After travelling 62 miles to the northern most end of Oslofjord we docked in Oslo, Norway at 10:00 am with a back on board time of 10:30 pm. It was a glorious sunny day of about 22 degrees. The ship docked right in town next to an old fortress. It felt like you could reach out and touch it from the ship it was so close.

I'd booked a tour for today so we set off on a sail boat cruise around the fjord. We saw a number of modern buildings, including the Opera House and the museum of modern art. There was also a sculpture in the harbour that was created as a replica of a painting of an iceberg, it was very cool (ha ha!).

We saw some new apartments overlooking the water and some small summer holiday homes that one in three Oslo inhabitants own (the population is about 650,000). We passed the summer palace of Oscarshall (now a museum) before docking at the museum.

This museum housed two polar explorer wooden ships from around 1892 (Fram and Maud). We were able to walk through the Fram to see where they slept, ate and passed the time while on explorations that took years. Pretty impressive. I can't imagine how they coped in such a constrained, difficult and unknown environment for such a long period. And the logistics of organising such a trip is astounding - food for 3-5 years?

We left the museum by bus and did a tour through the city before returning to the ship. We had lunch, watched a movie then took off on foot to explore the city.

We walked down the main drag (Karl Johan's Gate) past the parliament and a lovely central park with a fountain and pool that they use for ice skating in the winter. We were told the average temperature in winter is around -4 degrees and often as low as -20! Too cold for me, especially when they thought that today was a good swimming day. I wore jeans and a long sleeved top.

We also had a quick look in a souvenir shop where I was able to purchase some Christmas decorations: a moose and a reindeer!

We returned back to the ship and found a sunny spot on the Promenade deck. We had the whole space to ourselves and then noticed that most of the doors were barred with a 'deck closed' notice. We obviously found the right door!

Norway has been around for 1000 years, but it was part of Denmark for about 350 and also of Sweden before finally setting out on its own. We were told it had always been a poor country previous to the discovery of oil in their waters.

After dinner we sat in one of the bars and enjoyed the view out the window - lots of ships on this highway and some distant views of the Bealdt Bridge and lots more wind turbines. They are everywhere!

The pianist must have noticed I was in the audience and she played the Les Miserable medley again ;). It was getting late so we returned to the cabin for another Love Boat episode. Anthony stayed up until after midnight!