After Louie’s graduation, we wanted to take a road trip. For various reasons, we haven’t had a good Rocky Mountain road trip in a few summers, so we were really looking forward to it!
I originally started planning this road trip for last summer, but when Louie got invited to attend the Oslo conference, we nixed the plans. So I said, let’s do it this summer instead, and replanned the whole thing, with a few minor changes. It was originally a two week trip, and then Louie got invited to do a conference in Vail, so we added that on, to make just about 3 weeks of travel.
But then I hurt my knee, and I was worried about hiking and such, but it didn’t seem like a reason not to go, so we went!
Day 1: We set out from St Louis in the morning. We had plans to stay in a small town in Oklahoma, Boise City, that night, so we had about 11 hours of driving to cover. We stopped for lunch in Olathe, Kansas, and just kept driving. I have to confess, I must have been putting the pedal to the metal a bit much at one point in western Kansas, and we got pulled over. It was in the middle of nowhere and the roads were straight and flat, and I had gotten carried away, I guess. The cop asked where we were going, and this was a tough question to answer as we were going everywhere! We said we were going to Boise City, Idaho first, and then I maybe said Las Vegas, New Mexico and the cop seemed to think we were complete idiots. Which at this point we really were. Lucky for me, he had had a roommate at the academy with the last name of Frey and seemed content to give me a warning, so I set the cruise control for the speed limit and we continued on our way.
We got into Boise City quite late, and grabbed Subway sandwiches for dinner at a nearby gas station.
Louie pulled over to take pictures of this barn.
Day 2: We had breakfast at the Farmhouse Cafe in Boise City, which was barely labeled as a restaurant, but google maps showed it to be one. It was busy enough, filled with cowboys carrying actual guns on their belts and a man who used the ladies’ room in front of me–I was about to go and then he went. He claimed it was because the mens’ room was out of order (which Louie was confused by as he had already used it) and the whole thing made me think about all the reasons we use one restroom or the other and WHO CARES as long as people can use the bathroom, which is a thing that everybody has to do, and yet here we were surrounded by people who thought the whole thing was a joke and yet they wanted to use bathrooms that didn’t match their gender identity. GAH. Anyway, I had thought it would be fun to say we had spent the night in Oklahoma as neither of us could recall having done so before, and perhaps that was enough for a lifetime?
New Mexico, not Oklahoma.
Our next stop was Capulin Volcano National Monument in New Mexico. We enjoyed driving to the top of the Volcano and hiking around a bit. My knee didn’t hurt too much with some walking, but I didn’t take the second hike with Louie and rested instead.
The landscape was VERY different than St Louis!We also saw a snake on the path!
We saw there was another NPS site nearby so we went to Fort Union National Monument after that. It was interesting as well, but the best part was seeing a whole bunch of pronghorn (sometimes called American Antelope) on the drive.
The ruins of Fort Union are in the background.
After that it was time to get to Las Vegas, New Mexico, sometimes called Little Las Vegas. No, it’s nothing like the other Vegas. But Louie has a friend, Mario, who lives there and we met him for dinner and stayed in a lovely AirBNB in the downtown area. We had dinner at the Castenada Hotel Restaurant. I enjoyed seeing that the Hotel was a former Harvey Girls Hotel, right by the train station, if you are a fan of the podcast The History Chicks, you might have heard that episode.
Day 3: We got breakfast in the downtown Plaza area of Las Vegas, at a small place called El Rialto. We were both eager to try New Mexican food, and enjoyed green chile sauce on our meals.
We had to find the door from Longmire in the Plaza as well: many shows and movies have been filmed in Las Vegas, and Longmire is one of them. The show pretends it is in Wyoming, but it is filmed in Las Vegas, New Mexico!
We then drove to Santa Fe to meet Louie’s friend again for lunch at a place called Cafecito, which was very good and was located on Shoofly Street. After lunch we said goodbye to Mario, and then walked around the square at Santa Fe for awhile until the weather became too rainy/scary looking and we thought it was a good time to drive instead.
You can see the very ominous storm clouds in the background.
After an hour or two, we headed to our next destination: a yurt in White Rock, outside of Bandelier. We checked into the yurt and got situated, then we had dinner at the Pig and Fig, a local restaurant, and took a drive up to White Rock Overlook.
The view out the top of the yurt.
That seems like a good place to stop today, so I’ll pick up with Day 4 and more White Rock next. I’m sure you are thrilled I fit 3 days in one blog post, aren’t you?
