Midway to JFK the girl says, if my passport isn’t in this bag I don’t have it with me.

Where did you last have it? I don’t know. Try harder. I still don’t know.

It must be in your suitcase, he says. That’s impossible, she says.

At the airport, check all the suitcases. It’s nowhere.

I say to the Norwegian Air folks, my daughter can’t find her passport. Then your daughter won’t be going to Oslo, they reply. But good news! The plane is delayed an hour. You’ll have time to go back and get it.

Oh, lucky us.

This is how we begin the last leg of The Great Leaving and it gets me spooked. I’ve been watching far too much of the fear machine that is the 24-hour American news cycle. I’m uneasy and see the Case of the Missing Passport as a sign that we shouldn’t be boarding our flight to Oslo. These thoughts piss me off (because a forgotten passport is not a sign from the universe, it’s just poor planning), though not as much as the girl in the seat next to me who lays against my shoulder the entire flight as the boyfriend rubs her feet. All while my people enjoy the extra leg room of the prime bulkhead seats directly in front of me.

The things I do for love.

Oslo

It’s cold and dreary, the sky is spitting down on us. We’ve arrived far too early to get into the Airbnb and are out of practice in the art of schlepping luggage down sidewalks of busy streets. Hello miserable Americans, welcome to Oslo!

Fortunately our host has suggested a cafe where we can wait, just down the street from the apartment on Nils Huus Gate 2. Warmth, cafe latte, croissant with jam and butter. And everyone speaks English (of course). Instant mood lifter. I sit on a conference call, distracted by one strange, nagging thought: I’d like to come back in my next life as a Norwegian infant. The blue eyed, blonde haired cherubs and their doting, effortlessly beautiful mødre pushing impeccably stylish Scandinavian prams are everywhere. I want to be them.

Anyway.

Oslo is a blur. It’s the first time since last August that I feel I’ve given a city short-shrift. The reasons are honorable: the new website launch and webinar prep for my “real job.” It doesn’t matter. I still feel cheated. We did a little exploring on Saturday. Then I sat in the flat and worked on Sunday. I sat in a coffee shop and worked all day Monday. I launched the website. I packed in a big day of sightseeing. I sat in the flat and finished my Powerpoint while my crew went out and about. Then I went to the train station.

Not my idea of deep travel. And yet, I still managed to get a taste for the city even if I couldn’t experience it as I would have preferred.

After a quiet Friday with some pretty excellent Thai food take-away and an attempt to ward off jet lag with an early bedtime, Saturday begins as the Uber driver drops us off on Jernbanetorget and we get a gander at a familiar sight: the European square. Open, tree-infused, meandering people, glorious buildings. It feels like a homecoming.

We skip the moseying and head for a 30-minute ride on Tram 12. It’s an easy way to preview the Oslo highlight reel and get our bearings. We see old town’s architecture, get a peak at the water and City Hall, wind through upscale neighborhoods and pass by Frogner Park with its statue of Sonja Henie nearby.

We hop off at the Tullinlokka stop for a visit to the National Gallery and a big surprise: Edvard Munch’s The Scream is housed here. Munch grew up in Oslo, where he began as an artist and where he spent the last decades of his life.

It was sunny but quite cold during our visit, which kept my walking to a minimum. But after a full day working in a coffee shop, we wandered down by to the Fjord for dinner. Two burgers, a beer and a milkshake for $70. This is one expensive city.

As the clock ticked down on our time in Oslo, a full day packed with “must sees” was the only way I thought I might salvage this visit. Get ready for a 40 minute bus ride to the Bygdøy peninsula for a non-stop, breakneck museum fest! The fest turned into just two stops thanks to closing times, unexpected delight in the places we chose first and mandatory coffee breaks. A reminder that sometimes two is a very acceptable number.

Norsk Folkemuseum + Kon Tiki

If this was the only place I was able to visit, I’d leave Oslo completely satisfied. The Folk Museum includes more than 150 buildings, mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries, gathered from around the country and reassembled here. It is a walk through time and it is pure delight. The weather and the fact that it was a weekday in April once again kept the crowds at bay and we often had the place entirely to ourselves. The drawback in not coming during the warmer months is missing out on guides dressed in traditional costumes, the houses and farmsteads filled with activities (like traditional beer brewing – damn!), live music and folk dance demonstrations.

A quick bus ride down the hill from the Folk Museum lies the Kon-Tiki Museum. I’m not going to embarrass anyone by informing my vast readership that certain people in my party had not even heard of Kon-Tiki. That was about to change. What an interesting and accessible exhibit that not only documents Thor Heyerdahl’s 8,000 mile Pacific Ocean crossing in 1947, basically on a pile of sticks, but his subsequent historic voyages. The man was a serial adventurer and intrepid environmentalist. We left quite smitten.

The Opera House

The last stop of the day before burgers was to see the Opera House. Sure the enormous marble (36,000 individually cut slabs of Carrara marble in fact) and glass building is meant to look like a glacier floating in the water but the best feature is the ability to walk up and around its exterior. You’re surrounded by the Fjord on one side and the cityscape on the other, and once you reach the roof you’re rewarded with a view of the hills surrounding Oslo. Stunning.

Frogner Park

Alas, my eyes did not gaze upon the wonders found in Frognerparken. I was stuck in the apartment finishing up my presentation but Grace and Joe were able to fit in a visit before we caught the 16:00 train to Stockholm. The world’s largest sculpture park made by a single artist contains 212 bronze and granite sculptures created by Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland. The naked bodies – alone, in pairs or presented in a jumbled mess – evoke the purest essence of our humanity.