My husband, Dave, and I aren’t frequent international travelers, and we never thought about Norway as a destination. But after a recent high school reunion, an idea to visit Norway was born.
More than 50 years ago, a young man from Norway, Bjorn, was the foreign exchange student in my high school in Pana, Illinois. When he returned to attend our 50th class reunion, we had a wonderful time sharing high school stories and catching up.
That evening someone suggested a trip to Norway to visit Bjorn. About a dozen classmates greeted the idea with enthusiasm. As it turned out, the person who made the suggestion (and nearly everyone else) decided against the adventure.
But Noela, Becky and I thought we could organize a small group, and Dave was game. After consulting with Bjorn, who enthusiastically encouraged us, we decided on a 10-day tour that would start and stop in Oslo, Bjorn’s home, and we’d spend time with him at the end.
Our Globus tour guide was terrific—this was her 30th year on the job. Everyone we encountered was friendly, helpful and fluent in English.
Norway is breathtakingly beautiful. Fjords, lakes, snowcapped mountains and waterfalls abound. We saw boats of every type, from cruise ships to small fishing dinghies, as well as ferries, beautiful yachts and pleasure boats of every size. Marinas were in almost every city on our tour.
At the beginning of our tour, we visited two boat-related museums in Oslo. The first was the Fram Museum, which is built around the Fram, arguably the strongest wooden ship ever constructed. It was used on three important expeditions: Fridtjof Nansen’s expedition on a drift over the Arctic Ocean from 1893 to 1896; Otto Sverdrup’s 1898–1902 expedition to the Arctic Archipelago west of Greenland—now Nunavut territory in Canada; and Roald Amundsen’s South Pole expedition from 1910–1912.
The second boat-related museum we visited was the Kon-Tiki Museum, which holds the original balsa wood raft built by Thor Heyerdahl in 1947 and artifacts from Heyerdahl’s world-famous expeditions. You can also watch the 1951 Oscar-winning documentary at the museum, which features Heyerdahl and several of his original crew.
We traveled by motor coach through Rauland, Bergen, Stalheim, Loen and Lillehammer. We returned to meet Bjorn in Oslo, where we watched Norway’s Constitution Day parades, saw the Norwegian royal family waving from their balcony and enjoyed a wonderful meal prepared by our friend.
On our last day Bjorn took us to the Munch Museum, the Holmenkollen Ski Museum & Tower, a local Oslo beach with beautiful water and a rocky shore, and other favorite parts of his wonderful city.
