November 30 to December 10, 2025
Gate1 Travel and 5-day Cruise, with 33 stops, on the Hurtigruten cruise ship, Nordkapp, with Jane and Joy. Met AJ (TX), Donna (MN), Patrice (MN) and Gloria (NJ)
Joy and I left DAB to ATL where we met Jane. Then on to Amstterdam and Oslo. Coming home it was Bergen to Amsterdam to ATL — where we departed from Jane — to DAB. No snafus AT ALL!
I apologize for the amount of mediocre photos on this trip. I realize you cannot convey the beauty of what we saw via photos.
It was exciting to see snow. And there was the anticipation of wondering if I would survive the cold.
We stayed at the Thon opera Hotel and it took me a while to figure out it was named that because it was across from the famous opera house.
Jane and I set out on a mission to get to City Hall where they present the Nobel Peace prizes. With our lack of map reading ability and lack of speaking Norwegian, when we finally spoke to somebody about getting to the City Hall he suggested we take the Subway because it was three Subway spots away! We saw a lot of the city but needless to say never hit City Hall.
This floating structure was meant to look like an iceberg. Hmmm.
Also across the street from the hotel was a five-story library. Was amazing. People were everywhere reading and studying. I suppose if you want to get out of your house in Norway and it’s too cold to take a walk, going to a library would be a fun outing. These cats were huge.
Here’s their money. This is equivalent to $50. I didn’t even exchange money since most people will take US dollars and they are big on credit cards (except American Express).
These photos of Oslo were taken at 9:00 a.m.
Always…..Mickey D’s.
This park and all it’s statues were donated by Gustav Vigeland. He was a wonderful Sculptor but not much of a husband or father. He sent his wife and kids off, never to see them again.
We were all dealing with our gloves, hats, coats, scarves and boots while trying to take pictures of these impressive sculptures.
Rather than pull off my glove every time I needed to hit the dot on my camera, I realized I could say “cheese” or “smile” and my phone would take a picture by itself. I sounded a little crazy, but it kept my hands warm.
click.
This big dish with the men holding it up was the statue that the Sculptor wanted displayed and the city wouldn’t let him. So he donated all his other statues for the park, and they finally acquiesced.
The park contains 192 sculptures with more than 600 figures. The park’s most popular attraction is a Monolith column, measuring 46 feet high, it is
carved from a single block of granite and took three stone sculptors 14 years to complete
Frozen!!
I love this statue. It’s in our hotel lobby. I just noticed the man has no legs.
Because there was some happening at City Hall (maybe a presentation of a Nobel Prize), we were not able to tour it so we took a bus ride up a mountain to see one of the first ski jumps in the country that was used in the Olympics in the ’50’s. It was very foggy and we couldn’t really see it due to the fog. But we all got out, hit the bathrooms and got hot chocolate, and people were happy.
These little kids were so bundled up on their field trip, it was cute.
This may be some of the reason we couldn’t go to City Hall because they may have been preparing for the Nobel Peace Prize winner. (The one who beat out Trump in his bid for the Peace Prize).
CLICK.
We Visited the Fram Museum that housed an actual ship that went both to the North Pole and the South Pole in the late 1800’s or early 1900s.
This windmill on the ship actually made electricity.
In the early 1890s, Fridtjof Nansen devised a groundbreaking plan to reach the North Pole by constructing the specially designed ship Fram, which could withstand the pressures of ice.
We heard the story of how the Explorer had his ship built with a rounded hull so that when they were frozen in the ocean, slowly the ice would push against their sides lifted up high enough that they would get out of the ice. At one point they were stuck for over a year when Nansen and one other man decided to walk or ski back to their original debarkation spot.
At some point on their journey the ice melted and they had to take all their equipment and use it to build some kind of raft. They paddled back to their original spot. Ironically while they were going through all this hassle the ship finally broke out of its ice jail and arrived in a nearby city to Nansen within a week.
If the Nansen hadn’t left he would have ended up in the same place without having to risk his life.
They were crazy to get in a ship this small and get to the North Pole. But they eventually did it.
This is their refrigerator freezer. It needed no electricity, just the temperature from the outside to keep it all cold.
Once Nansen went to the North Pole he geared up for another tour what apparently was going to be the North Pole again. Days before they set out with his crew he told them they were going to the South Pole. He had all the plans made and all the proper food and they actually discovered the South Pole a week before another Explorer did.
They actually had a woodworking shop on the ship because they had to make things as they were sailing.
And they made their outfits out of the seals they killed on the trip. Thus, tthe Singer sewing machine was necessary.