Oslo, Norway

Any previous thoughts of Switzerland being the most expensive place I have ever been in the world quickly went on the window this weekend when I visited Norway. While it was an inexpensive flight and hostel stay (though we got what we paid for) food, drinks, and activities made us greatly appreciate the prices in the Eurozone (countries that use the Euro). For comparison a cheap mixed drink in Norway was 120 Norwegian kroner. This converts to about 21 U.S. dollars; and that was a cheap drink. Another comparison was the advertised price of 250 kroner at T.G.I. Friday's for a burger, appetizer, and coke. That's going to be 43 dollars please (or 8 trips to Subway in the U.S.). I don't even spend that much on my own birthday. Needless to say we didn't drink and ate only when absolutely necessary on our trip.

However, it wasn't all bad prices. Oslo is a good city for a weekend getaway and we definitely stayed busy the whole time. My overall take is that if I ever go back to Norway, I will go in the summer and rent a car. Driving up and down the coast looks absolutely beautiful and seemed to be the thing to do for vacationers.

Getting into Oslo is quite an adventure with all the airports at least half an hour outside of the city. The one we flew into, Rygge, is an hour outside of the city. Yeah it's in the middle of nowhere. But for a 60 dollar roundtrip flight it looked pretty nice.

The first place we went after checking into our hostel was the Mini Bottle Museum. It doesn't sound that cool, but this was one of the coolest museums I've ever been to. Maybe it wasn't as big as the Louvre, but it had just as much character. They had mini bottles from all over the world most of which were pretty cool. A majority of them were airplane shots but this little collection of over 500,000 mini bottles had any object you could ever imagine.

Chandelier.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

These look like cigars, but they're not.

While this is not a bottle, it may be the coolest urinal I've ever seen.

Smoked salmon pizza.

 Opera house

Ice bar. We stayed for about half an hour, not because it was cold but because you can't afford anything here...

This is part of the Norwegian Folk Museum. It is an interactive museum where you can walk through houses and have people explain how life was in Norway in the 1600s - present. Very interesting.

Holmenkollen is the name of the ski jump in Oslo. They hosted the ski jump championships here this weekend where the winning jump was about 300 feet. The idea of going off this is even more ridiculous in person.

Viking ship museum. It was surprisingly small. There are only 3 remaining viking ships that have been found through excavation. They were used as burial ships for important people.

 Holmenkollen from the top of the jump.

This is Obersten, he was in the first group of dogs to reach the south pole. His nickname was "The Colonel" as he was the lead sled dog. This was at the ski museum which featured the evolution of skiing which originated in 600 a.d.

Looks like fun...