Bit of a traveling day today… We dropped the car off, had a couple of hour wait at Reykjavik airport and somehow we had premium economy seats on our way to Oslo, Norway. Plenty of legroom, free meal + extra seat – it’s no business class but it was pretty nice!
Oslo and their airport have their shit together. By the time we reached the bag carousel, our bags were just coming out and we were on our way. Again – no passport required and we even stopped at an information booth to ensure we weren’t doing anything wrong. More importantly, no stamps in our passports! We look like amateurs with a pretty much empty passport!
The train from the airport into Oslo Central Station is super nice, super quick and runs every 10 minutes. That’s public transport done well. No ticket needed, just swipe your credit card at the turnstyle and you’re through – that’s it!
We didn’t have much time in Oslo, but our hotel is rather ritzy which is a nice change. We dumped our stuff and went for an explore through the city. Found a cute restaurant for dinner where they serve local, organic beers. So you’ve heard Oslo is expensive? You heard right. My 500ml beer was $21. There was one beer on the list for $42 for 500ml. My salmon dish was $41 which was one of the cheaper items! And this was at a place considered good value… Both our meals (Soph had an organic barley veggie risotto) were delicious so we couldn’t really complain.
Afterwards, we stopped in at a craft beer bar. This is turning into a bit of a beer tour, but they can’t really grow grapes in this part of the world so beer is massive and all the cool places do beer really well. They had hundreds (no exaggeration) of craft beers available. They even have a short novel-sized booklet that explains what each beer is, where it’s from etc. Sadly/understandably it’s all in Norwegian, but the idea is stellar. Heaps of people were here, all locals from the conversations we heard, so we kicked back, enjoyed our $20 drinks and had a couple of rounds.
