Started off from Stansted Airport London, we slept at the airport since we arrived early here from Manchester. Flew to Oslo Rygge with Ryan Air flight FR1392 which we bought a month before for £39 per person. The flight was at 8.25am, without hiccup. We almost got busted for bringing hiking pole with us on board.
We reached Oslo Rygge at 11.30am local time. The immigration took awhile to go by. We bought ticket to Oslo by Rygge Ekspressen before we came as the price is a bit cheaper than buy from the driver. The cost is NOK170 for each person. It will be cheaper if you buy return ticket to the same airport but since we are going to London from Stavanger, we bought one way.
The bus is comfortable. We reached Oslo an hour later after the bus stop at few stations. We immediately look for toilet. At the bus station you have to pay for the toilet for NOK10. Then we look for luggage locker. Medium sized locker cost about NOK60 for 24 hours. We start to walk around Oslo from there.
The first place we went was Vigelandsparken (The Vigeland Park) by tram. To purchase public transport ticket by Ruter you can buy it from participating outlet like 7 Eleven (Surprisingly there was a lot of 7Es in Oslo), by apps, from its website or just buy it from the driver. But the price is differ between online and offline. Here, its like they encourage you to buy ticket online rather than offline because it is cheaper to buy online or participating outlet or machine. Anyway, for 24 hour ticket it will cost about NOK90 so you can use any bus, tram and even ferry for 24 hours. I really love this kind of ticketing system!
We reached at Vigeland Park after 15 minutes or so using tram 12. We bought a pine of ice cream since the day was too hot. The park is full with naked sculptures. According to postcards and people the most popular sculpture along the bridge is the Angry Boy. Have a look some of the pictures....
There are also some small lakes with ducks and flower garden. But the flowers are seems not in the good shape.
We did a little bit of geocache there as well. There were a few number of free traditional cache and one or two premium caches as well. We left the vicinity after couple of hours for the Oslo Opera House. Along the way to the tram station we also did a little bit of geocache. All these geocaches entries we found can be seen here.
We disembarked at aker brygge where there was a ferry station. Out of curiosity we went to the ferry terminal, looked at the ferry route map and just boarded on the ferry. You just need to tap the ticket to the ticket reader, but I'm not so sure whether to validate again or not, so we just tapped it. The Oslo view from the water was beautiful, with bright sunny day it make day better. Even if you need to pay small amount to get on to the ferry, I recommend you to just do it.
The ferry stopped by nearby small island called Hovedøya. We had not much time to walk around for longer time because the next ferry will come in 30 minutes. We took some photos in the ruins, which was from the war era, I think. We returned to the jetty after half an hour, just on time for the trip to the Oslo mainland.
Back at Oslo city centre, it's time to eat. From my research there are (surprisingly) several halal restaurant in the city. So we went to Lett and Mett restaurant. They have kebabs and burgers, the main halal dishes.
After we had our early dinner, we went to Operahuset or Opera House, just few minutes walk from the central station. You can walk from the ground floor to the roof top and see the view of Oslo and the sun set.
After awhile we went to the train station for our trip to Stavanger. Bought some snacks and water bottle for 8.5 hours long train ride. We bought the ticket one month earlier which costs us NOK249 per person. If you buy it later it will cost more, can get as expensive as NOK500 per person. We bought the ticket online from NSB website. You can choose your seat as well as preference to be with pet coach or family coach. Our train depart from Oslo Sentralstasjon at 10.25pm. On the seat you will see there is new blanket, earplug and sleeping mask which you can take it home! I was so impressed with the service in fact that we paid only for standard seat.
Along the ride you can see beautiful scenery. But it's already at night and we are tired. Lack of sleep since Manchester. So we dozed off. The train will stopped by a few stations along the way though.
...To be continued
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