Day 2, Oslo, Norway

Arrived in Oslo and was disappointed to find out the ship is not docking where I expected it to dock. I've always assumed the ship will dock in the cruise terminal across the street from Akershus Castle. If I had checked the port schedule beforehand, I would have known that it is scheduled to dock at Filipstad Container Crane West cargo terminal on the other side of the bay.

This threw our plans completely out of schedule. We now couldn't go back to the ship for lunch after visiting Akershus Castle. Princess offered a shuttle to the cruise terminal for $8/$16 one-way/round trip. We took the one-way ticket to the cruise terminal and bought the 24 hour Oslo pass. The ticket counter at the terminal is completely disorganized. Maybe it's because of the hour we got there (around 10:30am) but there were about 30 people waiting for 2 attendants and no one was falling in line. Finally got our Oslo passes after about 20 minutes. Cruise passengers get a 20% discount on the pass which comes out to 216/96 NOK adult/child. Walked across the street to Akershus fortress and visited the Norway Resistance museum.

Akershus Fortress

Akershus Fortress

We then took the ferry to Bygdøy and got off on the second stop. If you get off on the first stop, Dronningen, it is a long walk uphill to the Viking Ship museum. The second stop, Bygdøynes, is right by the Fram, Kon-Tiki, and Norwegian Maritime museums.

Fram Museum

Kon-Tiki Museum

We then took bus #30 and got off on the second stop and walked the rest of the way to the Viking Ship museum. Make sure you get off on this stop because the bus turns left on this route and does not stop at the Viking Ship museum.

Viking Ship Museum

Since we couldn't go back to the ship to eat lunch, we had hotdogs at this store around the corner from the Viking Ship Museum. The lines at the the stand outside the museum were quite long.

We then took bus #30 to Olav Kyrres plass stop and transferred to bus #20 to Vigelandsparken for the Vigeland Sculpture park.

On the way back at the Vigelandsparken tram stop, for some odd reason, tram #17 stopped at the station that day. We knew beforehand that we're supposed to take tram #12 back to Aker Brygge so we skipped this tram and waited for the actual tram #12. From the Aker Brygge stop, it was about a mile walk back to the ship. We probably had time to visit City Hall and the Nobel Peace Center but we've been walking for about 5 hours already and didn't want to add any more distance away from the ship. If the ship was docked at the cruise terminal, the walk would have been a fraction of that distance from the nearest tram stop.