I have always held an intrigue for Oslo since I first started going on European city breaks in the days of student loans and part-time work that I’d cobble together for a couple trips a year. Over the years, trips took me to other places but Oslo always sat there quietly on my wish list, waiting for a rainy (or snowy) day.

My mum had sent me some money for Christmas and birthday and I had a browse online which lead me to doing a ‘Ryanair Roulette’ (not quite a roulette but going with an open mind and seeing what locations are presented through your chosen dates and prices). I didn’t want a flight that was over two hours as it was only going to be a 2-night trip. Everything fell into line and there was my Christmas/birthday trip: Oslo; a mere 1 hour 50 minutes away from Manchester.

Typical of Ryanair, the airport they list as Oslo is actually in a small Norwegian town called Torp, some 75 miles away. Although this took some careful planning around my flight times concerning trains and hotels, it actually became a part of the adventure so I was glad of it.

One of my favourite feelings after booking a flight and seeing that confirmation page is the buzz of knowing you can now rush off into the internet and research this new wonderland and put a plan together filled with art, scenery and food. My travel dates were 2nd-4th January so a lot of places I looked up online would be closed until the whole city returned from their Christmas break on the 6th but this was fine, I guess the cheaper hotel costs for those dates offset this. When twists and turns throw spanners into the works of a plan, I embrace it!

DAY ONE

My flight from Manchester was at 5:45 on a particularly freezing January morning. It was -2 celsius as we all shivered along the wet runway with our hoods up to board the plane. I’m not often able to sleep on a plane so I was delighted to wake up 20 minutes before landing from what was already a short flight.

Around 8:35 (Norway’s time is one hour ahead of the UK), the cabin crew flung open the door and a dazzling white light and frosty air suddenly whirled into the aircraft.

I was excited, I love things like this, the experience of being in much colder or hotter temperatures than what you’re used to, seeing a different light and colour palette in the landscape to back home. I pulled my thermal gloves and hat on and shuffled up towards the door and felt giddy as the icy blast of -7 landed on my cheeks while the bright morning sun reflected from the snowy runway.

Torp is a tiny airport so it was straight through border control then outdoors to wait for a bus to Torp’s train station. The bus didn’t arrive at the stated time and signage didn’t indicate much so it was a case of standing in -8 for around an hour until one hopefully came along. To be fair, you could wait indoors but there was no way of knowing when the bus would arrive.

Finally, one came and loads of us squashed on which was uncomfortable but only for five minutes. As the bus drove through some snowy woods, a blinding sunlight shone into the bus but the driver seemed used to it. We then disembarked at Torp train station and admired the thick, unspoiled blanket of snow and cute Norwegian houses like something straight from a Christmas card.

The cold indeed felt a novelty but it also felt its full -12 degrees here, waiting 40 minutes for the train. I had to pace up and down the platform to get blood circulating round numb fingers and toes. It was so cold you felt like laughing but an interesting experience and part of why I chose to come to Norway in winter anyway. I used to live in the hottest city in Europe (Córdoba, Andalusia) where summer temperatures could hit 45 celsius and it sometimes so absurdly hot, it had the same effect where you wanted to laugh.

I bought my train ticket from Torp to Oslo online on Vy, Norway’s national train operator, which cost 369 NOK (around £26 one-way). The Norwegian currency is the krone, with £1 converting to around 14 NOK as of today, 26th January 2025.

The journey took around 1 hour 30 and was really pleasant with postcard-perfect snowy views from the window the whole way but I also allowed myself another nap to get as much energy as possible from the day ahead after the very early flight (I’d stayed in a Manchester airport hotel the night before the 5:45 flight but still had to wake up at 3:30).

The train pulled into Oslo Sentralstasjon in the area of the city called Sentrum. Some capital city’s train stations are a bit out of the way (such as in Vienna, my first solo trip abroad other than when living in Spain, and I felt a bit unnerved by its sketchy location) but this station is in the perfect place. Cross one main road and you are at the most beautiful part of the city- its harbour, Oslo Havn.

Oslo is famed for being an expensive city but with this in front of you, you could visit here and spend next to nothing just walking around and taking in the sights.

