with a man, a woman and two children holding onto each other for all eternity.  I didn’t find it nearly as impressive as The Monolith.

We saw this sign on our way back to the hotel, in the window of a tattoo parlor.  Really curious where this sign was originally!

Up next we head north, above the arctic circle, to visit Tromso, Norway.