Oslo

If I could use two words to describe Oslo, they would be 1) Gorgeous, 2) Expensive. The first you will see in the pictures. The second is shown by the fact that a burger meal at TGI Fridays (which is quite popular over there) is listed as 200 Kroner, or between $35 and $40. Also, by the fact that the cheapest hostel we could find charged about $40 a night per person, and was basically a hotel room. We had a private room with three beds, a TV, DVD player, and full size Fridge in the room. Really quite stunning for a hostel. Oh, and our hostel was protected by Ninjas. Or had been assaulted by them. Either way -- Ninjas were involved, which makes it way sweeter.

So the next comment on Oslo is that the people there are all very friendly, and all speak excellent English. Honestly, this place felt like a cleaner, more expensive version of America. On the topic of graffiti, one of the funniest things I saw was a mother teaching her child letters from a graffiti tag. Lemonade out of lemons indeed. About the only thing we didn't like about Oslo other than the cost was their beer laws. No beer could be sold on Sunday, and no beer could be sold after 6 PM at grocery stores. Even when they could sell it, taxes accounted for about half the price, putting a half litre of the cheap stuff at 20 Kroner (~$4) in grocery stores. At a restaurant or bar, you'd be paying 60 Kroner (~$12) for the same swill. Of course, we found the same stuff at duty free for half the price. Never thought I'd say this, but please oh please give me US taxes.

So, what we did -- Friday we showed up exhausted from the early morning Ryanair flight that we almost missed because security took about an hour to get through. After sprinting through the terminal we couldn't even get a glass of water, unless of course we wanted to pay 3 pounds for it. Anyway, we walked around the city, got our bearings, saw the national gallery (home of The Scream), and watched the sun set down at the harbor.

Day two, we went up north of the city and explored some hiking trails. Took some intentional wrong turns, got lost a bit, and then of course re-found our way randomly. The hiking was gorgeous, if a bit muddy at times. We ended the day by discovering that our hostel had free DVD rentals.

Day three we began by visiting the fortress and castle grounds above the harbor. Very scenic, with some great shots of boats on the water. While up there, we discovered that a British warship, the HMS Lancaster was in port, and apparently open to the public. We we hopped on over to that and said Cheerio to some friendly British folk with large guns. Apparently part of the stated mission of the British navy is to go to different ports and simply fly the flag and engage the locals in a friendly fashion. In any event, it was a nice added bonus to the trip. From there we hopped into the Nobel Peace Prize museum, which was free because they were renovating one of the exhibits. Probably the coolest thing there was the speculation over Teddy Roosevelt's peace prize. The controversy was that the Norwegian counsel selected him to gain the powerful US as an ally. Of all the awards, his was the only that was on display in a distinctively different color. Then we headed over to a very large pretty park, that was full of weird naked statues. I'll post a couple of pictures below -- definitely an odd place. I think the weirdest part though was the kids climbing all over them and posing for pictures.

Day four was spent at two museums -- the viking ship museum, and the cultural history museum. The cultural history museum was amazing, and definitely worth the cost of admission.


Picture Time!

In honor of Touchdown Jesus.

Another weird naked statue.