Saturday June 24th we arrived to Oslo later in the evening, we had to pick up our key from a 7-11, which was a new one for us, but luckily it was seamless. After checking into our Airbnb, we immediately went straight out to find dinner, we were all quite hungry, especially me who was getting hangry! After dinner we walked around then brought the boys back to the apartment and Paul and I went to a little bar around the corner, called the Art Bar. It was a quaint little place packed to the gills, but luckily we snagged a seat right in front of the window. As we were enjoying our drinks and people watching, a guy started yelling at one of the owners. She was holding her own and attempting to shoo the guy outside, but without much luck. They finally got him outside and thought he was going to leave, but he decided to grab a chair and threatened to throw it into the window, the one we were sitting in front of! It was a scary moment to say the least. People started calling the police and trying to get this guy to leave, he ended up throwing his entire water bottle into the woman’s face but then eventually left. It certainly added some excitement to our night out!

Sunday June 25th. The apartment is located in a block of apartment buildings with a big shared courtyard in the middle, ours is one that people live in year round and then rent it out occasionally to make extra cash, so their stuff is in the apartment. There are positives and negatives to these situations, for instance, there’s lots of food (spices, condiments, etc.) that one can borrow and every kitchen gadget you may need, but the downside is that there’s very little space to put our clothes and groceries. We find this is quite common over here in Europe. This place has 3 bedrooms, so the boys were happy to each have their own space, plus 1 ½ bathrooms. A great balcony off the living room too, although the view was not fabulous-we looked out onto a chocolate factory. The smells were amazing, but the view and noise from it was not so great. The trucks came early in the morning and woke us up. We have to keep the windows and balcony door wide open for some air flow, since it's warm and there's no AC. Sleeping is difficult because it stays light out all night, it’s hot as heck, and noisy in the city. We miss the comfort of air conditioning.

Not so great view from the balcony of the factory.

Anyway, enough complaining. We toured around Oslo on Sunday, down to the harbour promenade which was really nice and since it was a sunny Sunday, people were strewn everywhere sunbathing, and jumping into the water, etc. The Oslo Opera House has a really cool feature to it, there is a pathway that wraps around the building up to the roof and is open to the public. It was a fun little thing to do, and when we got to the top the boys decided the roof of an opera house was the perfect place to sit down and play chess! Well Paul and I decided not to wait out their games, so we continued our little walk and sat down at the waterfront for an hour. We reunited with the boys again and grabbed some bikes to continue our tour of Oslo.

These were floating saunas that you can sit in and then jump into the sea to cool off!

Monday June 26th we jumped on a tram and rode up the hill to Frognerseteren, a tiny town with an old restaurant on top of the hill and great views. We grabbed some coffee and pastries here and soaked up the views before started a hike down Holmenkollen. This is a mountain up to 500M which holds ski competitions, it holds the 120M ski jump used for the World Championships, which also has a museum attached to it-this was our original goal for our hike, but we got lost in the woods and found something even better! We stumbled across a smaller ski jump, this one was 90M high, and a ski team was practicing jumps. We were able to walk right up to the jump at different levels and watch these kids, 12-13 year olds jumping off this ski jump. This is the only one that is open during summer where they have an artificial turf instead of snow/ice. We were able to talk to some of the kids and parents to learn more about it. These kids start out jumping around 6 years old on the smaller jumps and work their way up to the bigger ones. We felt this was a much better way to see a ski 


Tuesday June 27th to keep with the Nordic ski traditions, we ventured to an indoor ski arena just outside of Oslo. Unfortunately, we didn’t bring proper clothes to go skiing, so we had to make do with what we had, which left us freezing inside the ski arena. It included a whole section of terrain park that had jumps and rails for skiers and snowboarders alike. There was also a slope designated for alpine ski training, it was nice and steep. All around the top was a cross-country ski track. The arena also had an ice-climbing wall. It was a fun and different experience. The boys really enjoyed trying out the different jumps and rails, luckily the place was not that busy. It mainly had ski camps that day.

Oslo was nice, and we enjoyed our time here, but I mainly enjoyed the parts outside of Oslo, up in the hills away from the hustle and bustle. It’s a big city and I wouldn’t say a city I need to come back to. Off to a new country tomorrow!