Thanks for visiting! I’ve decided to change the format of my posts a bit to avoid me babbling on about nothing (too much!).
Overview
Oslo is the capital city of Norway. Famous for vikings, polar exploration, fjords and Ole Gunner Solskjaer, the country has vast oil reserves, massive coastline and good standard of living, it is right up there with the most expensive places to visit in Europe. As a real tight-arse, the cost of things will turn up many times throughout the post!
Norway is not part of the EU but does make up the Shengen area that allows free travel across borders. A direct flight from the UK would take about 2.5 hours, although we went via Amsterdam.
We stayed in the Anker hotel, about a 15 minute walk from the main train station. It was a great location next to a long park/river and included the best breakfast buffet I have had. I dread to think how much smoked salmon they get through, although I was quite happy with a more British selection. Our room was quite basic but perfect for us. Others may be disappointed with a lack of cupboards or safe. Hotel on booking.com link.
Getting around
From the airport into the city, you can get a “Flytoget” express train £35 return or the normal train for £15. I recommend the normal train as it only takes 5 minutes longer.
Once you’re in the city, you have a plethora of travel options, but most sights to see are within walking distance. One ticket can cover the metro, tram and buses that turn up every few minutes during the day, and even the public transport boats. You don’t even need to time your travels they are so regular. A 24-hour ticket will set you back about a tenner, but considering a single ticket is £4, it’s worth getting. They also do longer periods for additional savings.
A few people mentioned the Northern Lights to me. Norway is a large country with Oslo being towards the south. The Northern Lights are best viewed further north. Trondheim I think is the biggest area but don’t actually know if that’s an accurate suggestion to view them. Domestic flights are considerably cheap if you wanted to research an excursion from Oslo.
It was not as cold as we expected. Think November UK weather. It was supposed to rain all week but miraculously we didn’t get caught up in any in Oslo.
Things to do
I will cover a lot of the sights in the itenerary below. If you want just a city break I reckon 2-3 days will be enough. Longer if you wish to soak up the nightlife or spend hours people watching from cafés.
Worth noting that when we went (late October) it was not the best time to visit. The brief summer season from May to September had passed and a lot of tourism activites either close or run reduced offerings. Notable omissions from our itinerary includes a ferry tour of the fjords and the viking museum, that is being rebuilt until 2025. We definitely would have done both if available. Missing the fjord tour was a shame.
Costs
I don’t know if I have been looking forward to this section or dreading it! Being a tourist in Norway is not cheap. A lot of the hospitality sector is taxed at 25% and has a minimum wage of an incredible £14.50 per hour!
Five days from Bristol to Oslo using KLM cost around £1,500 for the two of us. Flights £150 each gladly avoiding Ryanair, and our decent hotel about the same. We spent £40 each on a train to Lillehammer and £60 each to Bergen. In addition to this we spent £550 over the five days. Total with two PCR tests at £68 each have made up our estimate.
You need to expect to pay around double for things compared to the UK. Some examples:
– £3.50 for a 500ml bottle of coke. Water is dearer!?!
– £10 standard McDonalds meal
– £12 for a footlong subway meal
– Upwards of £25 for a basic restaurant main course
– £3 for a chocolate bar
What we did
Day one – Oslo
Arrived at Oslo S central train station around 1pm and walked to hotel. Researched public transport and visited the royal palace. You couldn’t go in. We arrived during the changing or the guard or something, but this took forever.
After lunch walked to Oslo cathedral via parliament. As far as cathedrals go, it didn’t have a lot of ‘bling’. I found the fabric ceiling art interesting. It was showing signs of wear and I wondered how difficult it will be to restore when the time comes.
General walk around town. Instead of going back to hotel earlier than planned, decided to visit a waterfall along the river Akerselva that passes our hotel. Strange seeing a waterfall in a suburb but welcomed. Had a pleasant stroll through the riverside park back to hotel.