I wanted to sum up our trip to Norway in one post, for easy sharing and referencing for people interested in going. I’ve had a few questions from friends, so this will make it easier!
We were there about 2 1/2 weeks. In a nutshell, here’s what we did. We loved everywhere we stayed, but I’m only going to list the restaurants we really enjoyed and recommend, and the same for the activities. Everybody loves different things, so do your own research, but this is what we loved.
“Sognefjord in a Nutshell”: Express boat from Bergen to Balestrand and then to Flam. The folks at Trip Advisor don’t like this tour, but we absolutely loved it. 4 hours on a boat, sign me up! It was terrific. I’m sure “Norway in a Nutshell” is great as well.
Oslo: We stayed at a fantastic AirBNB, great location, cute place. My only caveat would be that it is a loft bed, which we enjoyed but is not for everyone. Coffee/pastries: Apent Bakeri Frogner. Restaurants we loved: Lorry, Engebret Cafe (I loved it, Louie couldn’t go with me to this one.) Restaurants we liked a lot: Roti Shop Oslo, Mucho Mas, Jewel of India.
To do in Oslo, in a quasi favorite order: Vigeland Park, Norwegian Folk Museum, National Gallery, see a show at the Opera House, Fram Museum, Kon Tiki Museum, Holmenkollen Ski Jump and Museum, day trip to Drobak and Oscarsburg Fortress via ferry, Akershus Festning, Norwegian Resistance Museum, the Royal Palace.
It’s easy to get around: you can walk everywhere, or buy tickets on the public transportation system. In Oslo, download the Ruter app to your phone and you can buy tickets for the trip, the day, or the week (or longer!). I also always recommend downloading Google Maps for offline use as you never know when that will help.
Bring an umbrella, you’ll need it. For getting to and from the airport quickly, flytoget is super easy to use, though more expensive and not much faster than the regular train, apparently.
Fjaerland is a magical little place.
Oh, and we NEVER used any cash during our entire visit. We didn’t take any out, figuring we would if we needed, and we never did. Everybody uses credit cards. You don’t have to tip at restaurants either, even though the machine will suggest that you do. (We are suckers so we usually did a little, but really, they are already being paid well.)
The only cash we saw was in the museum! I do wish I had some coins as a souvenir, but oh well.
Trip planning resources: I used Rick Steves’ Norway Guidebook, Fodor’s Norway Guidebook, Trip Advisor (forums) and lots of internet searches. We also watched Occupied and I read the Harry Hole mysteries by Jo Nesbo (both entirely optional, just for fun). If we went back, there are more places to go (further north especially) but we loved all the places we visited and we felt like our research had paid off.
I am still thinking fondly of our trip over a month later. If you have an opportunity to go to Norway, GO!! I reserve the right to update this post along the way if I want to add anything.
After several years of everything being canceled due to COVID, Louie was speaking at two conferences in June, with just a week between. The first was in Oslo (if you are reading this and missed my posts about that trip, I recommend!) and then in Austin, Texas. Neither of us had been to Austin before, so as he was making his travel plans, I decided to come down for part of the conference. I wanted to teach a few days that week, so I went from Sunday to early Thursday, and he came back the next evening.
We were regretting our travel plans on Saturday before we left, as we had only been home for 4 days really before having to leave again, and still recovering from jet lag (and/or COVID, who really knows). With our original plan we would have had 6 full days of jet lag recover (and no COVID, that definitely wasn’t in the plan) but…anyway, we left bright and early Sunday morning and flew direct to Austin.
We decided to mask in the airport because there are a lot of people there and COVID isn’t the only thing you can catch!Our plane was getting ready.
The plane flight was uneventful, and we got to our hotel easily. We were staying at the conference hotel, the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center which was on the edge of the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. We were able to check in to our room early and got settled. It was hot outside, but very nice and cool at the hotel. I had had images of hanging out at the pool, but the pool was located on the side of the hotel by a busy street and never looked as appealing as the pictures of it (surprise!).
Louie didn’t have anything scheduled on Sunday, so we headed out on foot for some sightseeing and ultimately a late brunch reservation at Comedor.
We walked by the Texas State Capitol and realized you could also go inside, so we did that (it was good to get out of the heat).
The grounds were very pretty and had many different statues.
