Oslo
So I'm in Oslo for 2 nights before I head off to Iceland.
Amazing how many people turned up for the bus at our stop this morning! Turns out half of them were just saying goodbye to their friends but I hadn't seen this many people since I arrived and I wondered where the hell they'd all been hiding.
I started chatting to Marian (a German guy from the hostel) at the airport as we're on the same flight and in Oslo for the same 2 nights. We decided to go out for dinner and hang out a bit in Oslo which will be nice.
Plane ride was uneventful.
We went and checked into our respective accommodation then met up at the Christmas market to check that out and have a few beers and some Christmas cheer.
So we ate some food, drank some beer and mulled wine and generally wandered around. I was going to hire some ice skates and have a go but they were $50 to hire! Fuck that!
Wandered around a while then we went off to a craft beer place I'd had a drink at before arriving at the market. So we had a beer, then another one and pretty soon it was 3am. I decided at this point that I'd spent enough money and had enough to drink so I left Marian to it and went back to the hostel. Hopefully I didn't make too much noise when I came in.
It was really surprising to me that so many people were smoking at the bar. I would have thought with Norway's public health system and high standard of living that smoking wouldn't be a thing.
Got up just in time to catch the breakfast at the hostel (which is excellent) before heading out for the day.
I started at the Viking Ship Museum which was pretty basic but cool. They had 3 very old excavated Viking ships and some of the items found with them on display. It was only 3 rooms but two of the ships were in beautiful condition.
The room with the ship in the worst condition had an iMax style video playing on 3 of the walls showing a bit of a story of how the ship might have come to be where they found it. Basically went through the building of the ship, some battles then the burial rites of whoever was buried with the ship.
A small but interesting museum without too much written content.
Afterwards I walked 15 minutes down the road to the Fram museum. This was a museum dedicated to the polar expeditions of Amudensen and Scott racing to the South Pole. It was mostly focused on Amundsen since he won the race and is Norwegian. They had a couple of the boats used in expeditions and a lot of information around the preparation and conditions during the race.
There was also an interesting documentary playing that talked about early researchers living on Antarctica in the early 1900s.
I quite enjoyed this museum and would recommend it to anyone interested in the race to the South Pole.
Next up I went and had a look at a park called the Vigeland Sculpture Park. It's a big park with a bunch of sculpture from one particular artist. He basically focuses on the human form so almost all the sculptures were naked men, women and children interacting in various ways.
Some were shit, some were OK but they were all of a very similar style.
I think my favourites were the human dildo tower and the sequence of sculptures I have dubbed "How many babies can a grown man defeat in a fight?" There is even a selection of sculptures showing the babies training for the fight (at least that's how I interpreted them - and that's what art is right?).
Marian finally woke up so we decided to meet up for dinner later. I wanted something Norwegian for dinner. I was looking for somewhere that served seal but couldn't no find anywhere that had it on the menu. So we were going to check out a place called the Lofoten Fish Restaurant which was a very nice looking (and therefore horrifically expensive) restaurant that cooks seafood in the Lofoten style. Unfortunately they were booked out so we ended up at another random seafood restaurant nearby which was fine.
I had a seafood soup and monkfish which were both tasty.
Headed back to the hotel after that because I was still pretty tired from last night.
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