Adventures in Oslo

This is Part II of a trip to Norway with my mother and sister. For Part I in Bergen, visit here.

Oslo had so much to do, and the public transit runs everywhere through the city, so adventures were easy to get to! If you’re there for at least three days, I’d recommend the Oslo City Pass. It gives you access to the public transit system and includes all the museums you can visit, and discounts for things like our bike tour!

The Bike Tour

We started just after lunch in central Oslo. Our guide showed us the giant Akershus Fortress that has never been taken by force and sits on the water’s edge. Then, we headed to Oslo City Hall. This is the site of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony each year and is considered both the Ugliest and Prettiest building in Oslo (by different organizations). Though it’s uninteresting on the outside, on the inside there’s a variety of strange murals over all the walls. It’s a really strange building!

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After City Hall, we went up to the Royal Palace where we explored the nearby gardens and got to see the changing of the guard!

Earlier that same day, we were able to see the King pass as he prepared to open Parliament (Storting). There was a huge procession getting guards to line the street and bands playing!

After hanging out around the Royal Palace, we headed across town to the Vigeland Sculpture Park (Vigelandsparken). Vigeland was an artist commissioned to fill a large park in Oslo with original sculptures. They lined the bridge, they were part of fountains, and there was a massive monolith in the center (not pictured).

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Then we biked back to central Oslo and enjoyed the views of Aker Brygge – a hip peninsula covered in shopping and food. People actually swim here, even in the winter time (briefly)!

Overall, we really enjoyed the Viking Biking Tour and totally recommend it:

Museums

Holy cow, Oslo has so many museums over a variety of topics! With our Oslo City Pass, we ended up hitting five in one day!

Nobel Peace Center

This is a very small museum, but between October when the Peace Prize winner is announced and December when the award is presented, the museum is closed so the first floor can be completely redesigned to showcase the achievements of the most recent Prize winner. But there’s one room where all past prize winners (individuals and organizations) are showcased in separate videos.

The Fram Museum

After the Peace Center, we took a ferry to the Bygdøy Peninsula, where there are five museums in very close proximity to each other! We began with the Fram Museum. It showcases the polar and antarctic expeditions accomplished by Norweigians in the early 1900s. Voted Oslo’s best museum, the walls of the building are most of the content, while the entire inside is occupied by the giant ship that was sailed on multiple exploration trips. The steep ceiling is a projection screen for water, snow, ice, and the Norther Lights to make you feel like you’re really in the crew of the ship. The best part? You can actually go onto and into the ship to explore it! We were all very impressed by the Fram Museum.

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Kon-Tiki Museum

Next door to the Fram Museum is the Maritime Museum, which we skipped. We did, however, go to the Kon-Tiki Museum. This quick stop takes the visitor through the idea explorer Thor Heyerdahl had to prove a theory of travelling across oceans on a balsawood raft. No experts believed it was possible, so he proved them wrong with an international crew of young men! The museum is a bit pricey by itself, but if you’ve got an Oslo City Pass, then it’s worth a stop!

Vikingship Museum

After a very quick bus ride, we ended up at the Vikingship Museum. Filled with artifacts recovered from a Viking burial site of two wealthy women, the ships are authentic and the items they were buried with told a lot about how the Vikings lived and what they valued. The museum was cool, but smaller than expected. The immersive projection video in one section was really cool, though!

The Norwegian Museum of Cultural History

Also known as the Norske Folkemuseet, this museum was part open air, part traditional. They’ve imported buildings from all over Norway for showcasing and the coolest, by far, is the stave church from Gol, Norway. Built approximately 1200, it’s small, but super impressive!

We stayed at the Cultural Museum until closing and took the bus back to our apartment. Thus concluded an epic museum day.

Other highlights

Mathallen Food Hall

Think classy food court. There’s restaurants, a bar, a fish market, grocery, and coffee shop in this glorious place. We got coffee, a Norwegian waffle, Asian noodles, and beer! Our bike tour guide said that if you haven’t seen east Oslo, you haven’t seen the whole city. I loved this food hall and that funky part of town.

Oslo Opera House

Built in 2008, the Opera House is not only good-looking from sea level, you can actually walk across the sloping roof onto the top of the building with relative ease!

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Oslo Ski Jump

Holmenkollbakken in Norwegian, this ski jump has been used for ski jump competitions since 1892! We were able to even (laboriously) walk up two-thirds of it via a narrow staircase! It’s so huge, you can see it from the ferry in Oslo, despite how far away it is. If you’ve got the time, this stop was really cool!

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In Summary

We loved our trip to Norway. There was a lot of natural beauty to see and taking in Norwegian culture was delightful. If you’re planning a trip, I very much recommend both cities we’ve visited and the train ride between the two!

Bonus Picture(s)

The train ride from Bergen to Oslo is considered one of the prettiest in the world. It was nearly seven hours long, but beat any plane ride I’ve ever taken! Passing through snowing mountain towns, my sister stressed that she didn’t pack warm enough clothes! I assured her that sea level would be more gentle of weather.

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