Since summer is long gone (or so I thought) and we’ve been working for a while now non-stop, it was time for a little vacation. This time we went to Oslo, Norway to visit friends. We flew with KLM from Schiphol to Gardemoen last Wednesday.

Wednesday evening was spent catching up with the friends we were staying with. We ate a delicious home-cooked risotto with self-picked chantarelles. Yummy!

Thursday we spent doing sightseeing. We went to the Viking ship museum and the Fram museum (see addresses below). The Viking ship museum was very small and within one hour we had finished it, and this was 100 norwegian kronors for me (80 NOK for students).

We did the mistake of not buying the Oslo pass, thinking we wouldn’t visit so many museums, but in the end we went to a lot of them. As a student you get most of the time student discount, but me, as a working person, it got a bit expensive without the pass.

After that we headed to the Fram Museum which was situated on the same island. The Fram museum hosts the two ships Fram and Gjøa, which was used in polar expeditions by Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen in the end and beginning of the 19th and 20th centuries. This was a very impressing museum. You were allowed to enter the two ships. The Gjøa was a small ship and it felt like it was a ship for boys going on an adventure. The Fram was a lot bigger. The  museum chronicles the many expeditions through the last 1000 years that had been made to the polar regions. It also tells about Nansen’s more critical view of European culture being introduced to the Inuits. And also features a small exhibition on Inuit culture.

There were so much information that after a while I started mixing up the expeditions… The cafe was cute and nice.

On Friday we went to the National Gallery, mainly because I wanted to see The Scream by Edward Munch. This painting was very small and the colors were very pale. It looks better in the books at the moment.

After that we went to look for lunch. Checked out Mathallen, but apart from overpriced fish dishes, there really wasn’t that much, more a place for a drink and a snack than  lunch, so we ended up in a Middle-Eastern cafe (Mela Cafe, address below) and had falafel and mango lassi. This was really delicious! Lots of herbs and the falafel was really crunchy.

Oslo can boast with having some waterfalls in the city with the river Akerselva.

In the evening we met up with our hosts and their friends and had some tapas at Txotx. The tapas was very nice, but it wasn’t a place where you could eat yourself full.

We went for coffee a few times at Kaffebrenneriet, that’s like a Norwegian Starbucks. The coffee was tasty and you got big cups of it.

On Saturday we went pa tur with our hosts, a.k.a hiking. The boyfriend of my friend claimed that we were going for a 5 km walk. This wasn’t true. At all. We walked in total 12 km. 12 KM!!

We took the subway up a mountain (what the…?) and then walked down the mountain. Had some fika at a coffee house and continued further down after an hour or so.

My feet were pretty tired after this walk and in the evening we had dinner at home and played games.

Sunday was our last day. We went to the Vigeland park and the Oslo City Museum. The statues in the park I didn’t understand at all. But the park was nice in the fall colors.

The city museum was a (free) very interesting museum with lots of information (most of it in Norwegian) about the history of Oslo. When you get out of the museum you look at the city with new eyes.

A few hours later we flew back with KLM to Schiphol. There had been a sort of October heat wave during the weekend. It was so hot coming back with my winter jacket!

We really enjoyed Oslo, even though for a Dutch-Swedish expat couple it’s a bit expensive than good old Dutchland. I always remember Norway as being really really expensive, even for a Swede, but now, I didn’t really think the difference was that big.

Next time we want to go there in the winter and enjoy some city skiing!

Adresses:

Viking Ship Museum: Huk aveny 35, 0287 Oslo, https://www.khm.uio.no/english/visit-us/viking-ship-museum/index.html

Fram Museum: Bygdøynesveien 39, 0286 Oslo, http://frammuseum.no/

National Gallery:  Universitetsgata 13, 0164 Oslo, http://www.nasjonalmuseet.no/en/

Mela Cafe: Mariboes gate 6, 0183 Oslo

Txotx: Trondheimsveien 2, 0560 Oslo

Oslo City Museum: Frognerveien 67, 0266 Oslo, http://www.oslomuseum.no/oslo-museum/english/

And the Norwegians know what’s important to find in a city, the government licquer store, Vinmonopolet: