48 hours in Oslo, Norway

Friday

I arrive at Oslo Rygge late a night.

Nothing much to see here, just spending my evening travelling into the city (it takes around an hour) via bus and navigating to our apartment.

We travelled in via Ryggeekspressen which coincides with flights, Ryanair ones atleast. I booked tickets online before (website here) since it’s cheaper and I had found a discount code on google.

We were staying in the Frogner area, which is lovely but a little further out. Luckily, public transport runs really late and we were able to get a bus to nearby our apartment.

Frogner House Apartments was our home the weekend, and I honestly couldn’t recommend the place enough. I went with two friends, so it made sense to stay in an apartment where we could dine in and sip the duty free prosecco we bought at the airport while enjoying the sun on our own balcony.

Saturday

It’s raining! Who’d have thought July would bring torrential rain (clue: not me!).

It’s still warm though, and we’re still in a beautiful city. So it’s time to throw on our anoraks and head down to the harbour.

We take the bus there, and once again we don’t have to pay after the bus conductor insists we can make the journey without a ticket (is this normal? who knows.) After a few quick snaps of the cool street art and nobel peace centre, we find a great place for brunch/lunch.

Aker Brygge has loads of restaurants, we ate at Louise. If you ever visit, order the prawns on bread – doesn’t sound filling but I promise you it is! Louise has outdoor seating and heating too (hence the super weird photo colour), so we still got to enjoy the outdoors while staying dry!

When we left it was still raining, which meant it was the perfect opportunity to grab a 24 hour public transport pass and take a tour around the Oslo fjords by boat.

Still looking grey when we finish our short tour inside what turns out to be a commuters ferry (still enjoyed it!), but we head over to Bygdoy.

Bygdoy is museum central, so we figure we could always go inside one. However, by some sort of miracle… the sun comes out! Oslo (and my pics) are suddenly transformed. Since the sun had come out, we just wandered around the area for the rest of the day with a quick stop in the free area of the Viking ship museum…

Here’s what a full walk around Bygdoy looks like:

(Guess which photo was taken by my phone camera!)

We head back to Frogner to pick up some food for our d.i.y meze on the balcony. Oslo can be expensive (if you choose to make it that way) but so can dining out in any capital city. We save our pennies by eating in before we head out to a Norwegian house party.

This should have been the point we bought some drink for the party (they stop selling alcohol at 6pm in shops) but we didn’t… fail.

What a lovely meze we made though!

Luckily for us the Norwegian are very hospitable and kept our glasses topped and mouths full of popcorn all evening until we hit the clubs!

Sunday

Check out isn’t until afternoon, but since we woke up feeling fresh we wanted to make the most of the day. Vigelandsparken was high on the list, but the rain on Saturday meant we held off until the last day. So glad we did, it was sunny and they were celebrating 4th July.

The photos speak for themselves really…

Our flight back wasn’t until the evening, so we headed to Godt Brod in the Grunerlokka area for a late lunch. It’s basically a fancy a subway with the most amazing pastries and breads.

We spend most the afternoon here before heading back into town to catch the Rygeekespressen back to the airport.

Yes, if the weather was warmer we probably could have fit more of Oslo in… but I think we did pretty good for 48 hours!

Feel free to add your own Oslo tips for readers!