Oslo

Norway
October 2025.

This whole mad Bergen, Oslo and Lisbon trip (I mean who does Norway and Portugal in the same trip with nothing in between) came about because Eleanor and I have talked about going to a concert in a different country for quite some time. I saw Patti Smith was touring the 50th anniversary of her classic debut LP “Horses”, and playing in Oslo, and decided that now was the time.

So here we are in Oslo, arriving mid-afternoon yesterday. We’re staying in a nice downtown hotel, not far from the Munch Museum; which we visited the last time we came. The hotel is nice, but the breakfast was OMG good.

It’s cold and sunny and a good day to be walking 40 minutes up the Akerselva River from where it ends in the harbour near our hotel to Grunerlokka and the Mathallen food hall. We ate in the food hall last time we were in Oslo. It’s a bit like London’s Shoreditch 10 years ago, but all squashed into one small block; loads of graffiti and bars and cafes.

What we seemed to have missed last time was Nedre Foss. A small, but quite powerful waterfall just behind the back of the food hall. It was a lovely bonus to a nice riverside walk.

It was late morning when we left the hotel and we had intended on lunching though had arrived far too early to eat, especially after a large breakfast in the hotel. The walk was shorter than I had planned and though we carried on past the waterfall it seemed that being hungry again would be quite a way off.

The river is a similar size to central London’s Regents Canal, though fast running and seemingly cleaner. There are more trees and grass on the riverbank than the canal, but it was equally popular with walkers and runners.

That night we went to the Patti Smith concert that brought us here in the first place. The concert was great, though too packed for my liking, Patti was in fine voice and the band was fantastic. I’ve not seen her perform before.

The following day we spent some time in the National Museum of Oslo, which we also thoroughly enjoyed, though it’s very modern art gallery rather than national museum. The building itself is a fine piece of modern art, and it had a version of Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’, without the crowds of the Munch Museum. 

Yesterday we late-lunched in this fabulous vegan café in one of the inner city residential areas.  The food was very nice and we ended up talking to the owner about life in Oslo, he’d lived in the UK in the past so had some interesting perspectives, in a good way. One thing he said stuck with me ‘Norway is a trust based country’, admittedly we were mainly talking about tax, but the concept was on display in the basement of the museum. The cloakroom was just out in the open and there are dozens of coats just hanging there unguarded. I like it.

Oslo is a nice city to wander about, though very crowded on a sunny late autumn day. I found a bit of local brutalist architecture. It’s not the most exciting piece I will admit, but this holiday is not about brutalist buildings!

Soon enough it was time to head out to Oslo airport for a late afternoon flight to Lisbon. As we did last time, we enjoyed Oslo.