Oslo, Norway. Our flights from St. Maarten to Oslo went very smoothly and we arrived in Oslo bright and early on Monday morning. Needless to say, we were exhausted and headed straight to the hotel to get a few hours sleep. Once we had a catnap, we were ready to explore. Or at least, we thought we were. We were not prepared for the prices in Norway! To use the bathroom costs 2 euros but since a beer in a restaurant costs $10 to $12, a six pack at the grocery store was $18.00 and water was over $4 a bottle, we didn’t have to use the bathroom much because we were dehydrated most of the time! Other than the sticker shock, Oslo was a great place to begin our trip. The city is small compared to other capital cities, clean and easy to explore. Thank goodness everyone here speaks beautiful English because we have only managed to secure two Norwegian words that we can remember which are “thanks” and “water”. Luckily, many Norwegian words are close to English as well. Our favorite is “parkering” which means “parking”. Like all Norwegian words, they seem to add letters just to make them longer.
Our adventures have included Vigeland Park which was a large greenspace with some rather adventurous sculptures, the Royal Palace which, like the Norwegian people, was pretty straightforward, the Norway Maritime Museum and the Fram Museum as well as a gin distillery called Himkok (Norwegian for ‘moonshine’). At the distillery, we had two very interesting and very different conversations with the bartenders. The first was from Sweden and when Bill asked why beer and liquor prices were so high, he responded, “Because the government thinks it is their duty in our socialistic society to decide what is best for all of us. They tax all things they think unhealthy including alcohol, cigarettes and sugar. The politicians can retire at age 35 and have a pension forever. It is ridiculous!” The other bartender was from Italy. He responded, “I moved to Norway so I would not have to work as hard as I had to in Italy.” Well, that about summed up Bill’s question! The Fram museum was all about the exploration to find the Northwest Passage and we could have spent hours exploring. The actual ship, the Fram, was in the museum and we were allowed to walk through the ship which was exciting. We voted that Galt was much more comfortable though! Tomorrow we head to London on an early morning flight. For our fellow travelers, we both give Oslo the following score: Overall: 5 Points of interest: 5 Ease of communication: 10 Ease of transportation: 10 Friendly people: 10 Cost of living: 1 Weather: 8 (in summer months) Bill's favorite thing: Himkok distillery night Sally's favorite things: Fram Museum I will now attempt to upload pictures to the site! Getting the blog done on Bill's Chromebook has been challenging!
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AuthorSally Miller Archives
May 2024
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