We arrived in Oslo at night it was a bit foggy which was cool. It looked mysterious. Tall buildings compared to Dublin. We were having trouble getting our bearings at first so we ended up asking a security guard that looked like Gerard Butler for help. He helped us figure out which way was north and which streets to go down. We told him that Google Maps had said it was an 8 min walk from the bus station to the hostel. He laughed and told us "Google has long legs". Apparently Google's legs are perfectly proportioned because after no more then 10 mins or so we found our hostel. There were 6 of us and we booked in 4 different groups so therefore we ended up in 4 different rooms. Sinead and I were in the same room and we had signed up for a 'mixed dorm' as it was the cheapest. Not so mixed.We were definitely the only girls in the 8 bed room. We creep into our room because the light as are off and there are 3 people sleeping already. We look at the clock and it's only just 11pm! We call our other friends to see if there is people sleeping in their rooms and all gather in one empty room to plan for the weekend and decided on a reasonable 9am meeting time.
Next morning we all head out at about 9:30 headed in the general direction of Frogner Park. We end up in this little Nordic town set up with food stands, shops, and snow/ice sculptures inspired by Edvard Munch. We had a great time just running around taking pictures and eating some delicious Belgium waffles. We eventually made it up the hill to see the palace, but not before we had a slight detour to construct a snowman in the park. We were just in time to see the changing of the guard at the palace. Unlike the British guards these ones will talk to you. We continued on our way and eventually made it to Frogner park. It's filled with probably a hundred statues of people all in crazy poses. Hayley and I took to attempting to mimic some of the status which became quite interesting. There were some people laughing at our attempts. It was really a cool park and seeing all the statues there was quite remarkable. After the park our next task was food. It was at least 2 and most of us hadn't eaten more that a muffin or some bread since we'd landed in Oslo so there was some crankiness amongst the group. We finally decided on a hot dog/sausage meal. Which appeared to be very Norwegian because there were signs for them everywhere. They came with your choice of ketchup, mustard, and fried onions. I got mine with mustard and onions and boy did it hit the spot. After Some more walking and a little window shopping we headed to the harbor to watch the sun set. We were surprised to find that the water had a frozen layer on top of it, but it made for an awesome view. We climbed up a hill to watch sunset behind the skyline and the harbor. Everyone was pretty tuckered out at this point so we headed towards the hostel to make some dinner. Though we didn't quite make it as fast as we intended. We ended up stumbling upon the medal ceremony for the world ski championship. So we stayed to watch the singing performance and the medals being given out. We even made some Norwegian friends in the crowd who invited us to go out with them later so our groups exchanged numbers. We got back to the hostel and began to make our dinner which was constructed of 1/2 jar of peanut butter, strawberry jelly, some cheese slices, hagen daas ice cream, and a ton of white rice (14 servings I believe is what the box said). It was a frugal feast but after dinner we were so tired that we pretty much cleaned up and went to sleep.
Sunday! We had one more day to try to cram in as much as possible and we started with taking the metro up the mountain to where the skiing world champion was. The Metro was unbelievably packed. Like touching 8 different people at a time, so close I couldn't fall down if I had to packed. But we finally made it and walked up the mountain a bit so see what was going on. There was an breathtaking view from where we were and people with Norwegian flags everywhere. It was a really exciting atmosphere. We walked around awhile and then walked up the mountain quite a bit to get to the next train station to go back down into the city centre. Our goal once again became food. We had been recommended a kebab shop by a Norwegian we met at DCU and good thing too. I had never had a kebab but it was delicious. We then trekked to the Munch museum to see the scream and a lot of other Munch works. I don't think I'd ever seen too much of his work but I really enjoyed it, made me want to go home and paint. We were running out of time in Oslo but we (or maybe I) really wanted to see the opera house. So we super power walked (or as fast as you can go on ice covered sidewalks) via questionable route to the opera house. We literally only had time to run up one of it's slope about 30 feet or so the run back down towards the bus station. We made it to the bus just in time to catch it back to the Rygge airport to fly home to Dublin.
That's the basics, so many little funny things happened I couldn't imagine being able to write them all down. It was a truly amazing trip and I would go back in a heartbeat.
