A week in Oslo

On the 23rd of May we packed our bags and jumped on a Norwegian Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Oslo.

We wanted to somehow include Scandinavia in our trip and we had a hunch that Oslo would show us yet another flavour of Europe. We were right! We had arranged an AirBnB in the Barcode district of Oslo just a few minutes walk from its central station in a modern highrise apartment building not far from Oslo’s impressive Opera House.

The weather wasn’t great but it it was dry enough on most days to get out and about. Among other places we visited the Oslo City Hall, Frogner Park, the Nobel Peace Center, the Munch Museum, and the stunning Oslo Opera House. Keeping to our playbook we took in a walking tour. We visited a sauna, which are quite popular in Norway. We briefly walked Akershus Fortress before riding a ferry around the Islands in Oslo Fjord, and on our last day we hiked along the Lysaker River. The boys made a strong push on school work and were able to finish up their course work leaving only a final exam in Computer Science to be completed at our next stop, London. Just as we expected, Norway was an expensive place to visit! Literally everyone we met was very friendly and spoke perfect English. The public transit system was very impressive even by European standards. Frankly, Oslo, in our opinion did NOT measure up to the beauty of Stockholm (which Mark visited in the 1990s) or the charm of Copenhagen (which we visited as a family in 2015) which isn’t easy to do. However, as a society it has plenty to teach us (especially us North Americans) and overall it was an interesting detour for the second to last leg of our trip. Next stop…London!