A relaxing morning as we await the arrival of our son, Steve, and family (wife, Julie and daughter, Zoe) who are arriving from their brief visit to Bergen. Today is also the starting date for our Lindblad Expedition to Svalbard.

There is a local team of Lindblad people in the lobby, greeting the some 160 arrivals who are part of the tour. The ship is fully booked. I was told it is mostly Americans but there are always a small number of foreigners on their trips. Lindblad is offering a three-hour tour of some of the local sights for interested parties. There is a meet and greet cocktail party and buffet dinner this evening at 7PM.

Yvonne slept in while I sat in the lobby, waiting for Steve and family and working on my blog entries. They arrived about 11:30 and we all gathered in our room so Yvonne could greet everyone and develop a game plan for the day. Steve wanted to visit the Viking Ship and Fram Museums here, two very famous museums dedicated to famous explorers from the area- the Vikings and Roald Amundsen, a famous 20th century Norwegian explorer of both the North and South polar regions.

Yvonne and I had seen the fabulous Viking Ship Museum on a previous visit to Oslo but I had never been to the Fram Museum so that intrigued me. And I certainly would enjoy seeing the Viking ships again.  Yvonne decided to continue her day of R&R and four of us ventured out to begin our day of exploration under sunny skies and upper 60 degree temperatures. It was a beautiful day in Oslo.

The two museums are located on a peninsula across the harbor, most easily reached by taking a 15 minute ferry ride from the downtown harbor. We walked the 0.5 mile to the ferry and soon were on our way as the passenger ferries run every 20 minutes.

The Viking Ship Museum is famous because it houses several magnificent preserved Viking ships that survived being buried for over 1,000 years. The Oseberg ship, named after the farm where it was discovered in 1904,  dates back to 834 AD and is the largest burial ship found to date. Vikings believed in the afterlife and so were buried in their ships, along with provisions needed in the afterlife. Besides the ship many of these astounding artifacts are on display in the museum.

The ship is a OMG amazing sight. It is 71 feet long, 16 feet wide with a 30 foot mast. When not under sail it had 30 rowers to provide propulsion.  I was very surprised to learn that it was the burial site for two women, obviously important people as I always thought these were burial sites for men.  In addition to the human remains there were skeletons of 14 horses, an ox and three dogs in the burial site. There were also many household goods including three sleds and a magnificently carved cart among the artifacts. All are on display. I was amazed by the detail of the carvings on the sleds and cart.  If you are interested in learning more about this ship use this link.: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oseberg_shiphttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oseberg_ship

There are two other ships on display: the Gokstad and the Tune. The Gokstad is even larger than the Oseberg ship; it is 78 feet long and was used mainly for warfare, trade, transportation of people and goods. It housed 32 oarsmen. The Tune is a smaller ship (72 feet) and only fragments of the hull remain. Both ships date back to around 900 AD.

From the Viking Ship museum it was a pleasant 10 minute walk through a lovely residential area to the Fram Museum, the site of two famous Norwegian expedition ships from the early 20th century. The museum honors Norwegian polar exploration in general and three great Norwegian polar explorers in particular—Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup and Roald Amundsen.

The Gjoa was the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. With a crew of six, Roald Amundsen traversed the passage in a three-year journey, finishing in 1906. The Fram is a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctica regions by the explorers Nansen, Sverdrup, Amundsen and Wisting between 1893 and 1912. One can actually walk through the vessels to see how they were built and what life was like during their voyages. The museum is packed with information and artifacts about the men and their journeys. Our short time there hardly gave it the justice that it deserved

Our bodies and minds wore out and we found ourselves heading back to the hotel around 4PM where we were joined by Yvonne for a round of drinks, appetizers and a card game in the hotel bar.

At 7PM we met with the 164 people plus Lindblad staff for a meet and greet session and dinner. Details about tomorrow’s transfer to Longyearbyen and the ship were conveyed.  We sat with a family that had 16 year old twins (son, Dylan, and daughter, Tate). (Zoe turns 15 on this trip).  The dinner broke up early as we had to have luggage outside our doors by 9:30 PM. One of the major points made at the briefing was that the temperature in Svalbard will be less than 40 degrees (while Oslo temperatures were 70 degrees the last few days), so we were reminded to keep the cold weather jackets and hats out of our checked luggage and plan to wear them on the plane.

We are about to begin the adventure that brought us here.