When we got up this morning we headed out and stopped at a convenience store to pick up a daily travel ticket, then walked to a fruit shop to pick up a couple of apples. Then we walked down past the central station and down to Aker Brygge, which is the wharf. We got on a public ferry to Dronningen, and found some standing room out the front of the ferry. Lots of people got off at the same stop, and we pretty much followed them all up the street. There are two museums in the direct area and a few more a bit further on, so it was like a giant flock of tourists (gaggle of tourists? No, probably a goggle of tourists!) all heading up the street. Most of them turned off towards the folk museum, and we kept going up towards the Viking Ship Museum. As soon as you walk in the place, there's an absolutely gigantic Viking ship, which was perfectly preserved where it was found. It's huge, with the serpent heads at the ends, and intricate carvings along the sides. It was so big you couldn't possibly see it all, or even see over the sides of it, so they had built in little balconies into the corners of the room so you could get a good view of it. In the museum they had two other Viking ships, one that was simpler with bits missing, and less well preserved, and the other was pretty much a ruin, just the bare bones of the bottom of the ship. They had a few smaller ships on display as well which are said to be grave ships. The other section of the museum was full of artifacts that were found in the excavation of a burial mound in Norway. There were all kinds of things, carts, weapons, carvings, tools, textiles and lots of other things. There was one cart that was complete, which was so pretty! The carvings all over it were amazing! You could make out different things all woven through it, like people, serpents, animals, dragons, and heaps of other things. Lots of faces, some of them quite prominent, possibly gods? You could even see their teeth, that's how detailed it was! It was amazing! When we finished looking around there, we headed back down to the Norwegian Folk Museum, bought our tickets and went to the little cafe there for a bite. There were no vegetarian options, so I got a waffle with chocolate and toffee toppings, and crushed nuts! Darren got a burger that he thought was chicken but was actually a really gross type of fish! After lunch we headed in to the museum, where we waited in the square for an English tour that was starting in 10 or so minutes. Our guide came out, dressed up in a traditional norwegian dress, and she took us out into the open air museum, which was really cool, because we thought it was just a normal indoor museum. There were different sections made up for the different parts of Norway and the first part we went to was from an area called Setesdal, where it was made to be like a street from a village there, and had authentic houses from about 1650 that they had moved to the location! We got to go inside one of them and our guide talked to us about how they would have lived back then. After that we went to another village from the area of Numedal, which was from around the same time, but was more easily accessible to trade routes and had more of an outside cultural influence. The difference in how they lived and the 'luxuries' and technologies they had was amazing! Next we walked up to another section called the King Oscar II's collections, where there was a massive church. It looked amazing! It was black, with tiered layers and intricate carvings and gargoyles and dragon sculptures, and all sorts of things! I can't remember when it dates back to but it was really old! And the inside was amazing as well! They had a huge mural in the altar that had been painted onto the wood itself, which almost looked like the last supper. The tour ended there and we headed down and around to another village from the Telemark region. At this one, we waited for five minutes as they had a music and dance performance on. We watched a couple who were dressed in norwegian clothing dance some of the traditional dances while another girl played a violin. They danced another dance which was one that a guy would do to try impress a lady, and sometime the lady would challenge him, dance-off style! It was cool, and kind of funny too! Then the violinist introduced her instrument as a hardanger fiddle, and played a solo tune which was awesome! They did one more dance after that then finished up. We wandered around the rest of the village exhibits, including the hardanger section, which is where the fiddle was from as well as where Darren's ancestry is from. On our way back past the farms, we saw a fox in a paddock playing with something it was eating! It was a poser too, it sat up and looked at us, sitting extremely still until we took a photo, then it kept playing! So cute! We walked back past the Sami exhibition, of their teepee type things that they used to live in. One type looked as if it were dug into a hill like a hobbit house, it was awesome! By this time we were all pretty exhausted, so we decided to skip the actual museum exhibition part of it, and headed out. We walked up through the park and back into civilization, heading towards vigeland park. After a while of walking we started coming onto some shops and started looking for somewhere to go for dinner. We walked past a supermarket and decided just to grab something there and go eat in the park. We got some wraps and beer and headed into the park, where we found a nice green patch in the shade and sat down for our picnic. After our picnic we went for a stroll through the park, where they had a sculpture exhibition kind of thing. The first part was a bridge over the lake, and lining it there were heaps of naked statues of people of all ages, from babies right through to the elderly, in all sorts of weird poses! It was actually quite cool! The weirdest one, I think, was a man who looked like he was kicking and punching a bunch of babies... Random! As we went over the bridge, and past the naked man fountain that wasn't operating, you had to walk up a bunch of steps to the next section, which had a suspiciously phallic sculpture of all intertwined naked people, surrounded by more naked sculptures. It was actually quite funny to watch everyone getting their weird photos with the sculptures (we were doing it too though!) as well as seeing all the kids jumping and playing on them! After we finished looking and laughing at all the sculptures, we headed back through the park to the tram stop, where we got on the tram back to the hostel. The boys had a beer each and I had a shower and we went, pretty exhausted, to bed. We got woken up at about 11.30 by a bunch of girls who had just got in, making up their beds and making noise, which was annoying, but that's the hostel life!