Oslo Sightseeing
We had time for a walking tour at 1000 before having to check out at 1200. It would be tight but we gave it a shot.
We met at the “tiger” statue near the railway station. A large group gathered and an American guide turned up. He was OK, but not wonderful. What he was really good at was giving lots of suggestions for things to do ourselves after the tour, pointing them out along the way.
Of particular note were the Opera House (built to resemble an iceberg floating in the harbour) and the Town Hall. The latter looked like a plain red brick building but the inside was much more colourful with brightly painted murals. It is the site of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony (the remaining Nobel ceremonies being held in Stockholm).
Text continues after this gallery.
-
- Things we didn’t try 😉
-
- The “Iceberg” Opera House.
-
- Oslo waterfront.
-
- Oslo Town Hall look drab from the outside but it is richly decorated inside.
-
- Oslo Town Hall look drab from the outside but it is richly decorated inside.
We cut short the tour by about 20 minutes at the end to ensure we didn’t get locked out of the automated hotel, so we could check out properly. Checking out by kiosk was easy; just enter the room number without any kind of validation then drop the keycard into a separate slot. Could be fun just going up to the kiosk and checking out random rooms!
Kim had found this hotdog and Coke combo at 7-Eleven that seemed too good to be true. So we had the first part of our lunch there and bought a sandwich to bring along for later. We killed some time with a cuppa at McDonald’s before going to the station to board the Swedish train to Stockholm.
Continuing to Stockholm
The train was nicer that yesterday’s Norwegian train (which was nice enough). The stewardess greeted everyone with “Hey” which I thought was a little informal until when I realised much later that was the Swedish greeting!
The scenery wasn’t too different from yesterday but had a greater portion of lowlands with dry grassy farmland.
After 5+ hours, we arrived into Stockholm’s Central Station. We took the nearest exit which didn’t put us in good stead for crossing the bridge to Gamla Stan (the Old Town). We got to the hotel eventually after a 15 min walk.
At the Archipelago Hostel, we had a twin room with shared bathroom. There were lots of good eateries around and it seemed a little cheaper than Norway. Eg. NOK100 would get a takeaway kebab whereas SEK100 would get a meal in a simpler restaurant (the currencies are nearly on par).
We weren’t hungry so had a snack of ice cream (Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia) followed by tea and cake. Very naughty.