In the evening we headed to Akershus fortress. It was dark at this point and the dimly lit cobbled streets around the fortress were less than ideal. Any buildings of interest were now closed but I think it would be worth a visit in the day. Had a quick £30 McDonald’s for tea.
Day two – Oslo
The first of our delightful (and more importantly free) breakfasts in the hotel.
Visited the harbour and took the public boat that runs all year round to five nearby islands. These vary in terms of the amount of people who live there but great for photos especially across the Oslo waterfront. We disembarked at the foresty Hovedøya and had a walk around for an hour before catching the next boat back. The moon still in the sky!
We wanted to visit the Nobel building by the harbour (a la the Peace Prize) but closed until the weekend. I’ll visit again for my award for services to travel blogging in a few years no doubt.
Had a choice of museums to visit and decided on the Folk museum. Very similar to St Fagans with their examples of housing through the ages and and old church. The exhibition of Norway from 1600 to the 1900’s was ok, I’ve never been good with museums etc as I always feel in a rush. In hindsight I think the “Fram” museum would have been a better choice which looks at the history of Norway’s polar exploration.
Should probably mention today was Mikayla’s birthday!! It was difficult to bring presents on a flight so instead bought us a week in Lisbon next year. She’s a lucky girl I know. And another crap blog for you!
Next up was Frogner park, that features a sight-to-see “angry boy” statue among another 200+ human sculptures all made by Gustav Vigeland, so the place is sometimes referred to as Vigelenparken. Every single one of the sculptures naked. It was quite a bizarre walk up to the “Manolitten” plinth. There’s undoubtedly a story about family/life struggles and successes to be told about the artwork, one which everyone may have a different perspective on.
The story about the park history and the sculptures is a good side-read. Here’s the Wikipedia page.
After a quick pit stop at the hotel, visited the national ballet and opera house. It was cool that you could actually walk up to the roof, albeit questioning how the random steps at the viewing platform passed health and safety.
Went for an all you can eat Chinese for tea. Weird you had to put the raw meat and veg on your plate before giving it to the chef to took. Flesh everywhere. At £63 including two cokes it was cheap for a restaurant. I clocked half a lager at £7. Yikes! They had to feed their koi carp somehow I guess.
Day three – Lillehammer
Have you heard of Lillehammer? It’s about a two hour train from Oslo, and probably the only reason we chose Norway. Apart from hosting the winter Olympics in 1994, the town is also famous for the setting of unofficial Sopranos spin-off “Lilyhammer”. I watched this earlier in the year, googled the area, and the rest is history.
Again avoiding any wet weather, we arrived in Lillehammer in sunshine and started the walk to the artificial ski jumping arena, where the opening ceremony of the ’94 Olympics took place. Previously sourced images made me expect panoramic views at the top, but this wasn’t the case.
From the station we walked 2km uphill, rather horrible when unexpected, and in the middle of nowhere too. Once finally arrived the expected views were masked by clouds or fog.
You can get to the top of ski jump if you take the cable car (not operating) or 936 steps. I was prepared to walk those steps but it would have been stupid (in my unfit state) to do that with no rewarding views at the end. Still, the first Olympic ski jump venue I’ve visited!
The walk back in to town was a lot more pleasant as I told Instagram my tale of disappointment at the ski-jump. If we weren’t in such a rush I would’ve liked to have a closer look at the woods with the river crashing downhill with us.
I had researched a few locations from the TV series and was pleased to visit the nightclub, high street, church and lake-crossing bridge that featured in the show, either side of a £7.20 ham salad sandwich.
I now know that VERY few people have actually watched Lilyhammer, so didn’t have a clue what I was going on about!! If you enjoyed the Sopranos it’s definitely worth a watch. When first aired, a sixth of the Norwegian population watched it.
18,000 steps in under 4 hours and we still got back to Oslo by 4pm.
That evening we didn’t do much apart from jump on a few buses to visit the national football stadium. We walked right past it before noticing the building with offices and shops was actually part of one stand! It’ll be a really tough decision as to whether I’d visit here for the football and the obligatory 20 match day beers.
