Well, actually we don’t want to scream. The weather is exactly like home in March; raining all day, high of 52 degrees. Looks like it might be that way the whole time we are here. But we are having fun anyway. This being Friday, we thought we would hit the Viking Museum and Kon-Tiki Museum before they get really crowded over the weekend. But with the rain, we didn’t want to ride the boat over to Bygdøy. (Not that we’ll want to ride in the rain tomorrow either!)

We went to the Edvard Munch Museum (Munch museet) instead. And… we rode the subway to get there. For the equivalent of $85 each we got an ‘Oslo Pass’ good for three days. It gives us free entrance to most of the museums in town, free parking in municipal garages and free use of the subway (T-bane), trolleys and busses.

Edvard Munch (pronounced Monk) was a strange dude. Of course he painted ‘The Scream’. But his body of work is far more interesting. He influenced modern impressionism (although some people would say modern impressionism is redundant.) He evolved his own style several times over his life. If you traverse the exhibit in time-order or backwards like we did (oops!) you can see the changes over time. He had his demons and they really come out in his work. We each found a favorite or two that we went back to look at.

We had lunch in the café at the museum. Food is Oslo is REALLY expensive! A salad and sandwich plus bottles of water ran to seventy dollars. We found a local pizza chain that serves gluten-free pizza. Each single-person pizzas was over thirty dollars. And they had a line nearly out the door. The tax on food and everything else is twenty percent. In Sweden is it twenty-five percent. Coffee for two at a café (more Farkle) was twenty-three dollars. We don’t think we’re paying tourist prices either; food was also expensive in Denmark and Sweden. These three countries have very high social services and therefore very high taxes. And they are relatively small countries that import a lot of goods. So we’re not really surprised…

This is the half-way point; twelve nights gone by, twelve more to go. We’re not quite halfway through the driving though, so the last third of the trip will be mostly on the road. We’re have a great time!