Bloggingsouls.com: Oslo, day 1

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May 13, 2008

Oslo, day 1

Adam and I flew into Oslo on a late Saturday afternoon. We caught a train from the airport to central Oslo and we were impressed with the changing light display as we exited Nationaltheatret station via the escalator. We purchased a ticket for the tram but noticed no one seemed to pay on either of the trams we took to get to our destination (though a Norwegian who I spoke to later asserted that most people do buy tickets since random checks are performed and the fine for those without tickets is significant). We also discovered how small Oslo was (we probably could've walked the distance covered by the two trams with relative ease--I guess we never pay attention to map scales).

The apartment we were staying in (hotels in Norway are expensive so we opted to stay mostly in apartments in Oslo and Bergen) was located in an upscale neighborhood called Frogner. Our apartment was located near the entrance to Frogner Park and since it was still early evening and very much light out (because of its northen latitude, the sun doesn't set until late in Norway--while we were there sunset occured just before 10) we decided to take a foray into the park before getting dinner.

There were a number of people in the park still, including some people grilling food on grill boxes. We walked towards a building near the entrance to the park and were charmed to find what looked like a beer hall. We decided to check out Vigelands Sculpture Park which was nice but a bit small. After having spent 24 hours traveling, however, a stroll through one of Oslo's major parks was a nice way to spend our first day in Norway.

After walking through the park, we grabbed dinner at a laid back cafe where Adam had a tasty burger with roasted potatoes and I had a goat cheese salad and we were introduced to Norway's high prices. I think our dishes each came out to over or around 100 Krone, or about $20 US but I will speak more about how expensive Norway in my next entry.

Frogner Park.jpg