What happens when you twist your ankle?

Occasionally, people ask how we will deal with illness or injury as we travel, particularly since US insurance rarely applies outside the US. Travel insurance only covers injury during travel. My macular degeneration is considered a chronic condition and therefore not covered (see amdontheroad.wordpress.com).

Jonathan sprained his ankle on one of our last days in Kjerstad (June 28). We’d already reserved 2 nights hotel in Oslo to have a day in the city. The Oslo airport is a 40 minute train ride from the city, and there is a lot of walking in a one-day visit, so we had to rethink.

We rented a car and each chose a place we wanted to see, settling on the Viking Ship museum, the stave church at the Norwegian folk museum and the Vigeland sculpture garden in Frogner Park. The Viking ships are impressive, even though the gold and other loot was long gone by the time they were excavated.

I’ve wanted to see a stave church since I wrote a paper about them for an anthropology class in college. The oldest portion of this one dates to about 1200. It was originally built in Gol, Norway and when the city was going to tear it down in 1880, the king, Oscar II, had it saved and restored in its current location among many other structures from around Norway in the Norsk Folkemuseum.

Jonathan rested his foot in the cafe while Paula and I did a bit more walking around the Folkemuseum. The costumed people manning the stops were well informed and we chatted with the man in the stave church for a while, the the silversmith and the pottery studio. It was raining in earnest by this time, so we headed to the cafe for a few minutes before leaving.

Our final tour stop was Frogner Park to see the Vigeland sculptures. Jonathan was only able to manage a short walk, though we pulled out our binoculars to look at birds splashing about in the rain.

From there we went to an early dinner at Markveien. It was delicious (see Jonathan’s review on TripAdvisor). We headed back to the hotel, having made the best of a day that could have been much more difficult. We were happy to have the car in the morning to get us back to the airport. Our flight was not until 11:40 am, so we had plenty of time to get there and give Jonathan time to walk slowly to the gate. We successfully spent the rest of our Norwegian kronor, to the last one.