Monday 25 August 2025 – Rather than just bounce in and out of Oslo for the final phase of this trip, we had decided to spend a little time to absorb something of Norway’s capital city, making it Phase II of this trip.  All we had to do was to get there, preferably by 2pm, which was when our Dutch friend Hertz van Rental was expecting us to return his car. After a prompt breakfast, we were on the road before 9am.  We discovered, on checkout, why the hotel was happy for us to pillage the breakfast bar for our packed lunch – they charged us for it! They hadn’t made it clear that this was going to be the case, and it was actually a very modest charge, at least by Norway’s exorbitant standards. So we coughed up and only felt a faint twinge of guilt that we didn’t tell them about the second packed lunch we stole….

The journey down was pretty much the reverse of the one up, minus the rain showers – we drove all the way in bright sunshine.  Jane did manage to get a picture of something we missed on the way up – something atop a distant hill.

We’re not sure what it is, but it was nice to complete the set, as it were.

The milling devotees of these pages will know that Jane and I are fans of Interesting Churches; Iceland was a very fertile hunting ground for these, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. We had passed many churches as we drove around, and Jane had commented that they all seemed to be in the shape of a cross, but with equal spokes, as opposed to the norm in the UK and other parts of a longer nave and shorter cross arm.  Jane whistled up ChatGPT to research the subject and found that the Norwegian churches we saw were higher-capacity replacements for original stave churches, which were deemed to be too small for the congregations. This set us off on a delightful diversion, because neither of us knew what a stave church is.

We learned that a stave church is a medieval wooden Christian church building once common in north-western Europe. The name derives from the building’s structure of post and lintel construction, a type of timber framing where the load-bearing pine posts are called stafr in Old Norse (stav in modern Norwegian). They often contained very intricate and detailed carvings. The replacement of stave churches by more modern ones has meant that there are only some 28 of them left in Norway, mainly built between 1150 and 1350, and that is only because in 2001, the National Heritage Board determined that they should be preserved for posterity.  Delightfully, one of these was just off our route, at Ringebu, so we diverted to take a look. And what a pleasure that was – it’s a delightful building. There were coaches in the car park and quite a few people there, so it’s clearly a popular site.

Jane had read en route that this church was only open during the summer, and we had missed that window by just a few days, so we resigned ourselves to just examining the outside, since this had joined the series of churches we’d visited that were closed.

The timber is preserved with tar, and it is educational to look at the shady side of the building,

where the tar has not been weathered so much by the sun. Like the Lesja church, this one had a side exhibit of old gravestones, crosses and other fragments.

However, on getting three-quarters of the way round, we found, to our delight, that the church was open!  The chap on the door explained that this was because there were several groups visiting (hence the coaches), and so we were very lucky to be able to piggyback on this to get a look inside.

It’s as striking inside as out.

Many parts of it go back to its origin, in the year 1120, such as the carvings around the door.

The inside is delightful.

There are, as expected, some very detailed and intricate carvings inside.

Altogether, it was a delightful diversion, made all the more so by the unexpected pleasure of being able to see the inside.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, and we handed back the rental car and found our way to the train station in the airport to head into Oslo.  The airport is a long way outside the centre – 50km – so train or bus are the only sensible options to get from one to the other. The bus journey takes an hour, so we decided to take the train. There’s a specialist train, the Flytog, but that’s twice the price of a standard train and no quicker, and we just managed to bundle ourselves into a VY train bound for Oslo as the doors slammed behind us. We were so rushed that we panicked a bit that we’d leapt on board the wrong train, but a nice elderly gentleman reassured us and engaged us in pleasant conversation until the guard came and told us to shut up because we were in a Quiet Zone.

We’re staying at the Hotel Bristol, which is something of an old-school hotel, occupying a large building, which makes the walk from the lift to your room something of a voyage of discovery. But it’s comfortable enough and furnished us with a nice lunch in elegant surroundings

(Jane had her favourite Toast Skagen) and an insight into Norwegian angst about alcohol.  At Trolltun, we’d tried and largely failed to get double-measure gin and tonics, as the staff there said they didn’t offer doubles. We tried again in the lounge here, and the nice lady who was serving us told us that it was actually against the law to serve double measures! Not only that but it was also against the law to try to game the system by ordering a G&T with an accompanying gin. You were allowed the one drink and could have another once you’d finished that.

This is very much in line with the general Scandinavian attitude to alcohol, which I think has its roots in Lutheran disapproval of anything that is actually enjoyable. I first came across it when I lived in Sweden, 40 years ago.  You could only get alcohol stronger than 2.5% by going to government-run off-licences, called System Bolaget, which was the only company I ever came across which ran adverts intended to dissuade you from buying their products. Things are a bit more relaxed now, but you can still only get spirits from System Bolaget to this day. On my first visit to Oslo – a business trip of just a couple of days – I inadvertently tried to order a post-prandial snifter of brandy, only to be told that they couldn’t sell me spirits because it was a Sunday, and I had to make do with port.

Anyhoo….having enjoyed our late lunch, we thought we’d go for a walk. Obviously.  So we pottered around trying to get a feel for the place.  I have to say that it didn’t call out to us. Perhaps we’ve been off the beaten track too much, but the noise and the crowds and the e-scooters all seemed a bit oppressive, somehow.  Still, we saw a few of the sights: there are some handsome old buildings among the modern stuff;

a striking cathedral with a lovely semi-circular cloister area behind it;

lots of modern stuff;

an Opera House which  is very proud of the fact that you can walk on its sloping roof;

plenty of museums, again well loaded with Architecture;

public saunas;

bits of sculpture in odd places;

a remarkable town hall building;

and a sodding great fortress, which contains all sorts of buildings within its walls.

We have a full day here tomorrow, and the weather forecast is as sunny as today was, so maybe we’ll get a chance to get better under the skin of the place. Part of the day will be spent having a Nice Lunch with an old a long-standing friend but there are still some things we would like to see. So we are looking forward to an active day’s touristing, and you will be able to read all about it in these pages if you come back soon.