We’ve been in Oslo since late Sunday night and we are really enjoying ourselves. We airbnb-ed a room in someone’s apartment and the place is lovely. What’s more, the person who owns the apartment is out of town, so we have the place to ourselves. I’ve been cooking and it’s been so nice. I felt like we had so little control over our diet in Iceland because there weren’t that many places to eat and everything was insanely expensive. We kept just getting soup because it was the cheapest thing; I consumed more soup in the 10 days I spent in Iceland than I had in my entire life prior.

Anyway, Oslo has plenty of food and I’ve been making sure we get our vegetables. Garett even found me some kale. Kale! We’re going to have it tonight.

Garett and I have made a tour of parks this week, including the botanical gardens. The weather has been wonderful and warm. Here are a few pictures from our park explorations. We’re not sure why there are panthers in that last park. At first we thought it was a reference to Oslo as the “Tiger City,” but they are definitely black panthers. Maybe they love Marvel.

These are from Frogner Park. The statues are done by Gustav Vigeland.

We also went to two ship museums. The first contained three restored Viking ships. They were cool; the lady who sold us our tickets said that the museum is the most popular one in Norway. Just like in Iceland, everyone really loves Vikings. The carving on the right is from the ship!

The second ship museum had two ships used in early explorations of the Arctic, the Fram and the Gjøa. There was a ton of information, but I was most interested in learning about the Inuit. I had steeled myself for the seemingly inevitable attempts of the white men to “civilize” or covert the heathens, but the Inuit and the explorers actually got along remarkably well and learned a lot from one another.

Today we went to the Interkulturelt Museum, a free museum in the neighborhood of Grønland, which is an area that has a number of immigrant communities. I was surprised, actually, that Oslo had so many immigrants. I guess I was imagining that Oslo would be more homogeneous–white and tall and blond. This is not the case–there are a lot of interracial couples, women in hijabs, and people from all of the world. Here is a picture from one of the exhibits at the museum. It’s titled “You are never alone.” If you look closely you can see Garett hidden right in the middle.