Oslo, Norway

Hey everyone...we made it safe to Oslo.  Even though our plane ended up being delayed about 2 house, we still managed to see just about everything we wanted to see here.  The city is beautiful and we're having a great time.  Ryan and I are both keeping journals so we can update these blogs later, but like I said, for now I'll just update you on how we're doing.  We leave for Stockholm at 7:35 tomorrow morning (1:35 in America).  I'll let you know how that goes.  Talk to you all soon!

~Mike

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We left Connecticut at 2, and from then on the trip began with a relatively grim start.  As we stepped foot out of the car and began walking through the terminals at Newark, we all began discussing how we always check to see we have out wallets.  Funny thing, Pat didn't have his.  So after calling Alex's mom and having her turn the car around, Pat got his wallet out of the car and we made our way through security.  Our plane was 2 hours delayed due to a valve that doesn't do anything in the air anyway...actually it barely does anything at all...it allows for air conditioning in the plane while it's at the gate...brilliant.

We arrived in Oslo at 11:30 in the morning local time to a partly cloudy day with temps in the 20's and 30's.  Before we even went through customs, Brady managed to break something in the bathroom, so it looks like we'll be leaving our mark here.  We took Fly-to-Get to Oslo, which was a 20 minute train ride through gorgeous Norwegian countryside.  When we arrived in Oslo we bought our tickets for Stockholm for the following day, and began walking

 to the hostel.  The hostel was only about 10 minutes away and very clean - Almost like a hotel.  We put our bags down and decided it would be best if we started exploring.  

After asking the front desk exactly where we should go and what we should see, we headed towards Akershus Fortress and Castle.  The fortress was awesome and gave us amazing views of the city.  We were able to see all the way to the mountains, making us all wish we were able to ski.  The air was so clean and crisp in oslo it was hard to believe that you were even in a city at all.  Not only that, the entire city was quiet - dead quiet.  It was actually th perfect place to visit first, as it allowed for us to relax a bit.

From the fortress we began to walk towards the city center.  We found a great place to go ice skating in Spikersuppa, so we decided it would be fitting to go since we were in Norway.  After embarrassing ourselves for a little while, we walked up a very long hill to the Parliament and Royal Palace.  The Royal Palace had guards at the front gates, although I'm not sure it was necessary, as there was so much open land in front of the palace that you would be able to see anyone coming from a mile away. 

After admiring the view, we walked back down and grabbed some dinner.  As it was Sunday,

 nothing was really open except for a TGIFridays, so, unfortunately, that is what we ate.  Alex, Ryan, and I all got relatively mall meals, while Pat decided to get baby back ribs and a glass of merlot because, hey, he's on vacation (a phrase we expect to hear a lot on this trip).  Everything was so expensive that we couldn't believe it. We went back to our hostel and decided to rest for the night, as we were all pretty tired from the trip over.

See more of my photos from Oslo here.