Day 9: Oslo

I think I may have misjudged Oslo, because we really enjoyed our day here today. A few things happened to change my mind.

The first thing that happened was that I slept well last night. I only woke a couple of times and went back to sleep each time. I might have to give MBW some credit for this – she cranked the air conditioning down to make it colder in the room, so I wasn’t so hot all night.

So the doona worked out OK.

The second thing that happened was that we found a nice coffee shop and had a nice coffee and a cinnamon bun each for breakfast. This was the first day of this trip that we didn’t have breakfast included.

The third thing that happened was that we did a walking tour today, and we were shown some really pretty parts of Oslo that we wouldn’t have found by ourselves. Our guide was South African which I just found confusing, but other than her habit of laughing at everything she said, it was a good tour.

Good until the end that is, when she advised everyone that she preferred tips in Euros, and promptly pulled out a card reader to take payments … which is really interesting considering that Euros are not the local currency …

And the final thing that changed my mind was that it was an absolute cracker of a day here in Oslo. Blue skies and sunny weather. It was still very cold, but you have to expect that.

We started the day with a “feels like” temperature of about -8 degrees, which was pretty confronting. We were out of the hotel by about 7.30am and we needed to meet at the bronze tiger at 10.00am for the walking tour, so we had plenty of time to reorient ourselves and get some breakfast.

We went back to the large shopping mall that is connected to the Central train station, and poked around for while, just browsing through the shops. We also figured out when and where we catch the airport express train tomorrow to get to the airport for the next leg of our journey to Rovaniemi via Helsinki.

We also worked backwards to figure out what time we need to be walking out of the hotel tomorrow if we are going to get to the airport in plenty of time, and those numbers don’t look appealing.

At around 9.45am we decided on a quick comfort stop before setting off on the walking tour, and we followed the signs through the shopping mall to find … barrier gates where you pay NOK20 (20 Kroner = approximately $3.00) to use the facilities.

Originally I thought that NOK20 was worth about 30 cents, then I realised it is $3.00. So at $3.00 a time, it’s probably a good economic proposition. I might start charging visitors to our house the same … I’ll just need to install a card reader on the toilet doors …

I wonder if the staff in the shopping centre get to pee for free? Otherwise they have to claim it as a tax deduction.

I did notice that there were toilets out on the street corner that only charged NOK5 (75 cents?), but i imagine they wouldn’t be very hygienic.

The tour was good, and showed us some places that we were keen to go back to and have another look. One of the more interesting things that we saw was floating saunas on the fjord. As I’m sure you realise, the sauna culture is pretty big here, and it’s not just a tourist scam to go into a floating sauna out onto the icy fjord, and jump into the freezing water.

We were told that it is the only scientifically proven method of reversing the aging process … but I think I’d rather get old gracefully that go from an 80 degree sauna into the freezing, icy waters of the fjord.

By the time that the tour finished at 12.00pm, we were getting peckisĥ but decided to do quick tour through Parliament House. Security was pretty tight, but the inside of the building was pretty spectacular with paintings on every surface. Some of the paintings were “interesting”, with images of naked people cavorting beside a river on one main wall. Parliament is an interesting place…

And the best part was that the parliamentary dunnies were free! So we used them.

We have tried very hard to eat well (ie healthy), and local where we can, but we wanted to see the changing of the guards at the King’s Palace at 1.30pm, and we saw a McDonald’s.

It probably won’t surprise you to know that a cheeseburger and fries in Oslo tastes exactly the same as in Australia.

By the time we’d hiked up the hill to the Palace we were feeling a little weary, so we headed back towards home, stopping to look at a couple of stores on the way.

We asked ChatGPT where we could find a shop in Oslo that was similar to Target or KMart in Australia, and it sent us to a place that was probably more like Myer or David Jones, but it had a good food hall and we got some options for dinner.

And we had coffee to keep us going.

Final stop for the day was the library, which is a massive building with all kinds of stuff in it. Far better than the Capalaba library, but I guess it is probably on par with the BCC library in the city.

My biggest complaint about Oslo is that because we are so far north, the sun sits very low on the horizon for most of the day, and it feels like you are always walking and looking into the sun.

But seriously, if that is my biggest complaint …

Before dinner we went back to the Citybox Oslo hotel (AKA home) to repack our bags and have a bit of a rest. We reckon we need to be walking out of the hotel just after 6.00am tomorrow morning, so we need to be able to get up, showered, get dressed and leave in the morning with the least possible decision-making required.

Mornings aren’t our best time of day, especially before the sun comes up. And especially when we need to function without the benefit of caffeine surging through our systems.

Tomorrow we head off to Rovaniemi via Helsinki on Finnair, with our flight departing Oslo at 8.45am. I’ll barely be awake, so I hope that the pilots function better in the morning than we do.

For dinner we went back to the food hall, about 3 blocks away and got there just before closing time. We picked ourselves up a couple of containers of soup and some bread rolls – cauliflower soup for MBW, and sweet potato & peppers for me. MBW reported that she had chosen well (as usual), and my choice was disappointing (also as usual). The “king of bad decisions” is what they call me.

Mine was very hot and spicy, in a not particularly enjoyable way. I’m sure that it will be fun when it makes it’s way through my digestive system … and hopefully that won’t be at 30,000 feet between Oslo and Helsinki.

I’ve mentioned that this hotel doesn’t offer a great deal of facilities in the room, but they do offer a communal kitchen on the ground floor with microwaves, vending machines, and a refrigerator.

They also have a coffee machine that dispenses coffee at NOK20 per cup … which happens to be the same price we paid to use toilets in the shopping centre today.

Coincidence?

Ciao