This travel update is for part four of our week in Oslo, Norway. It covers July 23, our walk to Frogner Park.

July 23, 2023 – Sunday: Frogner Park

Frogner Park is west of us about a mile and is a large area of lawns, sculptures, museums, a public swimming pool, and a stadium. It’s the big green thing on this map from Google.

It’s a tourist attraction and we decided to go over there today. Our walk took us on a different road than we’ve been on so far, and we decided to get Mexican food for lunch on the way. Patti says we should make it a point to eat Mexican food at least once in any big city that we visit. Here’s Patti in the restaurant, it was a colorful place and we were in the area without a roof so we could enjoy the fresh air of Oslo.

On our walk we enjoyed seeing the various kinds of buildings along the streets. We both liked the rounded balconies on these apartment buildings.

“Frogner Park (Norwegian: Frognerparken) is a public park located in the central West End borough of Frogner in Oslo, Norway. The park is historically part of Frogner Manor and is Oslo’s largest park, open to the public at all times. It includes the manor house which is the seat of Oslo Museum, the nearby Henriette Wegner Pavilion, the Vigeland installation of sculptures (Norwegian: Vigelandsanlegget) created by sculptor Gustav Vigeland, Frogner Baths, Frogner stadion, Frognerparken Café, the restaurant Herregårdskroen and the largest collection of roses in the country with 14,000 plants of 150 species. Frogner Park is the most visited tourist attraction in Norway.”

We found a statue of Sonja Henie at the park, and Patti posed with her.

“Sonja Henie (8 April 1912 – 12 October 1969) was a Norwegian figure skater and film star. She was a three-time Olympic champion (1928, 1932, 1936) in women’s singles, a ten-time World champion (1927–1936) and a six-time European champion (1931–1936). Henie has won more Olympic and World titles than any other ladies’ figure skater. She is one of only two skaters to defend a ladies’ singles Olympic title, the other being Katarina Witt, and her six European titles has only been matched by Witt. At the height of her acting career, she was one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood and starred in a series of box-office hits, including Thin Ice (1937), Happy Landing, My Lucky Star (1938), Second Fiddle (1939) and Sun Valley Serenade (1941).”

We wanted to do the City of Oslo Museum first because it closes at 4 but the park is open 24 hours a day. The museum includes a tour of the Frogner Manor house plus numerous galleries. We went on the tour of the manor house first and our guide conducted the tour in Norwegian. She explained that to us before the tour, her English isn’t that good and everyone else on the tour was Norwegian. Over the past ten years my hearing deteriorated so I couldn’t hear a tour guide anyway, so, now that I can actually hear a tour guide with my cochlear implant, it was interesting to still not be able to understand her.

Here’s the house from across the museum courtyard.

Here’s the music room, the grand piano was lovely. Our guide is the woman dressed all in black in the foreground.

We went through a lot of rooms in the house, all were nicely furnished with period things.

Back in the museum we first went into a gallery that had lots of paintings of the city of Oslo by various artists from various time periods. This one was from old times.

I liked this painting of a fish market.

And this night scene from more modern times was nice.

This was a really enjoyable gallery. We’ve never seen so many pictures of a single city all grouped together like this.

After that we went into the other side of the museum where they had a large exhibition of the WWII German occupation of Norway. That issue comes up a lot here. Here’s a picture of Norwegian women getting training on how to put out a fire after an air raid.

Hopefully they were wearing flame retardant clothing.

After the museum we walked through the sculpture park that has over 200 sculptures by Gustav Vigeland.

“Gustav Vigeland (11 April 1869 – 12 March 1943), born as Adolf Gustav Thorsen, was a Norwegian sculptor. Gustav Vigeland occupies a special position among Norwegian sculptors, both in the power of his creative imagination and in his productivity. He is most associated with the Vigeland installation (Vigelandsanlegget) in Frogner Park, Oslo. He was also the designer of the Nobel Peace Prize medal.”

There’s a bridge with about 100 bronzes of naked people in various poses like this one.

This fountain is one of the centerpieces, its got some naked men holding up a bowl.

I was impressed with how evenly the water overflowed the bowl, they must have worked hard to make that bowl level.

This granite column was another highly photographed sculpture.

When we’d seen all the tourist stuff at the park we walked back home. We enjoyed our day in Frogner Park!

Special Feature: The Blue Plaques of Oslo

We’ve noticed that there are blue plaques on the outside walls of some of the buildings in Oslo, similar to the blue plaques we saw in London. They mark buildings in which notable people once lived. Here’s one that’s near our Airbnb.

They’re all in Norwegian, of course, but luckily Google Translate Camera can read and translate the words. According to Google this one says:

Future Plans

• July 18 – 26: We are currently staying at an Airbnb reservation in Oslo.
• July 27: We fly Norwegian Airlines from Oslo to Longyearbyen.
• July 27 – August 2: We have an Airbnb reservation in Longyearbyen.
• August 2: We fly SAS Airlines from Longyearbyen to Tromsø.
• August 2 – 10: We have an Airbnb reservation in Tomsø.
• We are thinking that after Tromsø, we will head south down the coast of Norway, making reservations as we travel along.
• October 17 – December 3: No plans yet.
• December 3 – 9: I will be participating in research in Durham, North Carolina, at the Med-El facilities there. Med-El is the company that made my Cochlear Implant. I’ll spend 9am to 4pm for five days being a lab rat. They say they will test various new programming options for my cochlear implant with the goal of improving their systems. It should be fun. I’m looking forward to it.
• December 9: We drive to Bradenton, Florida
• December 9 – 31: We reserved a cabin at Horseshoe Cove RV Park in Bradenton, Florida, where we stayed last year for two months (November and December). We look forward to singing in the Christmas Choir again.

2024

• January through April: We plan to travel through Belize, Costa Rica, and Panama. We don’t have any reservations yet.
• May and June: We’ve reserved a cabin at Horseshoe Cove RV Park in Bradenton, Florida. We’ll spend these two months getting our yearly medical stuff done and visiting with family and friends. May and June are “off-season” in the Sarasota / Bradenton area, and the rate is $56 per night for these 61 days, which is pretty good for a place like this in this location. In season, January through March, the price doubles.
• After June 30, we have no plans, but we are entertaining options about where to travel next summer. Maybe Germany/Austria/Switzerland?