A Relaxing Day in Oslo

3rd September 2023

At 8 am on Sunday morning in Oslo there is not much going on. The photo below taken from our hotel room overlooking the square in front of the railway station says it all.

 As planned, we met up with John and Sharon for breakfast in the hotel restaurant at 8.30 am. The restaurant was packed and fortunately John and Sharon had secured, what must have been the only available table, when they arrived just before us. Included in our package, the breakfast was excellent.

There is no specific plan for today, so we agree to cover some of the town highlights on foot and head off at around 10.30am. The concierge gave us a few tips.

Most of the attractions are in the direction I headed yesterday, so we tried to take in some that I had missed. It wasnt long before were came across the Oslo Cathedral

The ubiquitous Trolls also started appearing in shop fronts around town.

Not far from the cathedral we saw signage pointing to the old town and the Akershus Fortress. Whilst I had seen some of the fortress from a distance yesterday, a further exploration was needed.

The fortress turned out to be a much larger complex than we could have imagined, taking in many buildings, walls, gates, a castle, armaments etc. Without a map in hand we explored it as best we could on foot as it was well signposted.

We entered the fortress grounds through a main gate guarded by the military and could already see that this was a massive complex. Many of the buildings are now museums.

Situated high upon a cliff along the shoreline the fortress grounds allowed some great views of the area.

The Port Authority

The Oslo Cruise Ship (and Ferry) Terminal was visible from one side of the Fortress

A DFDS ferry which provides services between Denmark and Oslo 

Some of the many buildings and gates are shown below.

Eventually we found a gate (above) that would give us access out of the complex and back down to the shoreline. But first there was a great view from a lookout that looked down on the harbour near City Hall where I saw the festival yesterday. It appears to be still under way, so we are heading in that direction.

Crowds are less than yesterday, but there is an expanded range of vintage cars and bikes to see, and a market taking place in the square in front of City Hall.

This pair of restored MG's were in pristine condition

City Hall with a market under way in the square.

We continued around past City Hall,  the Nobel Peace Centre (below) and followed the shoreline along the other side of the harbour to a  new precinct of very upmarket apartments, restaurants, galleries etc called Tjuvholmen.

Some views of Tjuvholmen below. It is a very nice area with some great architecture.

It seems some 20 architects were involved in the creation of this new borough in Oslo, with the most famous building being the Astrup Fearnly Museum of Modern Art located at the very end of this peninsula. We did not get that far down but could see it in the distance.

A large marina ran along the shoreline here and it seems a boat show was underway with a decent selection of sailing and motor boats on display.

Once again we found a nice little cafe in a side street and enjoyed a sandwich and coffee for lunch. Both of which were very good.

Having had a good look around this area, we headed back towards our hotel, walking back around past the City Hall and Harbour Festival Displays. There were a lot more vintage cars on display and the diesel mechanics were keen to fire up their ancient engines, not without considerable difficulty. One eventually got going but wasn't running all that efficiently. One of the others had 3 mechanics working on it desperately trying to get it to fire up.

Just as we were setting out to walk back around the shoreline, we realised that a small motorised train was providing a free shuttle service around to the cruise terminal, not far from our destination. We were lucky to get a seat and were soon under way.

Our transport arriving at the cruise terminal destination

From here it was a short walk back to our hotel, walking past the floating saunas which appear to be very popular today. To further enhance the experience, a choir had set up at a little pavilion in amongst the saunas, I guess providing music to sauna by.

Finally back at the Hotel at a bit after 3pm, we planned to meet up for dinner at 6.30pm and allow a bit of rest time for those still catching up on lost sleep.

Dinner was at the Gastro Pub next door as part of the railway station complex. It was pub food and quite tasty. We are slowly getting used to paying $40 + for a hamburger.

An early night is in order as tomorrow we are catching the railway to Flam, and need to have our bags downstairs by 6.30 am.