This is an especially long travelogue and reflects everything I did in about 12 hours in Oslo.
I left the hotel and headed over to Fuglen (which means “bird”) to get a pastry and caffeinated beverage. My friend told me about this place and he said that they have a location here and one in Tokyo.
I bought a 24-hour pass the day before via the Ruter app, and it expired at 6:59 PM today so I took a tram partway to the coffee shop and after leaving Fuglen I took transit partway back to the city center. I headed to the opera building, which is designed to allow walking up the inclined roof to two balconies from which to see the harbor – the south balcony – and the city – the north balcony. I could also see the new “Barcode” office district, which flanks the south side of the Oslo Sentralstasjon train station platforms.
I took another tram over to the other set of piers in the harbor (they are separated by Akershus Festning, the city fortress) and boarded the privately-operated ferry from Aker Brygge to Bygdøy, a peninsula in the city where there are several museums. The Ruter transit pass doesn’t cover this trip. I bought it on website of Norway Yacht Charter for 67 NOK as there is a 12 NOK surcharge for tickets purchased on board.
One of the museums here is Fram where Nansen’s polar expedition is explored. Upon arriving here I changed my mind and decided to head directly to the Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum), an open air – outdoor – museum which has over 100 rebuilt, relocated, or recreated buildings from all over the country. To get there I hired the Oslo Bysykkel bike share for 25 NOK for a single ride because the walk to the open air museum was going to be long. The bicycle enabled me to also visit a beach and park in another area and see some of the suburban houses. I’m glad it wasn’t raining during the ride.
The bikes are kind of small and I wouldn’t want to ride one more than about two miles at a time. There are also e-bikes but they cost more and there weren’t any available where I started the ride.
The Folkesmuseet was rad! The most popular attraction is the Stave church, which I think is pretty famous and you may recognize it. It’s much larger looking outside than inside and appears to be able to hold only 20 worshippers inside. There are also entire farmsteads that have been recreated by assembling buildings of different purposes in good condition from around Norway to represent the traditions and methods of the country. There is also a small active farm going, with roosters, a couple of sheep, and two horses. There are also guided tours, demonstrations, and activities for children.
I stayed at the open air museum for one hour and decided I wanted to ride more of the city’s public transport. I caught the route 30 bus from outside the museum towards the city center and disembarked near the Skøyen train station. I stopped at the Kiwi grocery store to grab some snacks. I was hoping to find a drinkable yogurt that I like to get in the Netherlands but the only options were too large for a snack and the hotel doesn’t have a refrigerator in which to store the rest.
From the Skøyen station I took commuter train line L1 eastbound through and past the city center to Bryn station because I noticed that was near a T-bane (metro) station and I hadn’t ridden the city’s subway lines yet. If I had known or seen how poorly the two were connected I would have ridden to the next station. Anyway, I walked five minutes between Bryn commuter station and Brynseng metro station.
I boarded one of the four T-bane lines (I don’t recall which and all of them had service going back to the city center) and disembarked at Stortinget station, since that was near the small IKEA on one of the pedestrian shopping streets. I haven’t been to a city center IKEA store yet and this was my chance. I had seen in the news that the Swedish home furnishings company opened a store in Vienna. After I posted about this visit on Twitter people replied that there is now a city center IKEA in San Francisco. I would like the company to open one in Chicago – there are several vacancies along the Magnificent Mile!
The smaller-format store has a tiny café and food market on the upper level while the stock of furnishings and furniture displays are in the basement. It’s possible to buy kitchen cookware and utensils, pillows and sheets, and view desks, tables, and chairs to order for home delivery.
My hotel was one of the few Citybox locations in Europe and I chose it largely because of its location (I wanted to be as close to the central station as possible because the train was leaving at 8:25 and I’m generally a late riser). I walked three minutes from IKEA to the hotel so I could take a break, rest my feet, fast charge my phone, and do some research as to what I wanted to do for the rest of the day. It was 15:40. The bulk of my research was about taking one of the ferries so I could see more of the Oslo fjord – the ferry to Bygdøy didn’t scratch this itch and I also love being outdoors on ferries.
