Valhalla, I am coming!
When London Looniness hits its maximum, I get the travel bug. Staying with Chad and Michelle, and otherwise generally feeling in limbo, I decided also that it was probably a good time to leave the country. So I scrambled around, putting out feelers to find out which friends were free and were willing to take in a stray. Claire responded with open arms, and so it was settled. Off to Oslo I was to go. Booked a flight for Friday through Tuesday, and thus was Scandenavia-bound.
Woke up bright and early to a rainy morning on the Friday, and headed out to Stansted airport to catch a mid-morning Ryan Air flight. Got into Torp airport mid-afternoon, and hopped on a bus that took me on a two hour trip through the Norwegian countryside from Sandefjord to Oslo. I brought my iPod and a book, but ignored both as I stared agape at the gorgeousness I was confronted with. England's green fields, deciduous trees and stone farmhouses were replaced by hill after hill of fir trees sloping down into clear glassy lakes, and dotted with brightly colored wooden houses. I'd been in the country less than an hour and had already decided it was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen.
Shortly, I was in Oslo where Claire met me at the bus station and we had a joyous reunion. I came bearing thank you gifts of large bottles of duty free vodka and Bailey's, which is apparently about 10 times as expensive in Norway as it is anywhere else. I think I saw Claire shed a brief tear. Maybe it was because she was so happy to see me, but I think it was probably the booze.
She immediately herded me onto Oslo's version of the Underground, called the T-Bane, and swept me into her dorm room. Her flat, along with much of the rest of the country, looks like it's straight out of an Ikea catalog. You wonder about these things, but the moment you find out it's all true is a sweet one. In fact, I think her kitchen is featured on p. 72.
The plan for that evening was simple. Do nothing. Her dorm is on a campus and has a small store about 50 yards away from her room, so we stopped by there and I spent 100 kroner (although the 100 was giving me a heart attack, it's only roughly about $15) buying us some food for the next few days. This is where she introduced me to one of my new favorite foods: brown cheese. Brown cheese is a goat cheese, which has the look and consistency of a cold block of creamy peanut butter, and tastes slightly sweet. It is awesome. We had some dinner, caught up with each other, had a little Bailey's, and me being a tired traveling cookie, went to beddy bye.
Saturday Claire woke up far too early (she's crazy, that one), but kindly let me sleep in a bit. Then we got up and got ready to pack in a full day of sightseeing. Oslo and the countryside had already been so pretty, I couldn't wait to see the rest! Our plan was to take a ferry out to some scattered islands that dotted Oslo's harbor. But first, we had some time to kill before the ferry left, so we wandered around downtown a bit. Oslo is a fairly small city of about half a million people, and the center of town is quite compact. Rather like Edinburgh, there is one main road that runs down the middle. At one end is the palace where the royal family lives.
The Palace.
The main road is Karl Johans Gate, and runs down towards Parliament and into the touristy shopping district.
We walked down from up there and over towards and along the harbor to catch our ferry.
The harbor is quite lovely, and it was great to be on the water.
The ferry we were catching takes passengers out to three small islands. We stayed on the boat as it made stops at all three and then alighted onto the main one, called Hovedoya.
There we hiked through woods until we came upon the ruins of a 12th century monastery. We wandered around here for a bit, climbing around on the rocks, and then settled down to snack on brown cheese wrapped in lefke. How's this for a picnic spot?
We hiked around the island a bit more, climbing up hills, atop which sat some old cannons. Here we sat and just enjoyed the view out onto the harbor and other islands.
We hopped back onto the ferry and rode back to the mainland, stopping to quick capture the moment of boat-riding merriment!
Our next stop was another ferry boat out to another island called Bygdoy. But we had some time to kill before then, so we took the long way 'round stopping to climb up (Oslo is quite hilly, so a lot of this blog will make references to climbing up things.) to Akerhus fortress, which looks like this:
We bypassed the part of it you had to pay for, and instead took in more views of the harbor down below.
and out over the city
Climbing down from there, we found another random, unexplained statue of an American President (not unlike the Lincoln statue in Parliament Square).
Weird.
After this, we caught our ferry boat to Bygdoy island so we could "visit" the Viking ship museum and Folkmuseum. I use the term visit loosely, as to officially visit them you had to pay an entry fee. As a student, and a rather broke one at that, I think this is lame and try to avoid paying for things at all costs (har har).
