My first trip to Oslo part 3

It's Saturday and we decided to head to the what I'm guessing is the slightly touristic Kaffistova in town, a sort of canteen place. I had reindeer cakes, same had their famous 'meat cakes', both served with gravy, potatoes and a mound of mushy peas. 

Post lunch, we were heading to the Vigeland sculpture park, we decided to walk there as we hadn't seen a lot of that side of town. We walked past the Royal Palace (the king was in), through Palace Park, past the House of Literature (Litteraturhuset). We came across a flea market with lots of nice stuff, but not anything special enough to buy. 

The sculpture park is located in another larger park (Frogner), but the sculpture section takes up a large section by itself. Conceived and designed by Gustav Vigeland, the sculptures are incredible. They show so much emotion, and are also quite eerie. 

We met up with our friends, and got the tram to Sentral station - it was the first tram we'd been on since arriving in Oslo. We unfortunately missed S O H N and Angel Haze was just about finishing when we arrived on site. We watched the last song of Pissed Jeans's set, and then watched Truls - a Norwegian artist we hadn't heard of before, but had a great voice. 

Mathallen - a new food market in Oslo (which we wandered through on Wednesday) had stalls at the festival and I went fish and chips today (Sam had a chorizo in baguette), and sat down to eat whilst Unknown Mortal Orchestra played. I'm always surprised by how Ruben holds his guitar like a bag. We then went to see John Talabot and I enjoyed seeing some of the Norwegians getting a little crunk - it was Saturday after all. 

We watched the opening songs of Slayer - they looked exactly how you want them to look: axe guitars, beards and long hair - before heading over to the main stage for The Knife. The Knife were a little bizarre, three different girls sang lead vocals so I was pretty confused as to which one was Karin. I was quite up for the idea of their performance art/dance led stage show but I was less up for only hearing one song from Silent Shout, everything else was from 'Shaking the Habitual'. 

Slayer 

The Knife

We had a drink outside Dattera Til Hagen before heading in for Talabot's DJ set. The venue was very cool, almost like a house although I didn't stay inside for long. 

John Talabot DJ set

Oddly enough, by the day of our departure, I had a fair amount of kroner left so I headed into town to check out their large second hand shop Uff and some of the design shops. When I got to Sentral station, I recalled nearly all shops are shut on Sundays - doh! So I headed to the opera house roof. It was really cool, and a great design/architecture idea. We had one last lunch at the apartment and then it was time to head to the airport. We bought a cheese slice at the airport (the Norwegians invented it). As we took off, a child shouted "We're flying now" and it transpired to be the son of Commodore Norrington from Pirates of the Caribbean and the crazy lady from Green Wing.

Opera House

Fun playground at the airport

Summaries of Norwegian dress: Kankens are everywhere on all ages, not just for the hipsters. And they have a brilliant collection of waterproof jackets. 

All photos my own. 

My first trip to Oslo part 2

The glorious sun of yesterday has departed this morning and replaced it with rain. We had plans so my and Sam headed down to Radhuset where the rain came down especially hard, perfect timing for a ferry trip across to Bygdøy (no 91) and walked over to the Viking Ship Museum - we only had time for one ship museum before lunch and decided on the vikings cause you know the history of Norway and all that. Sam lamented that there was no norse god type museum (we couldn't find one anyways) and wondered how good the Fram Museum would have been. 

The Viking Ship Museum had two two very well preserved boats, one not so much plus lots of well preserved wagons and other things these people had been buried with and also a burial chamber. It's not a huge museum but we finished just about on the time we had to leave for lunch so a good size for us. 

Viking Ship Museum

Lunch in question was on a tiny island (Herbern) of the coast of Bygdøy. We waited on a small pier for a small boat to take us over to the island - a very short ride! The restaurant, Lille Herbern, was in a beautiful location - I'd imagine if it hadn't been raining, it would have been even nicer - definitely a place to spend several hours chilling on the swing chairs, watching canoes go by. There was no one else in the restaurant - we had got the small ferry over with one of the chefs - whilst we waiting for the others to find the pier, but the sky started clearing and we could see back to the mainland and start to hear the festival bands as well. 

The menu is small, the food is delicious. I went for catch of the day (salmon) and apple tart, ice cream and an earl grey for afters. 

We skimmed stones for a while and then jumped on the mini ferry - as we got off, there was a smartly dressed party waiting to head over, I think this restaurant was definitely a special occasion place but I'm really glad we went. We walked past the Fram, and got on the ferry back to Radhus. We had a pit stop at our friend's apartment in Grønland. We had a sneaky tequila before heading to the medieval park (Middelalderparken) for day 2 of Øya Festival.

Lille Herben ferry

Fram Museum & Kon Tiki statue 

Opera House (Operahuset)

First up, was Grimes - who sounded a little out of tune in places (not the best time I've seen her anyways). As we arrived so late, it was now turn for today's headliner Kendrick Lamar (smallest headliner of the festival) who played with a live band. 

