Once again we were able to add a weekend being tourist onto a business trip. This time to Oslo, Norway. Whilst the weather is Spain is reasonably warm - sitting in the mid-teens, Oslo would be our first seriously cold venture whilst in Europe. With suitcases loaded with coats, parkas, scarves and gloves we headed to the cold north........and were not disappointed. We arrived on Saturday evening - after spending the entire day in various airports (we could just about have flown from Singapore in the same time frame), so woke up to our first views of the city on Sunday morning.
To our delight it had snowed overnight. This might not be exciting for most people - but for a couple of Aussies who have seen snow a couple of times in our lives (and me only once and never really been "in the snow" - this was great. So we crunched our way through the new snow to the tram stop and headed up to the Vigeland Sculpture Park. This beautiful park contains dozens of large sculptures portraying the human body in all its moods, ages, and relationships.
From little kids having temper tantrums or being piggy backed by parents; elderly lovers; men fighting; individuals contemplating and dreaming......really impressive. The park was magnificent with bare trees covered in snow; ducks swimming in nearly frozen lakes; park benches lined up dark against the clean snow.
After spending a couple of hours at the park watching the kids on sleds and the families out enjoying the snow, we headed off towards the main city centre and walked through the central promenade- past the university, museums, ice skating rink (where this little toddler (about 3) put everyone else to shame with his skating prowess - future Olympic for sure) and up the hill towards the Royal Palace. Unlike the Buckingham Palace in London, we were able to get right up close to the Palace and were even able to watch the changing of the guard from about 2 meters away.
The views of the Palace through the park were spectacular.
We headed up to the lounge on the top of our hotel which had views over the Palace park and out towards the fjord. A magic day.
Unfortunately the snow mostly melted over night and the city was not as impressive without its white covering. So the Monday was spent searching out the shops and finding my way around the commercial part of the city - as well as tryhing to find a coffee shop which would actually serve me (not sure what I was doing wrong - but there seemed to be a lack of service for those that were tourists). In summary, a great day on Sunday with the beauty of the new snow, Monday was not as impressive - however we did not spend any time near the water - that will be a spring/summer venue.
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