We disembarked and climbed up another long hill towards the Viking Ship museum through a neighborhood which Claire said reminded her of Pippi Longstocking. Fortunately, you can bypass the entry fee (insider's tip here!) by standing in the lobby of the museum where you can easily view the main attraction Viking ship, which looks like this:
Having sated my lukewarm desire to see a Viking ship, we wandered over to the Folkmuseum to see a Stave church. You also need to pay to get in to see this, but Claire took us around to the back where through a fence you could see its awesomeness from the outside.
Considering this is how we also saw Stonehenge, I have no problem finding this good enough. Paying to see things is for wusses.
Then we made it back down to the water to pick up our ferry boat. It made one more stop to another part of the island with more museums you have to pay to get into, so therefore we didn't. But this is what they look like from the outside.
Then we were off to go do the thing I was looking forward to most the whole day, taking a train to a lake and getting ice creeeeeeammm! Yesssss!!!
The end of the line of one of the trains that goes to Claire's part of town takes you to a path which winds through some woods to the most gorgeous, picturesque lake. We grabbed some super cheap, giant waffle cones - the day was a bit on the chilly side, but rather humid, and I found this still to be acceptable ice cream weather - and parked our butts on the edge of the lake where I sat in wonder and munched on tasty Norwegian ice cream (probably the same as any other kind of ice cream, but sounds more glamorous that way).
This is the lake, but it was about eight billion times prettier in person.
We then hiked (or in my case, dragged ourselves) down a path through some more woods and down towards Claire's dorm. It was very peaceful and beautiful, and we passed lots of people hiking, jogging or biking. The Norwegians are very outdoorsy and athletic, and I can see why with all the scenery to enjoy whilst doing so!
This is the view looking down onto Claire's dorm at the end, her campus and the city and water in the distance.
We thought about going out again that night, but I was plum worn out after the day and not having slept that well the two nights before, and ended up lying down for a nap around 7:30. This ended up me being asleep all night, while Claire watched movies with her flatmate.
The next morning we headed back downtown, this time to wander around the city more and go visit some museums (limiting ourselves, of course, to the free ones).
We walked around the Nationaltheater, where the Ibsen festival had just taken place.
And saw the Parliament building,
Then we went to City Hall, where they award the Nobel Peace Prize.
The inside of City Hall is gorgeous, and painted with loads of amazing murals.
This is the room where they actually hand out the Nobel Peace Prize.
Upstairs there is a gallery filled with gifts from cities and countries around the world, like London, Edinburgh, Thailand, and strangely enough, many, many gifts from Madison, Wisconsin. I don't know why this is, but it's pretty friggin' cool!
After this, we headed to the National Gallery, which is fortunately free, and saw loads of beautiful paintings, many by Edvard Munch, including the twice-nabbed "Scream" painting (though I think the one actually on display now is just a copy). We then went over to the Cultural History museum and saw loads of archaeological tidbits and some Stave church interiors.
It was kind of a rainy day, but we decided to next take another train to the end of the line, at the top of a mountain that overlooked the city. This proved to be an excellent idea as the views from the top were amazing, despite it being foggy and rainy and not being quite able to see the views down below.
While waiting for another train to take us back down, we wandered up a path through the woods.
There Claire located some of the remnants of the summer's blueberries. So we sat atop a mountain overlooking Oslo, munching on wild Norwegian blueberries. Excellent.
We took the train back down, and then walked over to the Vigeland Sculpture park which is filled with loads of sculptures by one artist that represent various familial relationships.
I snapped a closeup picture of my favorite one.
We then headed back to Claire's, ate a quick dinner, got dolled up and then headed back downtown to visit her favorite bar where she has found the cheapest pints in Oslo (kr. 30, or $4.50). Rock In was definitely hard rock, and after sitting awhile by ourselves sampling the cheap Norwegian draft, and chatting, we were joined by a Polish fellow named Martin who apparently spoke very little English, but was fluent in Russian and Italian. Now Claire and I, between us, can barely speak the following languages: Norwegian, Spanish, French and German. Together we are a super power of finding bathrooms in about half a dozen European countries. We can combine these languages to create a terrifying elixir of non-sensical, but enticing gibberish. But that's about it. And save for Claire's Spanish, none of our languages helped us understand Martin or him understand us. So the two of them attempted a conversation in Italian and Spanish, and she would translate for me. After about an hour, we'd sufficiently had a nice five-minute bout of small talk. It was great fun! Apparently, now Claire has a paying job tutoring him in English!
