Oslo day one

So...on Friday after her work my Aunt and I got packed up and headed to the airport because we were heading up to Norway (Oslo) for a weekend of fun before we head home to California for Christmas.

When we got to Oslo it was already around midnight....so we just got on the express train to the city center, got a cab to our hotel (he did not cheat us and my Aunt behaved very appropriately to him....so I thought the world had returned to normal again).

Saturday morning we got up and got ready to go out and look around Oslo at Christmas time. First though, we headed to breakfast at the hotel...IT IS GOOD. The hotel serves as good a breakfast as a breakfast restaurant would, except it is free and buffet style which made me VERY happy.

After we filled up, we started out into the cold outdoors. We headed down to the docks at the harbor where there is this Christmas "village" thing but we didn't go into it right away, because we were trying to get to the fjords boat trip. We went to talk to the boat tour operators, and learned that the Christmas market that they have at the Norwegian folk museum was going to close on Sunday. My Aunt and I both wanted to go to it so we thought that we should go on Saturday because if we wanted to go back to get something then we could so we changed our plans around a little and went to the market on Saturday instead.

The Christmas market is held at the Norwegian Folk Museum which is an outdoor museum of how Norway was a long long time ago. We first visited it this summer....you can look back to my blog here, where I talk about the museum.

The Christmas market was really cool but also really cold so we kept going inside to get out of the cold. There were a lot of stands where they were selling different gifts for people for Christmas. The restaurants were also open so we could go in and get something to drink when it got too cold. They also had fire pits all around, so we could warm up while we stood around in the mud. At the old Stave church they were holding a church service in Norwegian and my Aunt really wanted to go to that....so we did. It was pretty cool. We did the whole church service in Norwegian (with the help of a handout). And, they had an accordion player who played Christmas carols (apparently in Norway, accordions are very important). My Aunt bought me a candy apple....I had one bite and had to throw it out (it was SOOO sweet it was kind of gross).

Around the end of the time we were there we went to the beer brewery. It was a little weird because they were brewing beer old school style, and the stuff didn't taste very good at ALL. My Aunt was trying to be polite because the people were telling her all about how they brew the beer while she had her sample....you could tell that she hated it. ;-)

After we had our share of the freezing cold experience, we went back into the city and to our hotel and warmed up a bit. We actually took a nap at the hotel, and then went out into the city and looked around for a little while. We went to Pepe's pizza for dinner and I will leave you with this final observation of our first day in Oslo....I got a personal pizza and a 7-up, my Aunt got an appetizer nachos and a 7-up.....and the bill was $74.90!!!!