Oslo Day 1

Our four day trip last month was in Oslo.  We scored a monthly deal on Ryanair for crazy cheap tickets and spent the night before the flight in the Advance Hotel for Frankfurt-Hahn Airport.  It was a good idea in that it wasn't a rush to get to the airport so early in the morning.  We would probably do things that way again in the future.  They also drive you to the airport for free and back to your car when you return. 

The airport is pretty isolated in that no trains go there.  Most people get there by cab or car.  Fortunately for us, that wasn't an issue.

We arrived and then my lack of planning started causing a few minor issues.  I knew of the Express bus to Oslo, but we missed it by 5 minutes somehow so we proceeded to walk to the train station instead.  Packing light really paid off here as it was a 45min walk.  It was fortunate that the locals spoke pretty good English...very good for the most part.  Maybe it's because England is right across the pond?

The train to Oslo was pretty cozy, and once we got into Oslo, we high-tailed it to the Tourist Information Center to get our Oslo passes (a truly good deal!) and get connected to our AirBnb accomodations. 

AirBnb in Oslo is truly the way to go.  Hotel and Hostel costs are CRAZY!  Everything in Oslo is around 4 times more expense than most other countries.  $4 for a small McDonalds fries, $45 for a large pizza at a pizza place just to name two examples.  Even groceries were expensive.  Next time, we will consider actually packing food as we are quite sure even the cost of baggages would still make it a worthwhile venture.

On the flipside, public transportation is, while not technically free, virtually free in that most people don't bother paying for it as they already pay for it in their high taxes.  It shows too, as their trains and buses were all very clean and pretty new looking.  The whole city was really clean with lots of sculptures, parks, and beautiful views.

Two other things that J and I noticed upon arrival were the space and the people.  The streets and sidewalks are WIDE compared to most other places we have experienced in Europe.  They felt very American in that respect.  The reason is that Oslo had so many devastating fires in it's history, that the royalty decreed very wide roads and walkways to both keep further fires from spreading and so that fire vehicles could puts fires out more quickly.

As for the people, J mentioned immediately that they all look gorgeous!  An expected high percentage of blonds, but an unexpected generally tall and skinny population.  I think she referred to it as walking into a city of models.  Everyone was also very nice and, as mentioned before, spoke very good English.  We honestly couldn't catch accents in many locals we encountered.

On to the trip.  After connecting up with our lodging, we wandered through downtown Oslo to get familiar with the area.  Most of downtown is easily walkable, and a lot of the train and bus routes get you everywhere else pretty quickly.  We had pizza for dinner after getting the lay of the land, then figured out our next day then crashed.  Sorry, no pictures on Day 1.  Got tons of pictures for the other three days though!