Tipsily we nabbed the last train home, followed by Martin, who seemed to have meant to go the other way and found himself stranded at Ulleval Stadion (the football stadium) trying to hail a taxi on an abandoned road while Claire and I, giggling, ran up the road to her room. Then back to sleep!
Monday was my last full day in Oslo, and having run around like madwomen for two days, we decided to take it slow. Mainly I wanted to do a bit of shopping. Lots of people who visit Norway like to bring back giant Norwegian sweaters which are gorgeous and incredibly expensive. Claire said they were thousands of kroner. But she had found a super sneaky way of finding them for cheap: The Salvation Army. So we first stopped there and browsed, and I found an absolutely amazing sweater there for about 10% of what it would have been new, and it looks new. I also found a pair of shoes. And I only spent about $30. So I have me a beautiful, authentic Norwegian sweater and am totally happy.
Then we walked down to the downtown area to visit some more shops. Everything was pretty expensive, though, so I decided against a lot of that. The day was unexpectedly warm and bright, and since we were both feeling muggy and gross, we decided to cool off by grabbing a ferry and just riding around. It worked. After this, we'd pretty much exhausted things to do in Oslo, and headed back to her dorm for the night where we just hung out and watched a movie.
Tuesday morning it was up bright and early again to make my journey back to London. It was a long day, taking the long bus ride through the country, then waiting at the airport for hours, the 1.5 hour flight back to England, a horridly long line through Passport Control at Stansted, and then a train back from the airport to Chad's. The rest of the night and most of the next day I was useless, but it was great, great fun.
Norway is a beautiful country, and I'd love to go back some day and see even more than just Oslo. And of course there's the whole country of Sweden I've yet to touch! Oooo...the possibilities.
After that adventure, I've been hanging at Chad's, working, and getting ready to move. I might go get my Scandenavian fix by taking a trip out to Ikea tomorrow so I can get some new sheets now that I'm upgrading my bed to a double. Then Sunday I move into my new flat! Yippee! Will be nice to feel at least somewhat settled again.
And now, I leave you with a parting gift: Viking Kittens.
Watch it. You know you want to.
Woke up bright and early to a rainy morning on the Friday, and headed out to Stansted airport to catch a mid-morning Ryan Air flight. Got into Torp airport mid-afternoon, and hopped on a bus that took me on a two hour trip through the Norwegian countryside from Sandefjord to Oslo. I brought my iPod and a book, but ignored both as I stared agape at the gorgeousness I was confronted with. England's green fields, deciduous trees and stone farmhouses were replaced by hill after hill of fir trees sloping down into clear glassy lakes, and dotted with brightly colored wooden houses. I'd been in the country less than an hour and had already decided it was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen.
Shortly, I was in Oslo where Claire met me at the bus station and we had a joyous reunion. I came bearing thank you gifts of large bottles of duty free vodka and Bailey's, which is apparently about 10 times as expensive in Norway as it is anywhere else. I think I saw Claire shed a brief tear. Maybe it was because she was so happy to see me, but I think it was probably the booze.
She immediately herded me onto Oslo's version of the Underground, called the T-Bane, and swept me into her dorm room. Her flat, along with much of the rest of the country, looks like it's straight out of an Ikea catalog. You wonder about these things, but the moment you find out it's all true is a sweet one. In fact, I think her kitchen is featured on p. 72.
The plan for that evening was simple. Do nothing. Her dorm is on a campus and has a small store about 50 yards away from her room, so we stopped by there and I spent 100 kroner (although the 100 was giving me a heart attack, it's only roughly about $15) buying us some food for the next few days. This is where she introduced me to one of my new favorite foods: brown cheese. Brown cheese is a goat cheese, which has the look and consistency of a cold block of creamy peanut butter, and tastes slightly sweet. It is awesome. We had some dinner, caught up with each other, had a little Bailey's, and me being a tired traveling cookie, went to beddy bye.
