Our last day in Norway

Friday was a travel day, we visited three Stave churches.  We were able to tour the Reinli Stave Church.  Jake and Jim were able to play the organ.  The tour was very in depth, and we learned a lot about the church.  The tour guide sang us a lovely song, and showed us the original church key from the 9th century that is still functional!

We traveled through the Oslo and we were greeted by the big city traffic.  We dropped off our bags and headed to a Norwegian professor's house. We had three courses of meat, including elk, cow, and traditional sausage.  Dessert was ice cream with handpicked (by us) red currents.  Jake was extremely happy about this.  We got to meet a few students and other professors from the university, and we had some good discussions with them.

We woke up and took a ferry to the Viking Ship Museum where they had three intact Viking ships.  There were also a lot of artifacts from recovered Viking burial sites.  We were able to learn about the craftsmanship of the Viking Ships.  It was amazing how well they were preserved.  We were able to trace the Viking expansion as it related to climate change during the medieval warming period.

We had a quick lunch, which included smoothies and quiche.  We then headed the the Folke Museum.  There was so much to see in the Folke Museum that you could easily spend the entire day there.  The highlights were:

• The Stave Church
• The apartment building that showed life in Oslo for the past 130 years.
• An herb garden
• An old farmstead, complete with pigs, horses, cows, and chickens.
• Summer Cottages
• Suburban Homes

We finished off the night with the most upscale meal of the trip.  Jim and Christine ate a Whale Steak, which tasted like beef with a slight seafood taste.  We had elk heart appetizers and mussels.

We are happy to be returning to the US, where prices are a little more reasonable.

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J^3 - Jim, Jake, and Jewell