Oslo

Jun 2024

Oslo is a beautiful, fun city to visit, with one major flaw that we might as well get out of the way right now. The Norwegian word for coconut is “koko-snot,” which is unappealing enough that none of the gelato dealers along the waterfront offer any kind of coconut gelato, and it’s my favorite flavor.

Otherwise, Oslo is picture postcard perfect.

The city is very walkable, has more museums than you can visit in a week (maybe two), historic landmarks, a rich history, beautiful European building and streets, and needless to say, all that Nordic Viking stuff going for it.

In fact, on the map below, we visited all of these places and only took (the very good) public transportation once, to the Norsk Folkemuseum (which for some reason is a "Museum" instead of a "Museet," I never quite figured out the difference).


The city has its quirks. The biggest one can be summarized with one word. Ok, two words. “Station wagon.” There were an enormous number of station wagons in Oslo. Volvo? Of course. Toyota? They make a station wagon? Audi? BMW? Porsche? JAGUAR? Ferrari? Yes to all of them, and in large numbers. I think there are models of each that are literally only made for the Scandinavian market (ok, the 3 million dollar Nio EP9 below isn't a station wagon, but I bet Nio makes one)
The second, related quirk is luxury cars in general. I’d say three quarters of the cars we saw were Tesla, BMW, Audi, or Porsche models. Which seemed odd because Volvo seemed very under-represented. But the oddest thing was that it extended to the taxis. Eighty percent of the taxis were Tesla or Beamers. Ten percent were Mercedes.  And the final ten percent didn't get much business.

The final quirk I’ll mention is that ninety seven percent of the population could be underwear models. Or personal trainers. Making me feel like a stereotypical fat cat American, emphasis on “fat.” Jerks.

Of course, the main reason for visiting Oslo wasn't to see Oslo, but Brie, Aidan and Little Dave, who coincidentally where there at the same time. Except for the "coincidental" part. It was more like this; we were visiting Brie and Aidan in Ireland.  Brie said Aidan was going to Oslo on a business trip and that she was going to take some time off and tag along with Little Dave. And then Alison said, "well, we'll come so you have someone to watch Little David while you and Aidan go have a nice dinner." So basically we flew to Europe to babysit.

But, in fact, it worked out great. Little David was a real trooper while we travelled. He's a good natured little tyke and did very little complaining as long as you didn't stop moving. Ever. So we saw quite a bit of Oslo (we covered almost forty miles by foot the first three days).


Oslo is a very modern, vaguely European city with a waterfront (ocean, but at the end of a very long fjord, so it felt more lake-ish), a great public transport system, and a lot of parks. Most of the residential areas are more classic brick and stucco, with more modern buildings in the office parks and along the waterfront.

There's a lot of fun statues and fountains scattered throughout the city as well.

So with that intro out of the way, let's jump into the things we saw while we were there. From here, you can take a look at: