OUR EUROPEAN HOLIDAY - DAY 12 - A VISIT TO VIGELAND SCUPTURE PARK - OSL0 IN NORWAY

I work this morning to what I thought was fog but it actually turned out to be a very misty rain,   In fact it was raining when we walked over for our breakfast. 

What a treat we had dished up to us this morning with freshly squeezed orange juice, fresh breads, pate, sliced meats, cheeses, home made jams, scrambled eggs and then to finish it all off we had lovely cups of tea and cappuccinos.

It was still raining slightly after breakfast, so we ended up going back to our apartment and just chilled for a couple of hours.  Sarah wanted to give Max a sleep before we went out. 

By 11am, the sun had come out, so we decided to pack up and head into Vigeland Sculpture Park for the afternoon.  I ended up going in with Sarah to give Brenda a break from the children.  Of course we got lost, or I guess there were lots of traffic between Steve and us and they took a turn and we missed it.  We had to find our own way into Oslo but we did manage to drive in past their lovely new Opera House which overlooks the Fjords. 

By the time we found our park, we realized that we didn't have any cash on us, and we had no idea where the others were. By this stage Sarah was feeling a little stressed.  In the end Steve came to us, and then we walked into Vigeland Sculpture Park together.  It was way bigger that I remembered and everything was just so green and so many summer flowers were out.

We made our way to the Monolith in the middle of the park.   Now that was just as I had remembered it.  People were reaching up to the heavens, and then there were all ages of people around this monolith living out their lives.  I spent quite some time looking around and taking it all in, and of course photographing it as well.  It is just too hard to describe this park adequately.  Words cannot describe the feeling of just standing there gazing around and taking it all in.  Even the photos don't really do it justice. 

We spent quite a bit of time up and around the monolith - easily over and hour....  Steve also did all the steps and walked up to the "Ring of Life". 

 It was getting close to lunch by now and the girls wanted to go visit the restrooms, so we headed off to find food and the restrooms.  We had lunch at a little cafe we found in the park...

 After we had a bite to eat we headed back to wander around more of the park..
Brenda felt like stopping so she had a book and wandered off to find a quite spot to read...
Sarah had a bit more of a look around with us and then took the children off to find a park to play in, and Steve and I wandered around the rest of the park.

 We enjoyed photography a lot of the statues and just soaking up the atmosphere of this amazing park.

 By now it was close to 4.30pm and we needed to head home as we were expected for dinner at 6.30pm.  Steve went off to look for Sarah and the children whilst I found some lovely rose gardens to sit and relax whilst he went looking...

 Steve found Sarah and the children having fun on a lawn... they thought they had found a children's playground but it turned out to be a child care centre so they were not able to play on the equipment after all.  They did have a lot of fun snapping some family photos though...

 It was after 4.30pm by the time we left and we still had to go into town and find a chemist to get some drugs for Dan as he had stayed home with some sort of flu today.  He really wanted to recover quickly before they started the rest of their tour in a couple of days time. 

It was almost 6pm by the time we got back to our AirBnB.  We just had enough time to freshen up before we headed up to the main house for dinner. 

What a meal we were served up for dinner.  The most well cooked piece of steak with potatoes and the most divine sauce with a sprig of parsley to decorate. Exquisite is the best way to describe it.  We were also served a lovely South African red wine with our meal.  For desert we were served Peach Melba.  Our host sure can cook.

It was after 9pm before we got back to our room, and then we had to get the children to bed.  Dan and Chloe cooked up some sausages ready for our road trip the next day and the rest of us packed for an early start the next morning.  We did turn TV on in Sarah's room and watched a little as we packed.  Fortunately it was all in english with Norwegian subtitles. 

There is no night up here, there is always some light in the sky, and as we didn't have curtains in our room,  we needed our eye patches to get to sleep. 
It was a great day...
Tomorrow we leave this beautiful country and head to Sweden on our way back to Copenhagen...