After a few days blissful days in the countryside we decided to make the 45 minute bus journey from the cabin in Enebakk to Oslo. We’d been told about the Oslo Pass by our host Thove. It’s a great money-saving way to see all the sights Oslo has to offer and includes free entry to many of Oslo’s museums and attractions. You can Oslo (also) get discounts on selected restaurants and cafes and free public transport throughout the city and beyond!
We bought the 48 hour pass for 470NOK which is about £40 each, then headed over to the Bygdøy peninsula on a ferry (for free with the Oslo Pass). We visited The Fram Museum which is dedicated to the story of Norwegian polar expeditions with the Fram ship used by Fridtjof Nansen as the main exhibit. I particularly enjoyed reading about how detrimental the husky team were in the Norwegians success – Mouse would be very proud!
We then stopped off next door at the Kon-Tiki Museum which houses the vessels and details of adventurer Thor Heyerdahl’s life, with original reed boats & expedition artifacts.
We then headed up to the Folk Museum which is packed full of beautiful traditional buildings and is one of Europe’s largest open-air museums. With 155 traditional houses from all parts of Norway and a stave church from the year 1200.
All of these museums were free to get into as we had the Oslo Pass, so we’d pretty much already made our money back, it’s really worth getting one if you’re planning on doing lots of sight-seeing like us!
The next day we went to the Munch Museum, which houses the incredible artwork of Edvard Munch. There was a brilliant exhibition on which included work from both Munch and Van Gogh, highlighting the surprising similarities between them. Even though they had never met each other they had been influenced by the same places like Paris and the art movements that grew around there. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures in this exhibition – but I’d highly recommend it.
We then went to the Natural History Museum to bother some wolves.
And surprise some seals!
Followed by a stroll through the beautiful botanical gardens which were right next to the museum.
And then onto Oslo’s Reptile Park! No pictures unfortunately as my battery started to run low!
Afterwards we went for another wander, found some amazing street art and treated ourselves to a well deserved pint (costing around £10 – the price of alcohol certainly kept us out of trouble!)
On our final morning in Oslo, before catching the afternoon train to Bergen we went to the Oslo Sculpture Park or The Vigeland Park, which I’d been really looking forward to, and was probably my favourite bit of the city. It’s the largest sculpture park in the world created by a single artist, Gustav Vigeland. With more than 200 sculptures in bronze, granite and wrought iron, it’s filled with his life’s work and was his “gift” to the people of Oslo, I certainly wouldn’t mind it in my neighbourhood!
Realising we couldn’t smile at each other like idiots all afternoon, we raced to the train station and caught our 7 hour train journey to Bergen.
If you’re planning a trip to Oslo yourself and you have any questions about it, please feel free to get in touch and I’ll try my best to answer your questions!
The Manchester Tart 