Oslo

Saturday 9 December

After a very tasty breakfast I ventured out to check the route to our food tour this afternoon. I followed the directions from Google maps but couldn’t find the station I was looking for. However I did find a different one. I later realised that I should have been looking for a tram stop, not a station.

At 10 o’clock the Christmas market opened so I wandered all around that and bought myself some leather gloves. There were lots of wooden booths with typical Norwegian knitwear, socks, hats, as well as food. The sugared almonds smelled delicious and there were frankfurts on giant, round, swinging grills. In the middle of the market there is an ice skating rink. It was pretty quiet when I first saw it but the number of skaters grew as the day and evening progressed.

Anyone for a frankfurt?

My wandering took me to the parliament building opposite our hotel and then up the hill towards the royal palace.

Parliament

Royal palace

Rob and Judy arrived about 2.30 and we went for a cuppa in a nearby bakery. Hard to get a seat it was so busy. Then it was off on the tram to Olaf Ryes Plass on the other side of the city, the starting point for our Oslo Gourmet tour. We had to meet by the fountain in the park at 4.30, by which time of course it was quite dark. Felt more like 6.30 or 7.00. There was only one other person in our group, Michael from Germany. The tour took us to a big food market where we tasted beer and cheeses, then a restaurant where we tried some modern Norwegian cuisine which was very tasty. The last stop was a bar serving cocktails. Judy and I had a hot apple drink, sort of like drinking a hot, liquid, alcoholic apple pie.

A hot cocktail

Then it was back on the number 13 tram, with only a slight glitch when we were held up by an accident somewhere. We hopped off the tram to look for an alternative and no sooner had we done that than the traffic cleared and the backed up trams started moving. We scrambled back onto our tram just in time.

Stopped for a hot chocolate in the Christmas market and watched the ice skaters for a while before returning to our hotel. My feet are very happy to be in bed and free of shoes.

Evening skaters