The festival is quite green, so offers a 1 kroner for each returned plastic cup intact, there were a lot of kids scurrying around collecting for pocket money but two of our friends started during Kendrick and soon enough had 200 cups (the equivalent to about £20 so pretty good). By the time they finished, the exchange point was closed so they put them in the cloakroom (?!). 

The one

How to survive Oslo's prices 

The precious raffle ticket

A further stop at the close apartment where we made toast. The others headed to the RA party, but we took the opportunity for a relatively early night. 

Friday - the sun is out again! We headed to meet some friends and got the ferry from Vippetangen to Hovedøya. We got the long one so went past the other islands Bleikøya, Gressholmen & Lindøya Ost. We headed to a bathing spot and went straight for the water. The Oslo Fjord wasn't too cold to swim in, but took a while for the water to get deep. We had a little chill post dip and got the quick ferry back to the mainland. On our way back to our apartment, we stopped off a weird second hand market on Storgata but couldn't find anything to buy. 

A local bar

Hovedøya 

Second hand market

After some quiet time, we walked yet another route to the festival, this time going through the financial district. I could hear Parquet Courts starting 'Stoned & Starving' as we arrived towards the end of their set. We headed to Goat - a Swedish band I was very excited about seeing live. They were all wearing masks, lots of feathers and even a burka. The show was great - bought the record when we got home. We watched James Blake from the riverside and had an Illegal Burger for dinner to get ourselves prepped for Kraftwerk. I thought it would be a safe bet to go toilet after Autobahn, but then Tour de France came on so I had to run back. When I did make it to the toilet, I could hear Beach House's soothing sounds from backstage - it was a shame they clashed.

Kraftwerk

 

Post festival, we got on a bus organised by the festival for a midnight excursion to the Botanical Gardens. It was the first time, they had ever opened up the gardens after closing and it was lit by candles along the path - very special. We were given a beer and shown into the small house with Victoria Lilys, we then were given some food and sat on picnic tables listening to a Norwegian artist. After getting dropped off back at Sentral, we headed to Sukkerbiten again, this time for Todd Terje. We had some fun on the opera house on our way back. 

All photos my own. 

My first visit to Oslo part 1

I left work a little early to ensure we had enough time at the airport - didn't want a repeat of the Istanbul stress. Without any kerfuffle, we were on board and up in the air. We seemed especially high, with a glorious sun setting underneath cauliflower clouds. As the clouds began to separate, we could see thinner clouds (I suck at correctly identifying nimbus from cirrocumulus) and then darkness below. It was super bright up in the clouds. It didn't feel like we were heading to a capital city, but closer to something on the edge of the world. As we descended form the upper echelons, the clouds didn't disappear and even as we approached the runway, it was just trees and mist surrounding us. Our Airbnb host Petter picked us up from Sentral station as it was already 11.30pm. The airport train was super quick and swanky. As we drove the apartment, Petter pointed out a few things to us, and on arrival, took us up to the roof to check out the panorama views in the dark - it still helped us get our bearings. It was very peaceful up there - we were 20 minutes walk out of town - and we could see the ski jump Holmenkollen in the distance. Petter also mentioned that he has a lot of coffee enthusiasts staying in his place as there is a local guy called Tim (will find his full name) who has won the World Barista Championships - I don't drink coffee but still a good factoid. 

The apartment

  

The next morning we had breakfast  and headed out for a wander around the local area. We were staying very close to Our Saviour's Cemetery (Var Frelsers Gravlund), we walked past the wooden houses of Telthusbakken to the Akerselva River past bridges and waterfalls till we got to the main road. We looped back through Grunnerlokka (the trendy area apparently), Bergfjerdingen (more colourful wooden houses) and into the cemetery where we visited Munch's grave. We had lunch on the roof and chilled for a little in the sun before heading to the festival we were in Oslo for: Øya Festival. 

View from the roof

I was attempting to do the opera house on the way to the festival but we didn't have time. As we were trying to establish where we got our passes from, we wandered into the artist area (secure), we could hear Mount Kimbie soundchecking but didn't have much luck. We got in the main entrance queue and I called one of the festival team who were handling International stuff. We got in but missed all but one of Kimbie's set : (

Found our friends sitting on some hammocks and listened to Tame Impala from this sweet spot. It was then time for Wu Tang prep, it was the first time I had seen them, and they kept on bringing out more of the Clan as the set progressed. Blur were headlining and played a hits-heavy set - which is what I like for a festival headline act. They ended up on Song 2 in the encore of course. 

We headed to our friend's apartment for some drinks before heading to the Mykki Blanco/One Man Øya Natt show at Sukkerbiten. It was a cool venue, almost a container city on the edge of the desert but you're actually on the water's edge of the city. It wasn't very busy and it was getting late so we headed home as One Man came on.

Sunset on day 1 of the festival

Walking alongside the opera house

Sukkerbiten

All photos my own.