We had to go through a metal detector to get into the Capitol, but I think if you had a gun you just had to declare it. I was struck by how many non-English speaking people were at the Capitol, as well as many different looking English speaking people, likely a full cross section of America as it is, rather than America as…well, the people who run the Texas State Capitol wish for it to be. Keep in mind this was also still before my rights to my own body were taken away from me…it was an interesting visit and a beautiful building, but the underlying message that we have received from the Texas government is not a welcome one.
Texas is obsessed with stars. You see them everywhere!Looking down into the rotunda.It’s the little details, too.A sculpture outside on the grounds. It was hard to get in a picture, but it was the Texas African American History Memorial, and had a lot going on. It is interesting to note that we were actually there on Juneteenth! That sentence: “The conflict did not readily change the Black experience in Texas, as most African-Americans continued to be held in bondage and forced to labor.” I didn’t know until a few years ago that it took a long time after the Emancipation Proclamation for enslaved people to be freed. Austin is full of murals. The idea of “Keep Austin Weird”, they say, isn’t about the murals necessarily but just about having so many local businesses rather than chains. Brunch at Comedor. We were used to Norway prices, so it seemed reasonable.
We LOVED Comedor. We had fish tacos and a few other things.
Fish tacos!The Huarache with mushrooms, egg, and tomatoes.We finished with a pancake the size of a car tire. We did not eat the whole thing.
After lunch we walked down to the Congress River for a bit, which was beautiful but I was really hot, so we headed back to the hotel then.
The hotel room was nice enough to hang out in, and we cooled off and I chatted online with my family for the weekly meeting. Louie was able to work a bit as well as check into the conference and get the official book.
After that, we decided to go to a nearby restaurant called the Texas Chili Parlor. It was a dive bar, but it was welcoming, very near the hotel, and ended up being terrific. The prices were good, quick service, and we enjoyed chili and frozen margaritas.
The conference started Monday, so I had a few days to figure things out for myself. Some of the things I’d hoped to do Monday ended up being closed due to the Juneteenth Holiday, so my Monday ended up being fairly uneventful. I ate at the Driscoll Hotel at the1886 Cafe for breakfast, and did a little wandering around after that. I had tacos for lunch at the Velvet Taco, and spent the afternoon at the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, which was one of the reasons I’d decided to go to Austin.
People had a lot of things to tell us to do in Austin, and I’m sure many of them were great fun, but I was most interested in the museums. Unfortunately visiting from Sunday to Wednesday wasn’t the best to see museums, as I only managed to fit two in during that time, but those were great. I loved the LBJ Library and learned so much!
Inside the Museum–you can see the documents, filed on shelves.I read this as “Please do not touch the Murial.”Selfie in the Oval Office replica.The view from Lady Bird Johnson’s office.
I walked back to the hotel after that, losing and finding my walk since nearly everything in the area was under construction. We met up with Louie’s boss for dinner and planned to go to a nearby Indian restaurant, but the wait was estimated to be 1 1/2-2 hours, so…we decided to go to the Chili Parlor again. And yes, it was again for all of us.
The next day I had signed up for an organized tour for BBQ and wineries in Texas through the company Austin Detours. I am finding that when traveling on my own it’s nice to have something organized and pushes me out of my comfort zone. I get so worried meeting up with things, and of course, it was easy and the tour guide was welcoming and friendly.
There were just 6 of us plus the guide, and it was a wonderful day. We started downtown with a tour around from the van and then headed to the hills to the Salt Lick Barbecue. Now, you may know that I eat a mostly pescatarian diet, but my reasons for doing so allow for occasional meat eating opportunities, especially when it seems integral to the understanding and culture of a place, or for special occasions.
I got the burnt ends and the pulled pork. It was pretty good, but nothing will ever hold a candle to the barbecue of my youth, Hickory Hills in Clinton, South Carolina.
Next we went to the Fall Creek Winery, which was very nearby.
The tour guide liked taking pictures of us so I got some fun photos from the day.
We did a tasting there of about 6 wines and there were enjoyable. Not great, but certainly…as good as Missouri wines, I would say.
And then we went to the Duchman Family Winery. The tasting was different: we stood at the counter rather than sitting, but it was another 6 or so wines and though most in the group preferred the Duchman wines, I preferred the Fall Creek wines. I didn’t buy anything, as flying home with it would have been too difficult.
We stopped at this sign on our way back to Austin for pictures.
I recommend the tour if you have an afternoon free and want to do something different.