We had an absolute bargain for tea in the shape of 7-Eleven hotdogs. Just three quid each… So £9 for me but much more enjoyable than a McDonald’s or something costing at least double.
Day Four – train to Bergen
Today we were up before dawn for breakfast to catch a 7 hour train to Bergen. Why would anyone want to go on a train that long? Well, I seen a few articles describing the journey as one of the best train rides in the world.
For about £60 each, the train rises to over 1,200m, higher than Snowdon, passing 22 stations, most of which are in the remotest of remote arears before ending up near the west cost of the country. There is a really good blog on the Lonely Planet site here that tells you a bit more about the ride… I’ll just leave a few photo’s.
I did fall asleep for a few hours but managed to see the best bits including the highest station Finse, precisely 1,222.2m above sea level. The downhill half was the one to stay awake for, not only seeing mostly untouched nature, waterfalls and the greenest of rivers, bit to also admire the sheer effort it must have taken to build the track digging through countless mountains.
It was a bloody good experience. Was it better than a train through the Alps? I’m not sure, so try both!
Arrived in Bergen around 4pm for our first encounter with rain. This completely ruined the rest of the day. I couldn’t understand how we were so under prepared for rain, having expected it to piss down all week.
We visited Bryggen, which is a set of houses along the harbour that are among the earliest in the area following several large fires since 1702.
This was a little underwhelming for a UNESCO world heritage site, considering the weather and the fact one was a facade for a Radisson Blu hotel!
By the time we walked a little to Bergen castle with our £1 umbrellas already broken, we weren’t really in the mood for a wander around the park and buildings.
One of the top attractions to visit in Bergen is the funicular that traverses to the top of one of seven hills/mountains surrounding the city. Like much of Norway after summer season, this was also closed for refurbishment.
Thankfully (I say that ironically) there was also a cable car in operation that would take us to the top of the biggest mountain Ulriken.
It took a bus across the city and a 25 minute uphill walk before reaching the cable car housing. A lady setting up balloons for a birthday party was a bit shocked to see a tourist, we were probably the only ones that day!
Checking we were allowed on, we coughed up THIRTY QUID EACH for the 10 minute return ride. Now £30 is a lot for anything similar even in Norway, so when we were greeted with our ‘panoramic view’ at the top I knew Bergen had defeated us. Cold, wet and without food for 12 hours. Bleak.
I’ll happily rush through our trip in to town, to the airport (when it finally stopped raining) for our 55 minute flight back to Oslo. With another hotdog (two hotdogs).
We did top off the night with a comforting kebab shop dinner. The only thing more surprising than the cost being that Norwegians love sweetcorn on their Shawarma. I think it worked.
Day 5 – Amsterdam
Getting to bed at 2am and a miserable morning outside dispelled any intentions of another stroll along the river before we checked out.
The biggest question today was whether we were allowed in to Amsterdam for our eight hour layover. According to the government we were good to visit from Norway, and there was nothing to suggest us only being there for 5 days from the UK was an issue. Had we visited from the UK, we would have needed a PCR test. I think we probably weren’t allowed in… but ask me no questions I’ll tell you no lies.
We’ve been to Amsterdam twice now and both times for only a matter of hours. I think it’s quite a good place for a layover especially if you’re sober and not wanting to indulge in any plant based product.
On this occasion we had a walk along the canals* up to Dam Square, lunch on to the flower market and a walk back with some calorific churros. I can see why there isn’t a market for escooters here as your life is perfectly at risk with the cyclists!
* Canal walk did involve actively looking for the red light district. I couldn’t believe it is where it is, so central, and last time must have walked past a few places without noticing! This time however, one alley in particular, I was treated to an eyeful (but don’t take photo’s, the one below was closed!)
We didn’t have any money left, anyway…
The last leg of the trip getting home went without incident. A bloody good effort of I say so myself.
How Not 2 Life 