Four Days in Oslo (July 23, 24, 25, 26, 2023)

July 23, 2023 to July 26, 2023

A Lovely City

God Dag (that’s “good day”in Norwegian). Oslo is a lovely city.

We hunkered down at the Thon Rosenkrantz, which we highly recommend with one caveat. I was dying for a tub so we booked a suite which really was lovely, tub was A plus, it had a great balcony, and good space to spread out. It also was voted as Oslo’s best breakfast and I would concur or, as Scott Anderson would report, it’s a “ten-jammer.” It’s pretty weird how, after eating a hotel breakfast everyday, you get really opinionated about them and notice the little differences in each place, and in each country. In addition to the usual suspects the Thon Rosenkrantz has lots of different fishes (pickled herring, pickled herring in mustard sauce, peppered mackerel, salmon) and a chocolate table which included white chocolate, which is a favorite of mine. It’s not great to be tempted for breakfast. They also serve energy shots made with ginger.

The caveat being that the hotel is above a few bars across the street that become late night hangouts. Even with the solid windows closed, and even though we are on the 8th (and top) floor, the noise comes in. It doesn’t bother me but it’s been troubling Dave's sleep. You just never know. it's a bummer because this is a great place otherwise. The staff are super nice and helpful.

Thon hotels are a prominent Norwegian hotel chain; you see them everywhere. They vary in price but are generally reasonably priced (for Norway). When we checked out Dave commented on how nice everyone was, and the clerk said that that’s because they work for a great company who treats them really well so it’s easy to be happy and pleasant to guests. Hmmm, something to ponder for USA companies perhaps?

Although the view from our balcony is great, we overlook these three bars/restaurants which are packed with noisy revelers until four in the morning. 😤

This woman was amazing. She engaged with just about every table and everyone was charmed.

All about Oslo:

1. Although not a big newsflash, Oslo is very expensive. Dave's first beer at the Mathallen (market hall) was 15 USD. There are definitely no deals to be had, at least when it comes to alcohol. If you ever wanted to quit drinking this would be the place. My (admittedly excellent) espresso martini in the bar at the Grand Hotel was 20 USD. The other great but also challenging fact about Oslo is that the seafood is amazing, so it’s really hard not to want to go out and eat excellent, well-presented, well-cooked, but expensive seafood all the time. After Oslo we are venturing into the hinterlands so I doubt we will have opportunities to be tempted by delicious albeit expensive cuisine. The last night in Oslo we actually had a meal under 50 USD: we split a pizza usually meant for one person, had one beer and one glass of wine in a pretty casual pizza joint. (Casual enough they didn’t serve salad). We were just tired of very expensive meals, although we had some great ones during our stay.

2. Cycling infrastructure is good, not great. Unlike Copenhagen and Gothenburg, the cycling routes are less organized. Often there is no separate lane although bus and tram lanes are designated for cycling usage. There are a lot of tram lanes through the center of town and we find them challenging mainly because you can’t hear the trams coming. It’s still pretty easy to ride in Oslo because there just isn’t much traffic (we also saw that in Copenhagen) and the cars don’t drive fast or aggressively.

Support for cyclists is all around the city.

3. It’s hilly and that made for a great change of pace after four weeks of riding on pancake flat roads in Denmark and Sweden.

4. Referring back to point 1, food is excellent, and varied. We have eaten marvelously here starting with the “best breakfast” in the morning. The Mathallen, the Oslo market hall, provided lunch the first day. This would be a good choice for any lunch or dinner if you’re trying to go budget but fun. And, we had some superior upscale meals, including one dinner at the Lofoten Fiskehus (fish house) down at the Akers Brygge harbor area. The place had strictly seafood, well-presented, but be prepared as there are lots of tourists. We also had a signature tasting meal (six small courses) at Smalhans, all locally sourced fare, that was excellent (and no tourists). The chef goes out to the forest himself and picked the ramson greens for the purée used in one of the dishes. Oslo shuts down in the summer to a large degree and many restaurants close for a month to give their staff a month off. When I went to book a signature meal over two months ago the first six restaurants I tried were closed.

4. July is a good time to be in Oslo. It’s quiet because all the Norwegians have left. There are tourists, but it’s not awful. The Museums were busy but not wildly so. You just hear lots of English speakers. We had several nice conversations with US people at our hotel. The first morning we sat next to Emily Guskin, a reporter for the Washington Post and her partner who were touring Scandinavia. We swapped tips and opinions (they had been to Bergen already and we are headed there). The last morning as we were trying to get out of Oslo, we talked to a family from the East Coast. They had a friend with a place in Copenhagen so they were over in Scandinavia and Germany for a month.

5. There was a fair amount of pride support here. See photos below. Also, support for Ukraine.

Even the tram lines got into the spirit of pride. Note: This is a major thoroughfare near rush hour. The relative lack of cars is typical in the central city.

A pro Ukrainian rally in the center of town.

6. What Oslo central lacks in cars, it make up for in boats. This was the harbor we drove by one morning.

Who needs cars when you've got boats. Lots of boats!

What We Did in Oslo:

We arrived in Oslo at 10 am Sunday morning after being disgorged from the ferry. We rode directly (sort of--we rarely manage to get from point A to B without some sort of unplanned diversion from our route) to the Akershus Fortress to be a tourist for a couple hours before attempting to check into our hotel. It was early enough so there were few crowds, it was sunny and there was NO WIND. We were in a state of joy. Akershus Fortress is Oslo’s medieval-looking castle, built in the 13th century and upgraded in the Renaissance style in the late 18th century. It has the usual brutal reputation - it was a notoriously rough prison for much of its existence, including having been used to house prisoners during the Nazi occupation— but it’s more recent claim to fame was that during the Second World War, it was part of the effort made by Norwegian soldiers to hold out against Hitler’s attack from the sea in June 1940. This allowed the king and Norwegian parliament (called the Storget) to escape.

