Halden - Oslo

The morning was dreary after it had rained heavily all night, but by breakfast, we could see that it was starting to clear up. From Halden, we had to drive for an hour and a half to Oslo, and we wanted to arrive around noon so that we could see some of Oslo today. We stopped for half an hour in between to charge the car and arrived at our hotel on time, which is about 15 km from the city center. 

We decided to park the car at the hotel and immediately take the bus to the city center to buy our Oslo passes. We bought the 48-hour passes because we'll be here for part of the day tomorrow and the day after. With these passes, you can use public transport as much as you want, and many attractions and museums are included in the price. We paid around €170 for both of us, which is quite reasonable if you plan to do a number of activities and especially if you need to cover a lot of distances by public transport. 

From the city center, we took the stairs towards the royal palace where Anne wanted to see the changing of the guards. There isn’t much to it, but it's always nice to have seen it once. Traditions must be upheld here. We then walked to the opera house, where you can walk on the roof and have beautiful views of the harbor and the city center. It’s an enormous building where thousands of tourists walk every day to take the necessary photos. From the roof, we saw that the Munch museum was right next door, so we decided to pop in and take a look at his most famous work, 'The Scream'. What we thought would be a quick visit turned into almost an hour. Interestingly, the painting exists in three versions, all of which are displayed here, just not all at the same time, as that could be problematic if someone were to want to damage them. They are displayed alternately for 30 minutes each. 

Lastly, we visited the Vigeland Sculpture Park. The sculpture park is the life’s work of Gustav Vigeland and consists of more than 200 sculptures in granite, bronze, and wrought iron. Definitely worth a visit to appreciate what this artist created throughout his life. 

By now, our outing had stretched to 8:30 PM, and with a solid 26,000 steps on the odometer, we drove back to our hotel to check in on time. More Oslo tomorrow ...