Thursday, May 7, 2009

Norway, Yeah Way

For the 1st May bank holiday (long weekend) we headed to Oslo, the capital of Norway. Many months ago before I had a job, Ryanair had a flight sale to Norway for £1. We were keen to book at that time but we did know if we could afford the weekend away, as tempting as a £1 flight is. By the time I found work the tickets were up to £10 each way so we booked it considering the price was cheaper than a train ticket to Birmingham. Good old Ryanair decided to add on twice the price because we weren't EU citizens, but we took them anyway because it would be still a cheap weekend away ...or so we thought. The morning we left we read a book that said that be prepared to be shocked by the prices in Oslo - they were very expensive. I’d never thought I’d find a place that would make London look cheap! The only thing that was reasonable was the price of the hotel we stayed at.

We woke at 5am on Saturday morning to get to the airport outside London (Stansted). When we got to Norway we had to get a 2hour bus ride to Oslo, that almost cost the same price of the flight, eventually getting to the hotel about 5pm. Good old Ryanair for flying to and from airports in the middle of nowhere. It wasn’t the best start to the weekend, a lack of sleep and a long transit time. On the way up to Oslo we did get to see a bit of the country side. The landscape reminds me of scenes off MacGyver, with the rocky woodlands. The country side is littered with barns of the same dark red colour and design (like children’s story books about farmyards), and the roads seem to have plenty of tunnels going through rocky hills.

When we arrived into Oslo we thought we’d check out some markets near the bus station, but when we got closer they looked dodgy as, and there was even a guy that eyed us up on the way there looking like he was going to mug us….not a good start. We then scooted quickly out of there and wandered into town to find our hotel, and being cheap it wasn’t in the best area. So this didn’t leave us a very good impression to start off with either.

We grabbed a cheap Kebab for dinner (£6, in London £4) from a place that made their own pita bread - yum. Then we went for an evening walk to check out the harbour. We had a walk around to have a look at the stylish new Opera house on the water front, Oslo Castle, checked out some, old sailing ships, and Noble peace centre. It then got dark and our impression of Oslo got a lot better. We walked to the Royal palace, which we quite cool because it over looked the main street, and it looked just like Buckingham palace …and funnily enough the guards looked the same too (who copied who??). Old buildings were lit up at night which made the place look really cool. We found an awesome sweet shop that sold Gelato and some of the most amazing looking cake (the cake reminded me of CafĂ© Cuba) and we took in the awesome atmosphere of the street at night. There was one amazing busker who had drawn a crowd of us, he added to the atmosphere.

Nobel peace centre


The Royal Palace - Looks like Buckingham palace

Day 2
We sleep-in the next morning to catch up on some much needed sleep. Breakfast was a part of the hotel deal so we took advantage of this and sneaked in some sammies for lunch! The Norwegians love their fish, and have fish for breakfast, along with a sandwich filling type breakfast…handy for our lunch. With a surprising amount of things to do in Oslo, we did debate whether to go on a cruise to see the fjords, but that meant we would have had to give up our day on Saturday, and also it wasn’t the proper fjords, but more of a touristy tour around the harbour – the good ones were further west and would have required an extra couple of days to see. We were glad we didn’t when we spoke to some of the kiwis on our flight back. They said they had mates go and pretty much fell asleep.

Being in Norway made me think how similar to Japanese they are; they love eating fish (whales too), the announcements on public transport sound Japanese, and some houses even look like Japanese architecture. But in reality we found them to be similar to the Dutch, in terms of their food and language (how they can switch from Norweigian to perfect English without blinking an eyelash), however we did find them to be less friendly than the Dutch, with most of their customer sales people adopting a bored disinterested attitude. We bought a 24 hour Oslo pass that got us free entry in to the endless amounts of museums and transport on offer, so we headed out to the outdoor folk museum first (glad we didn’t have to pay for transport I saw a lady pay with a 200NK (Norweigan Kroner) note (£20) for a family of 4 and didn’t get much change at all!). This museum was basically a couple of hundred buildings to recreate how the Norwegian people use to live throughout the ages….we found this got tiresome quick and were off to the next museum, the Viking ship museum. This was impressive, they had three actual Viking ships on display that they had dug up and put back together, and was well worth the anticipation. The Vikings were incredibly clever seamen.

