Today we did the tour of the five museums on the Bygdøy peninsula, taking the small ferry there and back, getting the most out of our 24 hour Oslo Passes. We visited The Norwegian Museum of Cultural History (an open air museum of buildings from different regions and epochs of Norway), the Viking Ship Museum, the Norwegian Maritime Museum, The Fram Museum, and the Kon-Tiki Museum.

As far as I can tell all of these had at least something new compared to ten years ago (especially the Maritime Museum looked totally refurbished), but I did not remember half of the exhibitions anyway, so it was more or less equally new for the both of us. By the time we arrived back to the city centre it was raining quite hard, so we did not plan to walk around much, and after a coffee and a short tour in a shopping mall we got on a tram that was supposedly heading towards our apartment. Unluckily it turned out very soon that even though the number on the tram was the one we needed, it was diverted to another direction due to some disruptions… Therefore we got off at the second stop, and started walking. At the same time the Norse gods decided to turn the rain up a notch, so even though we had umbrellas, we decided to take cover in a supermarket (and get some cheap food for dinner). It is good that we did not listen to the weather forecast on the morning and ditch our umbrellas for the day.

Odometer reading at the end of the day: 3359 km (we did not drive today).

Yesterday I set my alarm to 10:00, but of course I could not sleep later than the usual hour, and by the time it actually went off, we were already on our way to the city centre. We passed by The Royal Palace and its gardens, the University of Oslo, the Nationaltheatret (and its interesting fountain), the Nobel Peace Center, and walked along the Aker Brygge neighbourhood.

After a coffee and a pastry, we continued our tour by visiting the Rådhuset (Town Hall). I did not go inside when I was here a decade ago, so it was also something new for me (and I really liked it).

From here we went to the Akershus Fortress, which was mainly interesting because of the panorama from its walls.

Then we crossed the old square of Christiania Torv on the way to the Østbanehallen (a food court in the refurbished old part of the Central Station), where we had a small lunch (wrap/sandwich). The next sight was the Opera House, which was again new for me too. Here we walked up the blindingly white roof and also had a look inside. It would have been better without all the construction cranes around, but I still managed to get a few OK pictures.

The last stop of the day was the Mathallen, which is another food court, situated in an upcoming, hip/trendy area of the city. Since it was only around four on the afternoon, I could only finish half of the pad thai portion, but we brought the rest (along with a citron merengue) back to our apartment for “dinner”. On the way back we walked along the Karl Johans gate (where it even rained a little), and only stopped for an extra smoothie before calling it a day.

Odometer reading at the end of the day: 3359 km (we did not drive today).