12 Hours in Oslo

If you live in London, a day trip is to the beach at Brighton, the Kent countryside, the Cotswolds, Oxford…Oslo? Can you seriously hop on a plane and head abroad for the day and make it worth it? Is it complete madness to take a day trip from London to Oslo? You know what’s coming next…

02:30 GMT

My alarm goes off. I totally snooze it.

04:19 GMT

One night bus and one coach later, I’m heading towards security at Stansted Airport. The idea of this escapade only went from “nah…” to “okay…” because the flight was £19.98 return on Ryanair (not quite a good as my £10 return to Copenhagen, but I can work with it). I’m booked on a 06:25 flight, arriving in Oslo at 09:30. My flight home is at 21:30, giving me exactly 12 hours on the ground. Day trip from London to Oslo? I can make this work.

09:28 CET

We actually land a couple of minutes early. It’s -7C and snowing and I’m starting to like this idea less and less.

Norway is not a cheap destination, so to ensure I maintain a grip on my spending, I withdraw 1000NOK (£93.40) from a cash machine and make that my budget for the day. I’m really bad at maths so I use the conversion £1 = 10NOK to give me a rough idea of how much I’m spending (it’s a little bit under so I can feel really good about myself when I have a few quid leftover).

With such a short trip, I’d planned my route into the city in advance. Oslo airport has the Flytoget express train that gets you into the city centre within 19 minutes, but
At 190NOK each way for a regular ticket, it is PRICEY. I took this on my last trip…when I was on expenses. Now that I’m travelling on my own dime I took the regular train. Trains are less regular journey time is only 5 mins longer, but its half the price (101NOK each way). For my day trip, I bought a 24 hour all-zone pass that got me return travel into the city and as well as bus, metro and tram access for the day. Cost?
237NOK . Like I said, this city ain’t cheap.

Travel tip: Use Ruter to plan journeys around town: I downloaded the app and it was a total lifesaver. Also, don’t forget to validate your ticket before travelling. Fines in Oslo, like everything else, are EXPENSIVE.

Bad at maths, worse at geography, it took me about 10 minutes to get out of Oslo Central Station (Oslo S). On the plus side this meant I got to swing by the tourist information centre to pick up a map (just in case google died), to walk through a cute little foodhall that had a branch of the cheese toastie foodtruck I’d heard so much about (closed until lunch) and to take a quick snap of the bronze tiger statue that serves as the city’s mascot.

10:54

My destination? The Opera House. The award-winning structure sits boldy on the waterfront, all ice-white and angular. I vaguely remember walking past it on my first trip about 10 years ago when it was brand new. What I didn’t do then – why not, I have no idea – was walk the roof. Yes, you can walk from the ground, up and over the roof, down the other side. You can take in the view of the city from the top and, on your way down, catch a sneaky peek through glass at the action inside . Today, however, the temperature was sub zero and the entire roof covered in snow thicker than a duvet. Still want to climb this thing?

Going up was a little slippy. Up top the view was pretty spectacular, a 360 of the waterfront, the city and back again but DAMN the windchill was ridiculous. I could barely feel my face. Paranoid about falling, I hugged the rail all the way down, Bambi-ing on black ice as I went. Meanwhile little kids are racing each other up and down, not even holding on. A woman passed me pushing a bloody Bug-a-Boo…have I missed something? Norwegians are hardcore. I ducked inside the building to warm up over a coffee (44NOK), admire the interiors (even the bathrooms are stunning) and plot my next move.

12:10

One bus ride later, I was at Mathallen market. Mathallen – like Borough Market, like Torvehallerne in Copenhagen, Foodhallen in Amsterdam and the rest – is an indoor food hall made up of lots of different stalls, pop-ups and proper restaurants serving dishes from all over the globe. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it…) it was lunchtime, I was hungry. I amused myself mooching between stalls deciding whether I wanted noodles or bao or tapas or pizza…but, this is me we’re talking about. My real choice was between donuts and ice cream. It was -3 outside, so warming up, obviously I went with the delish artisan gelato from Paradis (45 NOK). Those donuts did look good, though…