Sunday in Oslo

Clock tower in front of Oslo S from our hotel

Royal Palace

It rained overnight, so we awoke to a wet, grey morning in Oslo. Partly to make things simple for a late evening arrival we booked a room at the Scandic hotel right over the train station. It's a convenient location with respect to transportation, but does come with the usual assortment of sordid characters hanging around the square and  our window.clock tower, all of which could be seen from our window.

Revitalized harbor area around Aker Brygge

Christian Radich

After an unremarkable breakfast in the Egon restaurant associated with the hotel, we head out afoot in no particular direction. Passing crowds of rather grim faces under a oppressively grey sky, we eventually made our way to the Royal Palace. It and several other public buildings in that general vicinity were undergoing repairs, which explains the canopy over the palace.

From the palace we wandered back toward the harbor and found ourselves in a harbor renewal district called Aker Brygge. Each building along the waterfront was an entirely different flavor of contemporary design, and we both agreed that it would be a comfortable fit with our own tastes -- of course, affordability is another question altogether. A definite plus was the possibility of docking you boat at the quays between buildings. On the harborside of the buildings were a series of upscale restaurants and bars., which no doubt make for pleasant nightlife in the area.

Akershus Slott from the Forsvarsmuseet

Opera House from the Forsvarsmuseet

We continued our walk around the harbor and past the ferry docks to Akershus Slott fortress. I'm not sure where the day went so quickly,, but since it was only 30 minutes to closing in the main hall museum of the fortress we opted not to go inside, but instead just strolled the grounds and wandered over to the Armed Forces Museum. From there we wandered past the dock for the Copenhagen ferry and into the second harbor area, near the new Opera House. This district is currently undergoing a complete urban renewal effort that is expected to take until 2014 before a majority of the work is complete. It's a mess right now, but if the Opera House and what we saw around Aker Brygge are any indication of what is to come, then the area will be quite a destination in the future.


Focusing on the Opera House for a minute, it's truly a remarkable landmark, second in my estimation only to the Sydney Opera House as an iconic emblem for its city. It's all sloping flat marble surfaces with very little in the way of railings or other safety features. As one of the guidebooks noted, it's an architecture that would not be permitted under EU safety regulations (nor, I imagine, would it be allowable in most US jurisdictions), which just goes to show once again what we lose when regulations get too oppressive and stifling.

Gi napping at the Opera House

Our hotel was near the Opera House, so we stoped to clean up and rest before going out to hunt for dinner. After perusing online reviews we eventually set out to find an Italian place near the palace called Ruffino's Ristorante, but found it closed. A short distance down the street, across from the national theater, we found an upscale Chinese restaurant called "Dinner". I had a delicious Szechuan pepperpot, while Gi had steamed Chilean seabass. (Not a good choice when it comes to sustainable seafood, I know, but no surprise to find it on the menu in a country that still chafes about not being able to hunt whales for the dinner table.) The meal was A LOT more expensive that I had hoped to pay (about 900 NOk = $150), but it was quite good and not that mush out of line for what a comparable dinner would cost in another large city.

No flat surfaces -- bikes and skateboards banned