Saturday Claire woke up far too early (she's crazy, that one), but kindly let me sleep in a bit. Then we got up and got ready to pack in a full day of sightseeing. Oslo and the countryside had already been so pretty, I couldn't wait to see the rest! Our plan was to take a ferry out to some scattered islands that dotted Oslo's harbor. But first, we had some time to kill before the ferry left, so we wandered around downtown a bit. Oslo is a fairly small city of about half a million people, and the center of town is quite compact. Rather like Edinburgh, there is one main road that runs down the middle. At one end is the palace where the royal family lives.
The Palace.
The main road is Karl Johans Gate, and runs down towards Parliament and into the touristy shopping district.
We walked down from up there and over towards and along the harbor to catch our ferry.
The harbor is quite lovely, and it was great to be on the water.
The ferry we were catching takes passengers out to three small islands. We stayed on the boat as it made stops at all three and then alighted onto the main one, called Hovedoya.
There we hiked through woods until we came upon the ruins of a 12th century monastery. We wandered around here for a bit, climbing around on the rocks, and then settled down to snack on brown cheese wrapped in lefke. How's this for a picnic spot?
We hiked around the island a bit more, climbing up hills, atop which sat some old cannons. Here we sat and just enjoyed the view out onto the harbor and other islands.
We hopped back onto the ferry and rode back to the mainland, stopping to quick capture the moment of boat-riding merriment!
Our next stop was another ferry boat out to another island called Bygdoy. But we had some time to kill before then, so we took the long way 'round stopping to climb up (Oslo is quite hilly, so a lot of this blog will make references to climbing up things.) to Akerhus fortress, which looks like this:
We bypassed the part of it you had to pay for, and instead took in more views of the harbor down below.
and out over the city
Climbing down from there, we found another random, unexplained statue of an American President (not unlike the Lincoln statue in Parliament Square).
Weird.
After this, we caught our ferry boat to Bygdoy island so we could "visit" the Viking ship museum and Folkmuseum. I use the term visit loosely, as to officially visit them you had to pay an entry fee. As a student, and a rather broke one at that, I think this is lame and try to avoid paying for things at all costs (har har).
We disembarked and climbed up another long hill towards the Viking Ship museum through a neighborhood which Claire said reminded her of Pippi Longstocking. Fortunately, you can bypass the entry fee (insider's tip here!) by standing in the lobby of the museum where you can easily view the main attraction Viking ship, which looks like this:
Having sated my lukewarm desire to see a Viking ship, we wandered over to the Folkmuseum to see a Stave church. You also need to pay to get in to see this, but Claire took us around to the back where through a fence you could see its awesomeness from the outside.
Considering this is how we also saw Stonehenge, I have no problem finding this good enough. Paying to see things is for wusses.
Then we made it back down to the water to pick up our ferry boat. It made one more stop to another part of the island with more museums you have to pay to get into, so therefore we didn't. But this is what they look like from the outside.
Then we were off to go do the thing I was looking forward to most the whole day, taking a train to a lake and getting ice creeeeeeammm! Yesssss!!!
The end of the line of one of the trains that goes to Claire's part of town takes you to a path which winds through some woods to the most gorgeous, picturesque lake. We grabbed some super cheap, giant waffle cones - the day was a bit on the chilly side, but rather humid, and I found this still to be acceptable ice cream weather - and parked our butts on the edge of the lake where I sat in wonder and munched on tasty Norwegian ice cream (probably the same as any other kind of ice cream, but sounds more glamorous that way).
This is the lake, but it was about eight billion times prettier in person.
We then hiked (or in my case, dragged ourselves) down a path through some more woods and down towards Claire's dorm. It was very peaceful and beautiful, and we passed lots of people hiking, jogging or biking. The Norwegians are very outdoorsy and athletic, and I can see why with all the scenery to enjoy whilst doing so!
This is the view looking down onto Claire's dorm at the end, her campus and the city and water in the distance.
We thought about going out again that night, but I was plum worn out after the day and not having slept that well the two nights before, and ended up lying down for a nap around 7:30. This ended up me being asleep all night, while Claire watched movies with her flatmate.
The next morning we headed back downtown, this time to wander around the city more and go visit some museums (limiting ourselves, of course, to the free ones).
We walked around the Nationaltheater, where the Ibsen festival had just taken place.
And saw the Parliament building,
Then we went to City Hall, where they award the Nobel Peace Prize.
The inside of City Hall is gorgeous, and painted with loads of amazing murals.
This is the room where they actually hand out the Nobel Peace Prize.
