Our trip to Oslo, Norway was sort of a strange on in the planning. We went over St. Patrick’s Day when Honeybun was 32 months old and Sugarplum was 7 ½ months old. Hubby had an extended weekend with the holiday and airfare to Oslo was super cheap. However, when we started making our plans we quickly realized 2 things: First, everything in Oslo is crazy expensive from the hotels to the food and second, there wasn’t enough we wanted to do there to fill up our 6 free days so we decided to combine it with a stop in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
We flew into Rygge airport which is about an hour south of Oslo city centre (hence why airfare was so cheap!) From the airport we took a shuttle bus to the train station and then caught the train to Oslo and walked from the main train station to our hotel. We didn’t arrive in Rygge until 8:00 pm and it was snowing. While it was a bit frustrating and overwhelming to manage both the girls and the luggage in the snow, we had luckily brought the double buggy and we made it to our hotel and were ready for bed!
We only spent two days in Oslo and even though it was snowing and cold, we really enjoyed our time there. The first morning we took the bus to the Viking Ship Museum and the Norsk Folkemuseum which is an open-air museum of Norwegian buildings, history and culture. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m fascinated by history and other cultures so I loved these two museums. Even Honeybun really enjoyed them, other than the cold, and Sugarplum (as far as I can remember) slept and rode peacefully through most of it.
That afternoon we visited the Munsch museum which was interesting, though small, and we went through fairly quickly since it was free at the time.
That night we went to a really nice local restaurant that was not very happy to see my children, but they gave us a table and the girls were thankfully very well behaved and we got the opportunity to try some local fare like bear and whale.
The next day we took the streetcar to the Vigeland Sculpture Museum. We found out not all streetcars in Oslo have handicapped access and so we ended up having to carry the double (and extremely heavy) buggy up 3 stairs onto the streetcar. The sculpture park was beautiful, though it was snowing and pushing the buggy through the fresh snow was a challenge so I didn’t get to explore as far as hubby. Honeybun really liked the statues of babies. I love how Oslo cherishes and honors their hometown artists.
That afternoon we went to the Nobel Peace Center which has a beautiful, modern museum which includes interactive activities for the kids which even Honeybun was able to utilize and understand (and we were happy to finally be inside for awhile!)
We flew to Amsterdam from the main Oslo airport and again took the train to the airport which was much easier the 2nd time!