That evening Louie and I went back to Comedor for dinner. We are evidently creatures of habit, and loved the food for brunch so wanted to try it for dinner. I know there are many more places, but it seemed like most recommendations were barbecue and tacos and this was like, fancier tacos. We had an avocado tostada, an okra and corn side, a quesadilla with mushrooms, fish with mole sauce, and for dessert, chocolate tamal with ice cream. The meal was great, especially the okra side and the fish with mole sauce. The odd thing was that the restaurant, as it got darker outside, simply got darker and darker, to the point that I was struggling to see my way to the bathroom after the meal and nearly bumping into everyone. It was an interesting mood lighting choice.
The fish with sauce.
Wednesday morning Louie took the morning off from the conference, and we went to the Texas History Museum. It was a nice way to spend a few hours.
I told you they like stars. This one outside the museum is probably the largest.Standing in front of an Alamo replica. Remember!
The museum was interesting, and covered the history of Texas from the beginning of time until the present day. Some of it was a little starry eyed, and some of the stuff about slavery was especially starry eyed/propaganda, but I’m glad we went.
I met up with a friend for lunch then. A friend who used to live in St Louis now teaches at UT-Austin and we went to Kerbey Lane Cafe for lunch. It was great to catch up and chitchat, and reminded me that sometimes you can just have a nice time meeting up with a friend. (Sometimes it feels overwhelming visiting places where you know people and feeling like there’s no way to fit everything in, seeing the sights, seeing people, making people happy!) And then for dinner we met up with an old friend of Louie’s and had pizza and beer at Pinthouse Brewery.
Beer.
So that was my trip to Austin. I didn’t get to any of the Art Museums I wanted to see, I didn’t get to see my friend Heather who was also in Austin that week, we didn’t see the bats at dusk on the Congress Street bridge, we didn’t get Torchy’s Tacos or Franklin’s BBQ, we didn’t get to the swimming hole at Barton Springs, but we had a nice time, we still miss the Chili Parlor, and I was especially glad to have seen the LBJ Presidential Library.
Traveling is funny: it’s wonderful to explore and see new places, but with the internet and instagram, there seem to be these ideas that there are certain places everybody must see and do, and that there are places you must take pictures and post online, and…I think it’s important that we don’t see traveling as a series of checklists to cover. I enjoyed Austin on my terms, taking what people said and choosing from them and adding in stuff that I found.
The same with Norway: we loved what we did, and we definitely did some of the most popular things, but we also did things that particularly interested US, which isn’t necessarily the same thing that interests everybody else. In my day to day life, I do things that are very different than many people, so why would I do the same things in travel? I do think we might have enjoyed the bats, but it just didn’t work out with our dinner plans.
When I was young, my family took a long road trip “Out West”, as we called it, and one thing we did one night was sit in an amphitheater outside Carlsbad Caverns and watched the bats in their mass exodus from the cave at sunset. It was awe-inspiring, and part of me wanted to keep that in my memory as it is, and thought, maybe that’s enough bats for me right now.
My flight home was early on Thursday, and I had been hearing that the Austin airport was a nightmare, so I arrived about 2 hours early. The airport was the opposite of a nightmare and security took no time at all, haha, but it’s always better to be too early than running late. I’m glad I went to Austin, and I hope that Louie does some more conferences in the future that I can tag along on!
As promised, I’m back with another post about Oslo. This is the last one, and it’s long, but mostly pictures.
Remember, this is the Opera House. You can walk to the roof, and we did on our first day.
As I was researching Oslo, I found the Opera House (you can see it in Occupied as well), and thought, well, it would be fun to watch an opera or something there. Looking at the dates, it made more sense for us to see a ballet, so I bought tickets for Swan Lake and then didn’t think about it again until it was time for us to go to see it.
At our seats in the Opera House. We were in the very back row but it was pretty central and we could see just fine.
The curtain went up, there was a live orchestra, and a screen over the stage, and suddenly I realized the music wasn’t Swan Lake. Oddly, it wasn’t NOT Swan Lake, but it wasn’t Swan Lake. The screen showed the opening credits about “A Swan Lake” and I looked at Louie and whispered, “I may not have read the website correctly.” And then the screen came up and there were dozens of people onstage shouting all together, “ONCE….UPON…A TIME….!!!”.
Instead of the ballet Swan Lake, we watched something so much better. It was called A Swan Lake, and it was an absurdist take on how Tchaikovsky wrote Swan Lake. It was absolutely hilarious and really well done. The first act was dedicated to how Tchaikovsky came up with the idea, and took place in the 1800’s. At one point before the premiere, the dancer/actor playing Tchaikovsky said, what if we had them dancing onstage in water, and the other character said, we don’t have the technology for that…yet. And then when Act 2 started, the stage was covered in a few inches of water and the entire act took place on the water, and it was amazing! In any case, if you ever have an opportunity to see A Swan Lake, do!