I walked over to the Rådhusbryggene (city hall pier) at 16:30 to hop on the B1 ferry to Hovedøya via the roundtrip route. The route stops at Hovedøya first and then several more islands before coming back to Hovedøya and returning to Radhussbrygge. The ferry dropped me off at 17:46. I have until 18:46 to explore the island; that’s the next ferry and I don’t want to be here for more than an hour because I need to get dinner soon. The trip is included in the Ruter pass and I highly recommend it.
P.S. many of the public transport ferries are electric. I learned about this on a podcast interviewing a transit agency executive, forgot about it, and then was reminded when I saw this machine moving and realized that it was a battery charger that worked much like those on CTA’s electric buses.
Many of the islands appear to be popular during the summer as they have parks and small beaches with extremely calm water. The weather was 65°F and overcast yet two women disembarked the ferry at the same time I did and used the small beach on the far side of Hovedøya. I, on the other hand, took a look at the cloister ruins and a restored artillery battery at the top of a ridge that overlooks the Oslo fjord.
After getting returning to the mainland, I decided I would eat at Lorry. This restaurant came up in multiple searches for Norwegian food, moose, fish, and reindeer. I had moose patties for dinner the night before – which were very, very good – and I thought this time I would try seafood. I walked there from Rådhusbryggene and passed through the Royal Court and Slottsparken where there was a small area containing sculptures designed by children who won a contest and fabricated by established artists.
At Lorry I sat outside under the large awnings, even though it was raining, and ate baked salmon with cabbage and potatoes. I had a Nøgne Ø (brewery) saison beer. The food was fine and the beer was good. Eating out in Oslo is expensive! The meal was about $45 which included a five percent tip! (For reference, the average salami, tomato, and pesto sandwich I bought at a convenience store before the train on Wednesday morning was about $8 and a small premade mango-yogurt smoothie was over $4).
For dessert I walked over to McDonald’s on Storgata to get a McFlurry. I love that ice cream snack and it’s a personal tradition to try the local flavor in every country I visit. On the way there I was following the walking directions from Google Maps and I passed a neat-looking park built into the side of a hill so I deviated from the route and passed through the park and took notice of the wide, steep steel slides that looked like a lot of fun. I also walked through the Oslo Metropolitan University campus which has a nice central plaza ringed by tall buildings and meeting spaces.
Given the prices I paid for everything else I was shocked to see that the McFlurry is cheaper in Oslo than in the U.S. For the record, I got “Non Stop” (which is like M&Ms) as the mix-in with Daim as an add-on.
Wanting to return to my hotel, but not ready to call it a night, I walked towards the central station to check out some infrastructure I had seen twice earlier. North of the station are two or three hotels, including one that has a high-rise portion adorned with the signs of the shops inside – reminiscent of Tokyo zakkyo buildings! (I recommend the book where I learned that name, Emergent Tokyo: Designing the Spontaneous City, by Jorge Almazán and Joe McReynolds.
Continuing east past the station I walked through a small above-ground shopping center that abuts the Oslo Bussterminal; again, this reminded me of Asian shopping centers that surround transportation stations. There are dozens of gates in the bus terminal but not that many people were waiting at 21:30 at night. Also reminding me of Tokyo and other Asian cities, like Bangkok, were the elevated pedestrian walkways and bridges.
I found the infrastructure: it was a pedestrian bridge over the 20 or so train tracks. This breaks up the long distance until the next way to cross the tracks. The bridge reminded me of the one at the Utrecht Centraal station in the Netherlands. The bridge has a tall glass wall leaning inward to the bridge that inhibits people from falling or jumping onto the tracks as well as throwing debris. It also makes taking pictures of arriving and departing trains a bit harder. My height has an advantage though: I can easily hold my phone over the top of the wall.
That concluded the day. I walked back to the hotel, less than 10 minutes away. See on the Bergensbanen railway tomorrow!