Next we decided to check out the sculpture park. It was a very cool park with many sculptures showing many human emotions. The park reminded us of how much it was like the rest of Europe, when the suns out, people congregate to the park and the disposable bbqs come out. We then debated with the wallet on what to have for tea, finding out the cheapest restaurant that our guidebook recommended us was going to cost us a minimum of £15 per main, the equivalent in London of a £7 dish!.....cough! So we eventually decided to go have pizza from the place we went to the night before.



The Gol Stave Church - Outdoor Folk museum


Grassy roof

Old Viking ship



Vigeland Park - Sculptures

Day 3
Same again with breakfast - A nice sneaky packed lunch! The next day we checked out the Castle. This was a 16th century castle, but it was unlike all other castles we’ve seen, this one is made of brick! Before our bus to the airport, we checked out a few shops. Good old Ryanair, no allocated seats, so we had to make a run to get our seats!

Although we moaned about how expensive it was, all in all it was a good trip, especially going in with low expectations! And Jam like it lots because they thought she was Norwegian! The weather was great, a little colder than London – when we left London on Saturday it was heating to be a scorcher, but when we got back it was a lot colder than Norway…so we were quite pleased we didn’t miss out on too much!

The centre of Oslo

The harbour

Oslo Town hall

Friday, May 1, 2009

Keeping up with the Joneses

So recently I had another birthday – 21 again :o) YAY!

We decided to take the day off work, and relax doing London activities.
So in keeping with this idea, we started off with a couple of hours of relaxing in the sun at the park – yay for a spring birthday (and surprisingly sunny weather) versus my usual NZ autumn, rainy birthday. We then got all dolled up, and headed for a very posh high tea at the Dorchester. The Dorchester is on Park Lane (for any of you who have played Monopoly), so it is very swanky, with doormen wearing top hats and tails :o)

Outside the Dorchester


It was a fantastic experience – we really felt like upper class society, sipping an unlimited supply of superior quality tea, and being treated to cut sandwiches of various flavours, and then French cakes and finishing off the whole experience with scones with jam and cream! We were so full when we left we basically rolled out the door. What was really funny though, was seeing the type of people who were also dining there, on a weekday. One extremely posh lady in her 50s (who had either aged really well, or could afford copious amounts of botox and plastic surgery), sitting beside us seemed to know all of the waiting staff by name, and was asking them funny questions like “When you see me come through the door do you a) Think Oh no not her again, b) Run in the other direction, c) Think, yay her again? And the very tactful waiter said option e)! And the lady goes, but there was no e) option – precisely lady! He is not exactly going to go with option a) if he wants to keep his job is he!

Bev looking mighty pleased with himself - look at those delicious French cakes!

Me dying to crack into the scones with jam and cream, mmmmm!

We then spent the rest of the afternoon looking around the Green Park area (very close to Lizzy and Philips house), Bev showed me where his work is and we had a look at some really cute shops specifically for rich people, such as the real version of Rodd and Gunn – where guys actually go to buy their jumpers, check shirts and pants for game shooting. There was also a specialist shop for cigar smokers, where the only thing in the shop was cigars! How do these shops survive!

We then grabbed a quick dinner at a westernised asian restaurant (but delicious) called DimT with a superb view of Tower Bridge (slightly better view than I can get from my works office window)
The view of Tower Bridge from the restaurant



and then we went to the Globe Theatre to see Romeo and Juliet. I have wanted to go to the Globe since arriving so it was so cool to finally go, and we really loved the performance, it was really well done and just the atmosphere was really cool. I can just imagine what it must have been like in Shakespeare’s time. One of the funniest things was that Friar Lawerence was played by a kiwi guy - Rawiri Paratene who was in Whale Rider, and who was on Play School when I was little - awesome! Kiwis are taking over the world little by little!

The Globe Theatre

An excellent day out on all accounts!