Day 1 and 2 went by on the plane and via a 9-hour time difference. On Day 3, the weather was not perfect in Oslo, drizzling in the morning and raining pretty hard in the afternoon. We first took a bus tour in the city, our next stop was Vigeland Sculpture Park.
The Vigeland park contains more than 200 pieces of stone sculptures made by Norwegian artist Gustav Vigeland. The sculptures explore life, relationships and human experiences.
It contains three main sections
- Monoliths with 121 human and 36 sculptures around it to depict the cycle of life
- The fountain, six giants holding something in the main fountain, with four groups of tree figures, each group has 5 sculptures.
- The bridge - the angry boy was the most vandalized piece in the garden
There was another famous Norwegian painter named Edvard Munch. His famous work was “the screaming”, currently displayed in the National Museum in Oslo. The local tour guide shared a spicy story of Munch and Vigeland, in which the two artists shared the same mistress, when they lived in the same apartment in Berlin.
We then visited the ski jump in Holmankollen. It was built in 1911 by Belgian and Swedish architects.
The city tour ended at 12pm. Afternoon was free time and it was raining hard. We decided to walk to the city hall. When we got there, the line at the entrance was very long. I then realized that I lost my reading glasses. I was holding an umbrella, a walking stick, and my cell phone to show the route. Somehow the glasses fell off and I did’t notice. We decided to give up on waiting in line and worked the route back to look for my glasses. After searching in vain and getting lost here and there, we figured that it was more realistic simply buying a new pair instead. We finally traced back to our hotel and the receptionist told me there was a pharmacy only 400 meters away. So we walked there and found a pair of 3.0 reading glasses. We came back to the hotel, rested a bit, decided to go find some souvenirs and food. Daddy found a chain store called Way Nor (our tour guide told us there is another store called No Way, the Norwegian really is very lazy in choosing store names 😀). Way Nor is a huge two story souvenirs store. I bought a cashmere scarf, three butter knives made of reindeer’s antler and a troll magnet.
We then went to a historic Norwegian restaurant just across the street from our hotel called Kaffistova. (Coffee Shop)
We ordered a dish called Anniversary Plate (recommended by the waitress). It contained three types of meat - roasted whale, tenderloin of lamb and reindeer sausage. It was not tasty at all (whale meat too tough, lamb taste strange, reindeer bland). We also ordered a fish soup and that was good.
A few days later, we saw the pitch black raw whale meat in a fish market in Bergen — I would not order the dish if I had seen it before :)
The hotel is located in the center of downtown with a lot of attractions nearby. We walked by the Parliament building, the grand hotel, the city hall.
We also passed by a car dealer shop with a beautiful race car. We didn’t recognize the brand. Daddy checked and it was a Chinese car company called NIO , the car model was EP9, and Google said only 16 of the them were made.
According to Google:
NIO House Oslo is a public showroom, community space, and lifestyle hub located at Karl Johans gate 33A in central Oslo. As Europe’s first NIO House, it functions as a brand experience center for the Chinese electric vehicle maker, featuring vehicle displays, a public café, a library, meeting areas, and a children’s play area.