Upstairs there is a gallery filled with gifts from cities and countries around the world, like London, Edinburgh, Thailand, and strangely enough, many, many gifts from Madison, Wisconsin. I don't know why this is, but it's pretty friggin' cool!
After this, we headed to the National Gallery, which is fortunately free, and saw loads of beautiful paintings, many by Edvard Munch, including the twice-nabbed "Scream" painting (though I think the one actually on display now is just a copy). We then went over to the Cultural History museum and saw loads of archaeological tidbits and some Stave church interiors.
It was kind of a rainy day, but we decided to next take another train to the end of the line, at the top of a mountain that overlooked the city. This proved to be an excellent idea as the views from the top were amazing, despite it being foggy and rainy and not being quite able to see the views down below.
While waiting for another train to take us back down, we wandered up a path through the woods.
There Claire located some of the remnants of the summer's blueberries. So we sat atop a mountain overlooking Oslo, munching on wild Norwegian blueberries. Excellent.
We took the train back down, and then walked over to the Vigeland Sculpture park which is filled with loads of sculptures by one artist that represent various familial relationships.
I snapped a closeup picture of my favorite one.
We then headed back to Claire's, ate a quick dinner, got dolled up and then headed back downtown to visit her favorite bar where she has found the cheapest pints in Oslo (kr. 30, or $4.50). Rock In was definitely hard rock, and after sitting awhile by ourselves sampling the cheap Norwegian draft, and chatting, we were joined by a Polish fellow named Martin who apparently spoke very little English, but was fluent in Russian and Italian. Now Claire and I, between us, can barely speak the following languages: Norwegian, Spanish, French and German. Together we are a super power of finding bathrooms in about half a dozen European countries. We can combine these languages to create a terrifying elixir of non-sensical, but enticing gibberish. But that's about it. And save for Claire's Spanish, none of our languages helped us understand Martin or him understand us. So the two of them attempted a conversation in Italian and Spanish, and she would translate for me. After about an hour, we'd sufficiently had a nice five-minute bout of small talk. It was great fun! Apparently, now Claire has a paying job tutoring him in English!
Tipsily we nabbed the last train home, followed by Martin, who seemed to have meant to go the other way and found himself stranded at Ulleval Stadion (the football stadium) trying to hail a taxi on an abandoned road while Claire and I, giggling, ran up the road to her room. Then back to sleep!
Monday was my last full day in Oslo, and having run around like madwomen for two days, we decided to take it slow. Mainly I wanted to do a bit of shopping. Lots of people who visit Norway like to bring back giant Norwegian sweaters which are gorgeous and incredibly expensive. Claire said they were thousands of kroner. But she had found a super sneaky way of finding them for cheap: The Salvation Army. So we first stopped there and browsed, and I found an absolutely amazing sweater there for about 10% of what it would have been new, and it looks new. I also found a pair of shoes. And I only spent about $30. So I have me a beautiful, authentic Norwegian sweater and am totally happy.
Then we walked down to the downtown area to visit some more shops. Everything was pretty expensive, though, so I decided against a lot of that. The day was unexpectedly warm and bright, and since we were both feeling muggy and gross, we decided to cool off by grabbing a ferry and just riding around. It worked. After this, we'd pretty much exhausted things to do in Oslo, and headed back to her dorm for the night where we just hung out and watched a movie.
Tuesday morning it was up bright and early again to make my journey back to London. It was a long day, taking the long bus ride through the country, then waiting at the airport for hours, the 1.5 hour flight back to England, a horridly long line through Passport Control at Stansted, and then a train back from the airport to Chad's. The rest of the night and most of the next day I was useless, but it was great, great fun.
Norway is a beautiful country, and I'd love to go back some day and see even more than just Oslo. And of course there's the whole country of Sweden I've yet to touch! Oooo...the possibilities.
After that adventure, I've been hanging at Chad's, working, and getting ready to move. I might go get my Scandenavian fix by taking a trip out to Ikea tomorrow so I can get some new sheets now that I'm upgrading my bed to a double. Then Sunday I move into my new flat! Yippee! Will be nice to feel at least somewhat settled again.
And now, I leave you with a parting gift: Viking Kittens.
Watch it. You know you want to.
posted by Lauren Matson | 7:59 PM
1 Comments:
Oh my god. I desperately need some Viking kittens!
... I like the pretty pictures!
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