First Steps in Oslo
My first day in Oslo began at an hour that shouldn’t really exist. I was trying to get to Heathrow for a 7:50 flight. I picked that time because I wanted to make Friday a “proper” day of holiday rather than a “fly and snooze” day. The downside is clearly the early start. I was on the road at 3am to ensure I made it into the parking between 5 and 5:30. All went well and funnily enough there wasn’t much traffic around.
I was booked with BA, and hence was continuing my acquaintance, having previously used them this year for both Gibraltar and Krakow. That meant another trip to Terminal 3. After what we’ll generously call a “luggage failure” in Krakow I was armed with a new suitcase. The failure was that the zipper holding in the expansion part broke off, meaning that the case is permanently expanded now. So a new one was acquired – back to my preferred brand and a non-expanding hard shell.
Shiny Metal Tube
The flight itself was good, which I mention mainly because it means I’ve got nothing to complain about yet. Give it time. We took off more or less on time and landed slightly ahead of time. Oh, I forgot about the thing to complain about though. In the middle of the flight I was quite glad that I was strapped in and didn’t have a boiling hot coffee in my hand. Why? We found some turbulence. And by “turbulence” I mean a sort of vertical drop followed by a couple of sideways bounces. And then some more.
The pilot got the plane more or less back in order ans then came on the tannot to tell us they’d dropped a couple of thousand feet to get “below” the problem area. It wasn’t too bad after that. And there, I’ve found something to moan about in the second section. Normal service is resumed.
Oslo airport was kind of easy, and the immigration system actually worked. The immigration officer even commented on it. The new EU system seems to have been implemented in a patchy way across the Schengen Area. I’d previously exited into Spain while I was in Gibraltar (back when that was still needed. Then I went to Krakow and was told that the Spanish system hadn’t worked and they needed more photos and fingerprints. Clearly it had been well implemented in Poland, because over here in Norway was the first time I didn’t have to do a new photo. This was genuinely a highlight, which tells you something about my level of expectation about the new system.
What’s Going on?
The only mystery was the advertising boards in the baggage hall. Every single one of them featured a picture of the Norwegian King. Nobody had briefed me on this. I spent the walk to the train convinced I was missing something, because I was fairly convinced that Norway isn’t the sort of place that enforces mandatory admiration of its monarch.
So I wandered into the outer part of the airport and tried to figure out what to do. While I was there, I clearly completed the set of adventure labs that are set up to be done in the baggage hall.
Oslo Airport looks like it’s miles from the middle of the town, but there’s a cunning rail service with Flytoget which takes you to the Central Station in about 20 minutes. I spent that 20 minutes watching the news reel, which confirmed that overnight Norway’s King Harald V had passed away overnight following a 10 day period in hospital. All was now clear.
Read the Manual
I hadn’t done my homework on the last leg to the hotel. To be honest I bought a Pocket Rough Guide to Oslo and never read it. I was too tired on the flight over and had been too busy in the run up. So I negotiated the very large and busy shopping mall at Oslo Central Station down to the taxi rank. The taxi was a Tesla, and I had a good chat with the driver about the King’s passing and also about the taxis and general transportation systems in Oslo. You apparently can’t buy an internal combustion engine new in Oslo now – everyone has to have a full electric. To their credit, there are charging stations everywhere.
It wasn’t until I got to the hotel that I realised I’d paid enough to buy myself a decent Premier League footballer for a week. Hmm! I could have continued 2 more stops on the Flytoget and then walked 400m. Never mind. And never again. Confident and incorrect tourist mode installed. Call it an Oslo Arrival Tax.
On to the Main Business
Small mercies: the hotel had my room ready when I turned up at midday. Genuinely ideal, and just about enough to talk myself out of dwelling on the taxi. I was staying at the Scandic St Olavs Plass, which is, unsurprisingly, at St Olavs Plass. For the avoidance of further discussion, I’m going to describe my hotel room as compact. I wasn’t too bothered, to be honest, because I wasn’t planning to do anything there other than sleep and shower.
So anyway, I checked in, dumped the bag, and set off for a walk before I could talk myself into a nap instead. The walking plan wasn’t really much of a plan. I thought I’d walk up the north side of the Royal Palace grounds and then maybe along the gardens between the Palace and the Stortinget building.
Think Again
When I got up to the Royal Palace though, I changed tack. The Royal Palace grounds were busy, unsurprisingly. I clearly wasn’t going to get much caching done in that area without looking suspicious, so I refocused on getting as many different cache types as possible by heading out to the west. In fact, I was trying to get the info for a multi-cache up there when I was directed in a fairly stiff tone (by a soldier) that no, I was not walking up that bit of path today.
So I exited by walking across the front of the Palace to the south side, and then turning west. There was a whole bunch of reasonable looking caching opportunities. I also managed to gather (or guess) enough of another multi-cache to pin that down to a location west of the palace. Cool. That’ll do me then.
I decided I was ready for some lunch, so I slummed it at a nearby fast food location while I sat and contemplated my lot. All-in-all, it’s not too bad a lot.
Where do we go from here?
I did not, in fact, go down to the lake I fear. I’m not particularly scared of inland bodies of water, and anyway, there’s none of those in Central Oslo. So I continued west to the Norad building and then north to Riddervolds Plass, which was home to that multi-cache I’d worked on.
I’d guessed one of the answers, and I’d guessed wrongly. Thankfully though, the answer only affected the very minor digits of the coordinates. In fact, the difference between one end and the other of all possible results was only 20 metres. Just as well, because I’d picked one end and the actual answer was the other. Anyway, 20 metres further up the hill was my first multi-cache to add to the existing list of virtual, mystery, traditional and lab that I’d managed to this point. We’re doing well.
Round and Round
Oslo’s Bislett Stadium is a place which you will undoubtedly have heard of if you’ve ever watched any championship athletics. It’s a regular host to championships and an annual Diamond League athletics event, where it’s famous particularly for middle-distance running records. It’s on a peculiar triangular-shaped site, which means low seating at one end and high at the other, with the side stands flared at the top end. Anyway, you can see through the gates right into the stadium. There was a tournament on, but not a big enough one for the crowd to be big.
After doing a couple of labs here I decided it was well past time for another break. So after walking up and around Fagerborg Kirke I installed myself in a bar and ordered a beer. “How much?” was my initial thought until I realised I’d paid that much in bars in London too. So expensive, but maybe not as bad as I’d expected.
Back at Bislett Stadium, there was a magnetic cache attached to a metal frame outside the stadium, but it was about 4m up and I didn’t have any way of getting to it. I did think about asking someone if I could borrow their umbrella, especially as we were in the day’s rainstorm, but ultimately I left it and moved on.
That’ll Do
It was getting quite late and the rain was getting worse, so where I moved on to was basically back to the hotel. I was done anyway. I’d been up for 18 hours, so I was tired as well as wet. I’d found 59 caches (including labs), so I decided that was enough for a first day.
Back at the hotel I had a shower and put some dry clothes on. After that I retired to the hotel bar with my laptop, where I had a couple more beers and some snacks. I didn’t really need a “proper” meal, so I didn’t bother.