The Opera House is right on the water, and the views from inside are lovely. It got hot in the sun though!
Other things to know about seeing ballet in Oslo: the intermission was nearly 45 minutes long! I think this is relatively normal even though obviously during the intermission for this show they had to fill the stage with water.
Some pictures I took at intermission of the inside. I loved all the wood, which contrasted with all the glass outside.View of the bows from our seats. One man in front of me insisted on leaning forward throughout most of the show.
Before the show we ate at the restaurant at the Opera House, Sanguine Brasserie. We both ordered two courses, and the first course was great! The second course took nearly 45 minutes and tasted like it had just been sitting under a heat lamp for most of that time (it was confusing as most people near us got their entrees while we kept waiting, yet our food was not fresh.) So it was a mixed experience, and a little disappointing.
More fish soup though!Lovely seating area though, with a view of the Oslofjord.
The last night of Louie’s conference I went to Lillestrom to meet him for a banquet. I got to see the ending of the conference and see where he had been going all week, so that was nice. It was in a suburb, which was a quick 10 to 12 minute train ride away. I cannot speak more highly of the public transportation in Oslo. And walking was so easy as well, and if you needed to cross a road, the cars stopped for you, even before you knew you needed to cross. To me, that is freedom.
I followed the signs from the Lillestrom Train Station to his conference.
The banquet was nice, though the food was as you might expect for a large banquet. We sat with some people from Lyon, France, and had a variety of great conversations. We had spent so much time just the two of us so it was nice to talk with others. They were surprised that I played the violin rather than being an engineering researcher, and laughed when I said I was there for the food.
The banquet menu.
After the conference was over, it was simply sightseeing time.
Oslo was full of sculptures.Wasn’t sure what these were.Can you guess which house I went into for a selfie?We went to Bygdoy Peninsula to visit some museums. It was supposed to rain later, so we walked around outside first. Louie is posing with the arctic explorers here.
We started with the Fram Museum, which is really just a museum built around a ship. It was a little confusing at first, where to start, what it was about–neither of us knew much about arctic exploration though I did watch an excellent documentary about Shackleton once, Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure. But we got into it and appreciated the museum and seeing the ship, and being so glad we weren’t arctic explorers because it seemed so cold and miserable!
More outside pictures first. It was a gorgeous day! The Fram Museum is literally built around the ship, so it’s a tight fit.
After the Fram, we went to the Kon-Tiki Museum, also worth a visit. Together we always take longer at museums than the guidebook recommends, probably 2 to 2 1/2 at the Fram and 1 1/2 at the Kon Tiki? I think guidebooks suggest 1 hour for each…perhaps on my own I might have rushed through as Louie tends to be a slower reader than I am, but I also see people who look like they are skipping most stuff. If you are pressed for time, I can see trying to rush, but if you have the time, take it and really look at it all.
The Kon-Tiki Raft. Basically a Norwegian guy built a raft to show that people could have done so and traveled across the world on it. Oh look, another shrimp sandwich! From the museum cafe (at the Fjord Cafe.)Indian food at Jewel of India, near our Airbnb for dinner one night.
We did Rick Steves’ walking tour of the Grünerløkka neighborhood one evening, and ended up having dinner at Mathallen, which all the websites are excited about and is just a modern-day mall food court. We got some lovely Bao and paid dearly for it, but we saw some nice stuff and enjoyed the Akerselva River enough to walk it again later.
The Old Aker Church, the oldest church in Oslo. Or in Norwegian: Gamle Aker kirke.Lovely viewGrain towers turned into student housing!Walking along the Akerselva River.So much public art! Some of it good, some of it just silly.Nothing in particular, except that vines are taking over that building.Walking along the river. These women worked in the factories along the river, in what you may imagine were harsh conditions.The Ringnes brewery, their Budweiser but approximately $12 to 15 a pint.
One day we took the train to Holmenkollen Ski Jump. This was a lot of fun. Warning, it is quite the uphill walk from the train station, but it is worth it.
They have a variety of activities including some sort of ride where you ride a zipline down the jump, but we just looked around and went to the Museum, which was great and also nice as it covered some of the stuff from the Fram again in a different way so we felt like we were actually learning.
