Norway

Norway Trip #4: Back to Oslo, for longer than expected

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!

Part 1 here: how we got to Norway and then to Bergen.

Part 2 here: Bergen, where we got lucky and also unlucky

Part 3 here: The Fjords, not terribly af-fjordable, but terribly beautiful.

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 Bakeri
Coconut 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.