Naked People, or Day 15 in Oslo

We woke up and opened the curtains, and I was overjoyed with sunshine. Oslo has the best weather! At least for today, and forecasted for tomorrow.

We wore flip-flops and capris and t-shirts. First, we visited the fortress and royal reception rooms in the castle there. Guess what? Christian IV helped build it and it burnt down at one point. Big surprise.

We did get audio guides that allowed us to listen to ghost stories about the castle. There was a hound of death, little witch-y "vampires of the night" that caused fires, a Swedish tease that got shot, and a starved maid.

We next wandered to the actual royal palace, for the less than a century that has been a sovereign Norway. After circling, we realized there weren't any tours or anything, just a cute park around it.

Not really interested in any of the museums in town (and still wanting to soak up sunshine), we decided to walk the final half mile to Froggner Park.

After grabbing some luscious red strawberries for a snack, we got to the park and admired the statues that were meant to symbolize birth to death (all of them naked).

While we were walking along a path, two workmen were conferring over a large baby bird one of them had discovered. We rubber-necked for a bit, then, not wanting to leave it in the middle of a pedestrian path, we tried to shoo it off to the side. A minute into our futile effort, a man walking by just picked it up and set it by the trees. Small problem solved. The whole surviving problem probably wasn't, but there was only so much we could do.

Out of ideas, we sat (me in the sun, Alisa in the shade next to me), playing cards and gawking at the Norwegians that were down to bikinis and bras (in addition to cooking and drinking in the park). An hour or two of this, and I was parched, and we were ready for some food.

We made it halfway back to the hotel, found a sidewalk cafe to have some combination of lunch and dinner, and regained enough strength to make it down Karl Johans Gate, the big pedestrian thoroughfare. We both had chafing sandals, so a walk back to the hotel was in order.

A television with seven channels doesn't leave a good chance for English programming, so we watched "A Walk To Remember," dubbed. Part way through, we realized it was dubbed in German. Alisa and I managed to work up some tears anyway, then we were off for a sunset drink at the harbor.

There's a juicier story that has to do with tonight, but we'll save that for in-person storytelling.