You could see another view of the Oslofjord from up there, but it was of course hard to capture in pictures.The bottom of the ski jump.The top of the ski jump.
The museum talked about the history of skiing and the ski jump.
Somehow this sculpture was involved. With a statue of Nansen, one of the great Arctic explorers from Norway.Somewhere on Louie’s phone exists a photo of me in this prop.The lift.The Throne of Skis.More Akerselva River.
We ate at Mucho Mas in the Grünerløkka neighborhood one night. We ate most of our meal outside, but at the end it started raining so we had to run inside to finish.
The internet said Mucho Mas was terrific and also overrated. We liked it quite a lot, and it was fun to sit outside and people watch as well.
And one day we spent over 4 hours at the National Gallery, which had recently reopened.
For some reason I take a lot of pictures of musical instruments.The shields looked like Humpty Dumpty to me.This doesn’t look that different from the room Louie’s mom keeps her harps in, though I suppose it’s a little fancier…not by much. I laughed at the idea that my old Nokia phone could be in the National Gallery.Very popular, The Scream. There was a room dedicated to Edvard Munch, even though there is also a whole museum elsewhere. Not the original, but still fun to see. Another dinner at Lorry, shrimp sandwich and fish soup. We made the mistake of not asking for the soup to come out first.
I think that’s the gist of our trip! Please don’t hesitate to ask any questions. We loved Norway, I would go back in a heartbeat. If I could do anything differently it would be to try to relax more when things didn’t go as planned. I had some stressful times that in retrospect weren’t a big deal. But we saw some awesome stuff, enjoyed just wandering around, took advantage of a terrific transportation system, ate wonderful food, and really got a sense of the culture, we think.
We had an early flight to the airport, and that was a little stressful: we had to take the very first train, which left at 4:34 and arrived at 5:02. Our flight left for Heathrow at 7:05, which was as tight a time as we would want, but there was no other way. It was a full train, and the airport was crowded upon arrival, but we had no trouble: the biggest line was going through passport control, but we were at the gate by 6:15 am, which was plenty of time. London was a mess, security, passport control, that took about an hour, and then we wanted coffee before the plane which should have been quick but wasn’t. All was “forgiven” when we boarded the long haul flight and a lovely flight attendant randomly decided we should be seated up further in the comfort seats rather than the regular economy, which meant slightly more leg room and really made things better.
We got to Charlotte, went through security for the 3rd time that day, had the worst fish tacos we’d ever had at a restaurant while paying prices comparable to Norway, and after about 2 hours of delay, finally boarded the last leg of our flight. We got to St Louis, took a cab home (more expensive than uber, though I like to support cabbies sometime) and I think I was asleep within 20 minutes. I believe we had been traveling for 22-23 hours by then and it felt like it!
Looking back though, I can’t believe we were there. It feels like a dream!
I thought I’d dedicate today’s post to some of the things I saw on my own when Louie was in his conference. I’d initially planned a few more guided tours but canceled two things due to being sick and not feeling up to it/not wanting to be around people.
One of the conference days was my birthday, so I treated myself to a nice lunch sitting down at a restaurant. I went to Engebret Cafe and enjoyed a delicious shrimp sandwich: the best I had the entire trip. It was huge as well (with a price tag to match, but oh well!).
You can barely see it under the salad topping, but there is a ton of shrimp on top of a piece of bread, with a side of mayo for dipping, I guess.
I never mind sitting alone at a cafe or restaurant if I have my kindle, at least, plus people watching can be fun.
I wandered around, either walking or taking the tram somewhere, with some days not having any specific plans. I took a tram all the way to the end of the line once, thinking I could stay on and ride back and finally realizing the driver was trying to tell me I had to get off! That was a little awkward.
The entrance to our AirBNB: me coming down to meet Louie at the end of the day, as our place had only one set of keys.Near the Akershus Festning. Not a great place to sit.
I always felt comfortable walking around Oslo on my own. The only place anywhere in Oslo that we felt was a bit iffy was just around and north of the Oslo Station. Nothing terrible, just iffy.
Wandering around Akershus FestningFlowers in bloom!Up and up you walk.
I walked around the Fortress/Festning for a bit one day and found the Norwegian Resistance Museum. I spent about 45 minutes to an hour going through and looking at the exhibits, learning how the Nazis occupied Norway and the risks Norwegians took to fight back in a variety of ways.
From atop the Fortress you can see the Harbor very well. There was a large cruise ship in port.Selfie.
