Our daily adventure

Today Katherine and I took a bus (for the first time) into the center of town. I guess we technically live in the center when you look at the entire city but I mean more of the tourist and happening part of town. Our main objective was to go to the tourist information office to pick up brochures. Being a cold climate, the off season starts in a few weeks and opening hours are reduced. Some sights even close for the winter in September! I want to make sure we don't miss any of the key sights.

The National Museum and the "Tex Burger"

I got off the bus and started walking, not really knowing which direction I was heading but not wanting to look like a tourist. I walked past the National Museum and a lot of theaters. We found a park with statues, fountains and birds. Katherine loves birds, not like her Nana who hates them. If she was not in the stroller, she would have tried to catch one. We found the tourist office and had our questions answered. I ate lunch at a chinese restaurant. I had a chicken and rice dish, one egg roll and juice and it cost $30! Soooooo expensive in Olso. We also stopped in a toy store. They have a lot of really cool wooden toys but again, they are expensive. I am sure we will buy something for souvenirs but we will wait.

Bir and Wa - Birds and Water

We hopped back on the subway to head back to our area. It is only one stop but just far enough to not walk. Plus I wanted to look for some shops I had heard about near the subway station. I found a health food store with organic stuff. Again, so expensive. The only thing I bought was a $7 jar of applesauce for Katherine. That is a consistant part of her diet and the only other applesauce I had found was baby food and even more expensive because you buy the little jars. Then we found Child Planet. It is an indoor kids play area that you pay to go in. It is $5 for each person, regardless of age. You can also drop them off for daycare but that is $30 an hour and I can't think of anything I need to do that bad...though I did see a movie theater across the street. It was almost nap time so we did not stay but we will go back next week to play. I also found the grandaddy of grocery stores. It was like a light was shining down from heaven when I saw it. Not really but so far all the stores have been really small and loaded with unfamiliar products. This one was maybe 1/3 the size of a US grocery store, pretty large when you consider that most of the others in our area are only 6 aisles. It had a large produce and meat section and a lot of familiar items. They even had a Tex Mex section to satisfy any craving we may have.

Tex Mex section of the grocery store

We headed home with a full stroller of groceries. Katherine took a nap. I just checked our Fed Ex tracking and it has moved from "Clearance Delay" to "arrived at location". I called and that means they will deliver on Monday. Good news that I know when, bummer that it is not today and they don't deliver on Saturday. I am ready for Katherine to have her bed.

After dinner we went on our nightly walk to explore new sections of our neighborhood. We found another playground. Nana, we made sure to take pictures with the adults just for you. Here Katherine is struggling and mastering walking on the cargo net.

We also found an Apen Barnhage, which is an open kindergarten. It is a pretty cool concept where they (the state) sponsors staffed kindergartens for stay at home moms to come and bring their kids. You stay and play. So, your kids are able to play, moms interact and there are staff on hand to facilitate activities, set out coffee, tea and fruit and provide support for families. It cost $5 per time. The one we saw was for a particular neighborhood that we technically live just outside of but I am going to see if I can go anyway. It is a neighborhood where there are a lot of Americans.

We also went into Frogner Park. Sam had not been there before. We actually went into the sculpture section. The sun was setting so it was pretty. The sculptures are well done and some are really sweet relationships the only thing is that they are all nude. So you have a sweet picture of a mother and son - naked. Here are a few photos. Note that I was using my small camera, not my really nice one. I plan to go back for better photos.