Olso Afternoon

After a short break to get set up on the WiFi (priorities, y' know) and nom some sandwiches we headed out. Shortly thereafter we passed a military surplus shop with a Welsh flag displayed in its window; I had a feeling I could fit in there.

We stopped off back at the station to collect our tickets for Thursdays rail journey to Bergen, and were pleasantly surprised by how smoothly things went.

We passed many buildings on the way there that we are fairly sure would have been impressive... had they not been covered in scaffolding (the amount of construction work underway in Oslo was quite noticeable).

As we meandered around Oslo (so far not having seen any of the sights we has intended on seeing) we realized that this was hungry work. We wandered the harbor searching for a place to eat, but were dismayed to find American style food dominating the quayside. Having passed McDonalds, TGI Fridays and a plethora of non branded "texas steak-house" type operations, we eventually found a place that seemed like it was serving what sounded a reasonably Nordic Menu; the Cafe Sorgenfri.

The name 'cafe' belied how upscale a venue it appeared to be. The decor was quirky to the extreme, but created a pleasant atmosphere. The food when it came was gorgeous; Chris went for the dish of the day, where as I stuck with fish (it is Norway after all). (later we consulted our lonely planet and found that it goes unmentioned, but we think we may have stumbled onto a gem). During the meal we attempted to enlighten our selves regarding proper pronunciation of norsk; as the phonetic approximations in the phrase book were frequently erroneous. We also hit our first cross cultural misunderstanding over the use of the term "white tea", which the waitress took to mean the type of tea (as opposed to its more frequent usage in Britain to mean "black tea, with milk").

As we inspected the various restaurants and cafes we had been wincing at the prices, which seemed to fulfill the forecast of between two and four times as expensive as at home. After the meal though, I didn't feel like I had paid over the odds for what we had. I would suggest that prices aren't currently higher as such, but there seemed to be a notable absence of anything but high-end dishes. Given that this country has the largest GDP per capita in the world though, that seems logical (if worrying for us).

It was about this point that the oddity of having risen in London and dined in Oslo (having strolled lazily about most of the day) struck us. It seems it really is a small world.Baca selengkapnya