I also went to the Nobel Peace Center. Most of the Nobel Prizes are given out in Stockholm, Sweden, but the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, and there’s a nice museum about it. There’s also a little gift shop with a lot of neat gifts, and (good to know) there’s a bathroom that you can get to directly from the outside, no need to go through the museum lobby. We used the bathroom another day when wandering around, and just went in and used it, though then I felt like we should shop a few minutes to act like that was our intention.
The Nobel Peace Center Building.Part of my birthday dinner with Louie. We went to Lorry, a restaurant we ended up visiting twice because of the soup and because we enjoyed the vibe.Lorry from the sidewalk.
Selfie with the boatThe view of the Opera House from the water.I never tire of being on boats. I don’t think the resolution here is good enough to zoom in, but if you watch Occupied, I believe this is the building that in the show is in downtown Oslo and is where the city offices are. It is NOT in downtown Oslo, but it is a very cool building that actually exists. I was thrilled to see it as I rode down the Oslofjord on the boat!The Norwegian Flag Another selfie
After about 1 1/2 hours we landed on Oscarsborg Fortress, an island in the Oslofjord. There is, obviously, a Fortress there. It’s a neat place, with a museum, hotel, boating, and such.
There wasn’t much to do that I could see, so I wandered around a bit, and then caught the ferry to Drobak.
The ferry dock in Oscarsborg.
The tour I bought came with “ferry tickets” for certain times, but I will say this: the one at the end of the day would have been difficult. I came back earlier because the connection they give you is only 5 minutes and it is more than 5 minutes walk away. I saw some people getting on the boat who I believe made it, but they looked like they had run for their lives. I would recommend coming back 1 hour earlier and walking around the island more instead, even if that means less time in Drobak.
When you get off the ferry in Drobak it’s about a 10 minute to town, some of it scenic, some of it less so.
It started pouring rain when I got to Drobak, so I just went straight for lunch at a place called Det Gamle Bakeri. I got fish soup.
It might have been nice to sit outside, but it seemed too stormy.
Drobak was very picturesque, but after wandering around a little bit, I was ready to head back. I was early for the ferry, but I thought I’d go back and sit and read. I waited a bit and then a smaller ferry showed up, and the captain offered to take me and another couple back instead of us waiting for the larger ferry. We were happy to go with him and the couple and I chatted about Norway and the United States and Sweden, where they were from. They were staying overnight at the hotel for research purposes for a travel tv show, I think.
The smaller ferry.
When I got back to Oscarsborg, the sun was shining, so I walked all around the island some more and it was quite warm. And then after awhile caught the boat back to Oslo, which was pleasant after a full day.
I do recommend this tour, if you have been in Oslo awhile and want a day trip, as I did.
The last day of the conference was when we ended up having to change our flight to stay in the country longer. At the time we needed to get negative tests in order to fly home, and we didn’t think we both would, so we made an appointment with a doctor. The doctor said since we didn’t have official proof of being positive, he needed to have that proof first, and then 4 days later if we were fever free and our lungs were clear he could write a “proof of recovery” note for us. (We didn’t both need this, but one did.) Anyway, that meant changing our flight and finding new lodging.
If you are in a foreign country and want to change your flight with American Airlines, do not bother calling the 1-800 number, use the local country number. We were told an 8 hour hold with the 1-800 number, but the local number got us through right away and rebooked within 10-15 minutes. I was able to extend our stay in our AirBNB except for the last night, where we had to relocate to a nearby place.
Watching the Color Line Ship go by Oscarsborg Fortress.Not the western fjords, but still very pretty.The Boat.
That seems like a natural place to stop this blog post, so I’ll continue with another post soon. If you have any questions, please let me know! I love to hear from readers, otherwise I start to feel as if I am just writing into a void.
Okay, and since I’ve actually stopped traveling and even have a few “days off” at home, I have more time to blog.
Let me tell you. The hardest part of trip recaps is figuring out what photos to include. I took around 1400 pictures on this trip, but of course some are better than others. It’s so hard to decide which those are, however, looking at the phone screen. And since I have an iphone but a pc, that means getting them from my phone to my computer takes a little finagling. So over the past few weeks I’ve finally settled on the photos I want to consider for the blog. Now that that is done, the rest should be easy!
And now we are back in Oslo, for a day or two to recover before Louie’s conference started up. I think now is when I’ll stop doing a true day by day and instead just show you some pictures and tell you some cool stuff we did in Oslo.
