Day 14 - Sep. 1

This day was a biggie. First, I have to tell you that it rained pretty much all day. Not to be deterred because this was our only opportunity to explore this ancient and very important city, we donned our raincoats and headed out the door, maps, cameras and binoculars at the ready. (Note: Blogspot has upgraded their posting capabilities and I can now put captions under photos. I'm going to try that for the photos, but will describe where we went on this day in the body of this post. Subsequent posts will have the photos. Something with this, * means that there's a photo in a later post.)

We wanted to visit Munkholmen * which is a very small island in the harbor. It was used as a prison starting in the 11th century and some truly barbaric things happened there. To get there, one takes a 15-minute ferry *, unfortunately, we arrived at the ferry one hour BEFORE it left on its first trip of the day. Since it was raining, we dashed into a little bakery and had a coffee and shared a small, but luscious, sweet roll. That took about 20 minutes, so we headed back outside and decided to go to the Nidaros Cathedral * which was about 1/4 mile away, but directly up the street from where we were. Took a couple of photos outside (no photos allowed inside) and when we went to have a peek inside, we were told we had to pay. Time was getting short and, since we were more interested in learning about barbaric treatment of prisoners in the 11th to 15th centuries than we were in seeing the inside of a cathedral, we politely declined and walked back to the ferry. They were beginning to load passengers, so we were happy.

When the tour of Munkholmen was over, we decided to take the bus to the Ringve Museum, which houses an incredible collection of musical instruments of all kinds and from all parts of the world. This was one of the most interesting museums I've ever visited. I know that many of you, friends and family, are musically inclined and I encourage you to visit their website: http://www.ringve.com/English/  Their collection of instruments * on display in a building called "The Barn" is mind-boggling! Almost all instruments are behind glass and my camera's photos were all out of focus, but Ivan was able to adjust his camera to get some nice ones. There are three photos later on. We spent much of the day here.

We finally left on the bus back to town. Since it was still raining and we were tired, we elected to have dinner at the hotel again. Not as good the second time, but it sustained us.

(Another note: I took several photos of odd things we saw and those will be posted with small explanations with them. A couple probably won't need explanation!)