From the sublime to the ridiculous

What a day of extremes, from a batwing Tesla, driverless electric buses, government subsidised electric cars everywhere (no VAT, free road tolls and charging stations) to Viking ships and wooden carts dating to the first century and plastic galore. Yet everything in the supermarket is individually wrapped, right down to each parsnip = go figure. H&S mania hasn’t hit over here yet, we have seen many hair raising situations where it should, people working in precarious places without protection from roadworks to steep roofs, high rise windows that open from knee height, although a refreshingly low use of traffic cones.
Conquering the buses we headed off to the bus stop, coming across a

waterway with an astounding volume of very chilly water pounding through it. Finger numbing iced water comes straight out of the tap here. Starting at the furtherest point, we worked our way through our tour guide’s plan (ie Karen), back towards the apartment for dinner in - feet and legs aching up to our necks but rapt with how much we covered.
Viking Ship Museum: gobsmacking artefacts from burial ships dating back to 890AD, including fragments of tapestries currently being recreated using the original techniques. Great interactive film covering the journey of these funeral ships.
Royal Palace: Completed 1849 where we lucked up again, arriving for the changing of the guard and a nifty well practised performance by the military band.
Medieval Akershus Castle & Fortress: built 1299 with a hard to find entrance and impossible to photograph unless out on the fjord so nicked a photo off Wiki. Has hugely thick walls that kept invaders at

bay and the usual prison dungeons, royal burial sites, artillery from 16th century etc - that we decided not to pay to see. We gave the unattractive Oslo Cathedral a quick wave of the camera as we passed by and watched a ‘save endangered species’ demonstration at the government buildings - sound the same in any language, shout, shout, chant, chant.
Oslo Opera House = OMG! What an amazing piece of architecture, 1,100 rooms, built 2003 - 2007 @ $NZ732.5m, it is home to the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet and is their national theatre. Built to look like an iceberg rising up out of the Oslo Fjord and to invite one to walk over, and it so does. What a wind blown delight!
Loads of interesting happenings: goose bumped speedo and bikini wearers swimming in the 16 degree fjord ahead of jumping into mini floating saunas. Street entertainer playing glass bottles filled with varying amounts of water as we did as kids, although I don’t think we got as snazzy as hanging them up to make a glass organ.