We stayed at a fantastic AirBNB. While we could have stayed at a hotel for the conference, I thought it would be more fun to have an apartment of sorts. Initially I’d thought we might even cook, but that never happened. We did use the coffeemaker and refrigerator often though. What was BEST about the AirBNB we had was the location. It was in the Frogner neighborhood, only a few minutes in any direction from trains, buses, and trams, very walkable, with grocery stores, restaurants, etc all around. I would highly recommend this location if you are in Oslo, with one caveat: the bed is a loft. We loved it, but if you have mobility issues or young children it wouldn’t work.
The view at night from the loft bed. It did get dark closer to 11 each night and stayed that way until at least 3 or 3:30 am.Art on the wall of the apartment.The loft bed above, the couch and coffee table below. We were told the couch also had a pull out bed which was less comfortable. The ladder took some practice getting used to but it wasn’t too bad.Random picture of the apartment: a little closet/storage area. It was a small place, with a narrow hallway to the bathroom, and a tiny kitchenette.
The first morning I discovered we were around the corner from what ended up being our favorite coffee house and bakery ever. We didn’t go every day, but we stopped by almost every day, for coffee, baked goods, or bread. We had been wearing masks of course, and one of the employees, being very friendly, said, you know you don’t have to wear masks in Norway! We said, yes…but we have to test negative for COVID to get back to the states so we are being extra cautious.
Our first few days we were still recovering from COVID: I was feeling better, just tired. Louie was still feverish and with a bad cough. We finally got to a pharmacy to get him some medicine for that: note to readers, bring some NyQuil tablets with you when you travel, as at least in Norway they wouldn’t give us anything to help him sleep without a doctor’s note.
We did a bunch of outdoor stuff first: Vigeland Park is a real gem in the city. It’s a whole park dedicated to statues by one man, Gustav Vigeland, and as I exclaimed at one point, it’s just a bunch of statues of naked people! Louie pointed out that most statues are of naked people, which is true. We went on a beautiful weekend afternoon and the park was full of families, people grilling on little “one-time grills”, and it seemed like the entire city was out enjoying the beautiful weather.
All of Oslo at Vigeland Park. It reminded me of Forest Park in that way, except even more crowded (though smaller) more public transportation options, and more naked people statues.Angry Baby is one of the most famous statues in the park.The big obelisk statue was the center of everything. It is basically a big pile of naked people. It’s hilarious to see all the kids climbing around the statues, I wonder what they think of it all? In which I briefly discovered portrait mode on my phone, and then forgot. We were thrilled to find St Louis Ribs on the menu here. I’m kidding, we didn’t go here, but I thought this was a hilarious sign!This is in the neighborhood near where we stayed. Fish and chips at an Irish pub. There were a lot of Irish pubs in Oslo, and we needed a little break from Norwegian food.Manunderwear is presumably what it sounds like. Norwegian seemed to be like German in that sometimes they would just put a bunch of words together to make one longer word.
One of my favorite museums was the Norwegian Folk Museum. It’s an outdoor museum (perfect when you are trying to avoid people) and is on the Bygdoy peninsula. We took the bus there and enjoyed the public transportation.
Oh, notes again: you can use the Ruter app for travel. It’s so easy to buy tickets on your phone and use the app for directions places. We both got weekly passes, which meant we really used the system during that time.
The Folk Museum is a large collection of buildings used throughout Norwegian History. We spent over 3 hours there and felt like we could have spent 3 days there.
My usual favorite type of house: with a grass roof.Another house with a grass roof.A Stave Church. This is a thing throughout the country, but it was the only one we got to see. Inside the Stave Church.The roof of the church.Gorgeous woodworking on this building.A bicycle. It was locked up so nobody could ride it.
Some of the places were more modern: there was an apartment building that had a variety of apartments set up like they might have been during various times in the 1900’s. We were surprised to find that one was like an apartment would have been way back in the 1980’s…who would even have been alive then???
A two story outhouse building as would have been used for an apartment building.An old gas station.Lunch at the café, I was obsessed with shrimp sandwiches, and would continue to be so if it were an option here.Pastry from Apent BakeriCoconut drink at Roti Shop Oslo.Pizza at Olivia’s…it wasn’t our best dinner choice, but it was fine.I thought this building had a lot of expression.
I think I’ll stop there and keep this post shorter. I know I may have promised less posts overall, but I think I will return to more Oslo in another post. In a nutshell, this was our first weekend back there, and then Louie’s conference started.
