Oslo - Day Two

What a lovely day! After a little sleep last night (woke up at 4:30AM), I am feeling a bit more rested for the day ahead...which is Monday for us.

We took it easy and met up in the dining hall for breakfast at 9AM...the breakfasts that are included here with your hotel stay are very elaborate! We had lots of juices, coffee, eggs, meatballs, roasted potatoes, sausages, roasted veggies, pickles, beets, cold meats, cheeses, raw veggies, lox, breads...huge amounts and types to choose from.

This is a typical European hotel room, tiny single beds and great bed covers/quilts.

 

 

Seeing as our hotel is located in the downtown area of Oslo, walking to some of the shops is very convenient...after breakfast we visited some local shops, one of them was a sweater shop, featuring Norwegian sweaters of course! A short walk and we are upon various Historic sites and parks...one of which was the Royal Palace! The King is currently in residence there and we are trying to book a tour for Wednesday.

 

 

This is just a glimpse of it from the street...we walked through the park grounds surrounding the palace yesterday evening and they are quite lovely. The story behind the tours...the Norwegian government were not happy about supporting the current monarch's, King Harald V, desire to renovate and restore the palace. Due to the poor quality construction, originally started in 1824, extensive work needed to be done to bring it back to any original glory, so to help subsidize those costs the government negotiated allowing tours to generate some revenue!

 

 

As you can see today is quite overcast but while walking down one of the main streets, Karl Johan Gate, we are encountering many lovely old buildings, gardens, sculptures, store fronts, open restaurants and markets...

 

 

 

 

 

This photo below is the Oslo Cathedral that is located downtown. It was originally Our Savior's Church which was consecrated in 1697, in 1950 is was restored to its original baroque interior...very beautiful.

 

 

This is the ceiling in the church...it looks like it's a mosaic tile but it's actually wood panels that have been hand painted.

 

Today we have a 1 o'clock lunch date with my cousin Nancy's distant Norwegian relatives...Kjell and Kirsten. They prepared a beautiful traditional feast with some special dishes...lots of lovely food and company. We were very happy to have met them and grateful for their hospitality. I found their apartment to be very nice, filled with an assortment of interesting items from their life together.

 

 

 

 

We walked back to the hotel from our lunch date...took about ten minutes and we needed to walk off our food! We had a dinner reservation for 7PM at Engebret Cafe, which is THE oldest restaurant in Oslo!

 

We learnt that this spot was frequented by the actors and musicians and literary people of the day...there were many original receipts, sketches and documents from back in the day throughout the restaurant. It was also designed to accomodate different parties as I saw several private dining rooms within the space.

 

Last shot is of my dinner...I found a Bacalao dish...in Portugal, Bacalao is a salted codfish served with potatoes, onions, olive oil, pimento, olives and a vinegar style dressing...usually cold. In Norway, Bacalao is also a cod fish dish featuring all the same ingredients except it has a tomato base as a thicker sauce...very tasty and interesting to find a very similar traditional dish in Norway. Here they serve roasted new potatoes on the side and it's served warm.

 

 

Off to bed seeing as it has now turned into 1:00AM Tuesday!

God Natt...which you might have guessed is good night in Norwegian :)

 

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Oslo, Norway!

Wow! We have arrived :) It was a long journey but pleasant travelling Business Class. We left YVR at about 4PM Vancouver time and after a 9 hour flight to Frankfurt arrived and set our watches to 10:30AM...which wouldn't have been bad if I actually slept at all...but I wasn't so lucky :(

After what felt like a 5K walk, from the gate we arrived at to the gate we needed to depart from, we were nice and sweaty! Mom's carry-on weighed about 100lbs...so we found a shop to purchase add-on wheels! That was better, should have gotten them in Vancouver but we will save our shoulders and arms from now on ;)

The flight from Frankfurt to Oslo was only two hours but sleep still evaded me...I think the seats shrunk considerably as it felt super cramped after those nice Business Class seats ;) It's now 2:15PM in Oslo and after winding our way through all the corridors we were welcomed by a huge duty-free store...we were informed by our other travelling party (that arrived earlier via Toronto) that we could purchase as much as we wanted because apparently there isn't any guidelines in Norway?!!! So now stocked with a sufficient supply of alcohol we were ready for our immigration processing....which apparently isn't top priority in Norway either as we just went through a couple doors and straight out to the street to fetch a taxi !

We elected to grab a taxi even though it was more than taking the train into town...we were tired of carting luggage and knew we'd get a lift to the front door of the hotel this way...much nicer!

 

 

Check into our cute little hotel Thon Europa and immediately take off shoes and fall onto the bed! That was me...mom sorted bags, unpacked cords and set devices to charge :) Couple knocks on our door and our travel companions have come to greet us! Aunt June looks great, Barb and Nancy (my cousins) are all geared up and ready to tell the tales of their journey here. They had some 'fun' in Paris for their connecting flight...not! But after they figured out the correct terminal to be in, all was well and they caught their flight here to Oslo!

 

 

 

Just found a fun pub for some eats (dinner for me) and a Heineken. Tikka Chicken wrap, salad and chips...hits the spot when you are tired! My big plans for the evening is now bed! Gonna see if I can stay up until 8:00PM...one hour and 15 minutes to go...

 

 

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