National Monument for the Victims of War 1940-1945.

There was a strong sentiment from the Norwegian Cabinet to surrender right away and accept the German terms, but, according to lore which I could not independently verify, King Haakon told the Cabinet that he would abdicate if that happened. Norway held out for two months - with British help — then only surrendering after the Brits withdrew (somewhat notoriously) due to other war priorities. In defense of British wimpiness, the “priority” was that France was attacked by Hitler’s armies in June 1940. Most of the fighting was in the north up around Trondheim. King Haakon and the Crown Prince (his son and heir to the throne) escaped to Britain and set up a government in exile there during the war. Many Norwegians escaped and formed an army back in Britain and helped extensively with Resistance work.

As to the Royal Family, as far we can tell, the current Norwegian Royal family is well-regarded by the public. They seem pretty low-key and there doesn’t seem to be too much celebrity-like attention on them (but maybe I just don’t read the right stuff.) The current King, Harald, is married to a commoner, Sonja, and they were a couple for nine years back in the 1960s. Harald, then the Crown Prince, finally told his father, King Olaf V, that if he could not marry Sonja (due to her being a commoner) he would remain unmarried. Since the Crown Prince was the last of the line at that time, this did the trick. The King consented, and as far as I can tell, Sonja appears to be well-loved by the Norwegian people. (FYI, there is a cool exhibit at the National Museum with her fancy dress apparel. Jill saw it, Dave skipped it).

We visited the Resistance Museum in Akershus Fortress on Sunday morning. Norway had quite a few more resistance activities from the beginning of their occupation than did Denmark. The museum traced the Norwegian version of Hitler's attack along with vignettes from the occupation. The Resistance efforts had some significant successes particularly sabotaging the heavy water plant in Telemark. Germany was importing heavy water from this hydroelectric plant in Norway for the development of its nuclear weapons program and the sabotage interfered with that effort. For a good series, see the recent (2015) drama “The Heavy Water War.”

It was such a beautiful day we then rode over to Frogner Park (Oslo’s huge central park) and visited the Vigeland Sculpture Park. The City of Oslo supported Vigeland for many years and in exchange he created numerous sculptures all over the park. They are beautiful and thought-provoking, many intimately intertwined naked bodies in interesting poses. This has set a theme for the entire city (note the photo above of the victims of war memorial) and there are numerous naked body sculptures all over Oslo. Not surprisingly, Vigeland, besides being a genius, was an emotional mess and had a very tumultuous life.

Viegland’s most famous work, The Monolith, in the center of the park.

More naked, intertwined bodies. They were everywhere.

The next morning we walked over to the harbor area and visited the National Museum. This was opened in 2022 and was the culmination of work done since 2008 to combine four national collections under one roof. It is truly one of the most enjoyable museums I have ever visited. It helps that Norway has tons of money (oil) and is far more committed than most countries to making places for the masses. We went over to see the Edvard Munch exhibit (the “Scream” is there) but also lots of other interesting Munch creations, and many other interesting exhibits. We saw one on drawing in the 16th/17th century, highlighting Pieter Bruegel and his contemporaries. Jill visited a weird exhibit on “Why wool is important”. (I learned a lot about sheep breeding……) .There were some modern exhibits about art in the later 20th Century including a work of art described as the most berated, maltreated, and notorious, work of art in all Norway. Naturally, it involved the USA and the Vietnam War.

The museum building is huge. Here you're seeing only half of it.

You can see the advantages of building a Museum from scratch. The rooms were comfortably proportioned to handle crowds, the size of the exhibits were large enough to be meaningful but not overwhelming. Both the descriptions and audio were enough to understand but without too much detail which, if overdone, can take away from actually looking at the art. It was superbly curated.

That same day we rode over to the Ringen Kino (Norwegian for movie theater) and saw Oppenheimer in English with Norwegian subtitles. Google Maps took us directly to the theater, but as you can see from the photo below, its presence was well hidden. We finally had to ask a woman on the street where the theater was. She had this strange look on her face and simply pointed across the street. Well, duh! Americans!

David went online and successfully managed to purchase just about the last two tickets on the site, which was entirely in Norwegian. This film is really a stunner; it's over three hours long but we were riveted to our seats the whole time and close to crying at the end. We are still talking about it three days later and we were glad we made the effort to see it in a theater.

Would you know that this was a multiplex theater? We sure didn't. In sympathy to the Hollywood strike, I could not, in good conscience, add shots from the movie itself!

On our final day we rode our bikes over to Bygdoy Island (quite a nice ride - about 9 km) and visited the Fram Musuem which chronicles the various polar explorations including those of Roald Amundsen - a Norwegian - who was the first to successfully transit the entire Northwest Passage. In addition he traveled both by sledge and airplane to the North Pole and, just because he could, he went to the South Pole. He died in a plane crash in 1928 while searching for other explorers that were missing. We learned a lot and marvel at the hardiness of these explorers in the cold, but compared to the National Museum, the presentation feels dated. There were replicas of several of his ships which you could crawl around on but we have seen a lot of historical ships lately so we are a bit “shipped out.” (And we still have a visit to Bergen in a few weeks!)

The Fram is a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup, Oscar Wisting, and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912.

We are off to the fjords! Yippee.

Today's ride: 35 km (22 miles)
Total: 863 km (536 miles)

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Mark LongMove over Rick Steves: I have to hand it to you, you are doing a terrific job with your travelogue. I love the way you weave your personal impressions/interactions with your historical and geographical insights. Keep ‘em coming.
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