It's the country on the left in the light color.The days are shorter in Norway and it is very cold this time of year because Norway is located near the polar circle (similar latitude to Anchorage, Alaska). Luckily, the weather felt like NYC this week because the temperature was up in the mid-40s without any rain as the weatherman forecasted.
After my meetings today, I went shopping at Oslo City, a large indoor shopping mall near the hotel to buy you a few things to get ready for winter: a pink hat with mittens, a warm pink fleece outfit, some cute pink booties and more PJs. I also enjoyed a very lovely team dinner at a restaurant called Oro – which received one Michelin star. The food was excellent and the service was top-notch; if it were in the States, I would definitely take your Daddy out for a nice French dinner since it is his favorite.
Here in Norway, they serve Reindeer as a main course – when you get a bit older, you might be mortified when you read that your Mommy ate Reindeer for dinner (as in Rudolph the red-nosed Reindeer). Other traditional Norwegian foods include fresh, salted or smoked fish – I tried ‘rakfish’ (or rakörret for ‘rotten’) as an appetizer which is fermented trout served with sour cream, onions and pickled beetroot. In the days before freezers and canned foods, they had to preserve food by different kinds of fermentation. Rakfish tasted similar to gravalax (cured salmon) but much saltier. One more thing to note – Norway is often described as a ‘dry’ country because alcohol is very expensive here to prevent locals from drinking too much (maybe because when it is dark and cold in the winter, people used to drink too much because there wasn’t much else to do?).
Before leaving for the airport this morning, I took a walk around the central part of Oslo. It was still very dark outside at 7am when I woke up – the sun does not rise until after 8AM and it sets around 4PM, but in a few months there will only be a few hours of sunlight during the day – I’m not so sure I would survive a winter in Norway with only 3-4 hours of daily sunlight! On the flipside, during the summer time, the days never end – some people come to Norway just to play golf at midnight.
Daddy here. Here's the photos mommy took in Norway. This kind of looks like Seattle to me.
I'm not sure what this building is. Mommy said there are only a few million people living in Norway and half a million in Oslo. I would have thought it was bigger than that.
Look at this funny coffee stand. Looks like a coffee cup.
Looks like Oslo has lots of nice sculpture in the city.
Another nice shot of Oslo.
Outside of Oslo, there are beautiful fjords (curved out during the Ice Ages) to explore by boat, mountain areas to go hiking, and ski areas like Lillehammer (site of the 1994 Winter Olympics, only 2 hours away from Oslo via train). Too bad I did not have any free time to explore the rest of the country – maybe someday we’ll come to Norway for a family ski vacation or to visit with Ruth & Skylar Granlund (Mommy’s best friend from college who is Norwegian but has never visited Norway).
p.s. Your Daddy was so sweet to post photos of you while I was away. I love checking the blog to see what you're up to - I can't wait to see you later tonight. My flight from London is supposed to arrive JFK at 7:30pm so hopefully you will still be awake when I reach home, or else I may have to pick you up from your crib to give you a big hug (and hope that I don't wake you up or else your Daddy will be mad at me!).
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