I walked up to the top of the promenade to an amazing place called SALT. A lot of places in Oslo were still closed for Christmas but I am very glad this was open on the 2nd January. SALT is a really cool food, arts and music venue with saunas and campfires for roasting your own food. I popped in for an espresso which was one of the best I’ve ever had (and I’ve been to numerous places in Italy, including Turin, home of Lavazza, where I had my other best espresso).

Maybe it was the quick shot of heat whilst stood out in snow and ice overlooking the partially frozen Oslofjord, but it was one of those gorgeous sensory experiences you get when travelling. I mean, what a view:

This area of the city is called Bjørvika, a trendy and modern neighbourhood that comprises of the MUNCH Museum , Oslo Opera House and the Deichmann Library, along with restaurants and a great wine bar called VIN Bjørvika (more on some of those places later). Brave people jump off the promenade in swimming costumes or shorts into the unimaginably cold water then climb up the ladder into the saunas. I admired them; I didn’t go in as I didn’t pack a swimsuit and I didn’t fancy doing this alone as it’s more of a fun thing to do with someone else.

After this, it was time to find something to eat. Again, this was a bit of a challenge due to most places being closed until the 6th January (including most at SALT).

Fortunately, Oslo Street Food was open with its various stalls serving world food from Korean to Spanish tapas. It also felt like a relaxed enough place to sit and eat alone without feeling odd glances in a fine dining restaurant. I ventured in and felt glad to put my bag down for a bit which was packed to the seams!

Being from Liverpool, where we are known as ‘scousers’ (I’ve always felt a bit strange about this label for myself as I don’t have the strongest of ‘scouse’ accents within Liverpool, yet as soon as I cross over into neighbouring Chester, I can be deemed as scouse as anything!).

This unofficial demonym, of course, comes from Norway! In the 18th and 19th centuries, Norwegian sailors docking in Liverpool brought their dish of meat and vegetable stew to our shores where it was adopted as our own with the abbreviated name ‘scouse’ (nearly all words become abbreviated in Liverpool!). I make my own version at home during the winter but mine might be considered unorthodox and ‘bougie’ as I add bay leaves, thyme and dark ale. Red pickled cabbage on the side and warm, buttered crusty bread on the side makes for the ultimate comfort dish on a Sunday.

I have to say, I didn’t enjoy the lapskaus I tried in Oslo. Perhaps if I’d gone to a homely, traditional tavern to try it there, it might have been heartier and richer, but this one served in a bread bowl was just a bit bland. I quite enjoyed a Norwegian non-alcoholic beer called ‘Aass’ which was a bit on the sweet side but I wanted to keep a clear head for the day.

Afterwards, I walked back down towards the harbour but the other side which is Radhůsplassen (City Hall Square) for the Nobel Peace Center. The streets shimmered at an early ‘golden hour’ of 14:30 and I couldn’t help but observe how peaceful Oslo is for a capital city; I have experienced this in other Scandinavian cities such as Stockholm and Helsinki.

The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded at Oslo City Hall but the Peace Center is a museum you can visit for around £12 to learn about the prize’s founder, Alfred Nobel, and the history of its winners. The museum is located in a former train station, quite a striking building.

Alfred Nobel was Swedish and lead a life that was full of business accomplishments but he still felt he had never achieved anything of note. He left a sizeable will behind to the government with instructions to create a prize celebrating and encouraging world peace.

Sweden and Norway did not have a great political relationship at this time so he mandated that the award ceremony would be held in Oslo to try to build a bridge between the two conflicting nations.

The exhibitions inside are modern and interactive, where you can access a timeline of winners and learn more about their contributions towards fostering peace in the world.

There were some really interesting contemporary exhibitions at the museum in January, including the ‘Forget-Me-Not’ installation above the staircase by Kosovar and Spanish artists Petrit Hallilaj and Álvaro Urbano which beautifully represents queer love and reclaiming its space.

Downstairs, there was an exhibition called ‘Echo Chamber’ which explained how we can all fall into pockets of online opinion, often without even realising, such is the nature of echo chambers. Interactive quizzes assess how much you may be in an echo chamber and it invites you to step out of it and try seeing things through other perspectives.

After an hour spent at the Nobel Peace Center, I stepped back outside in time for a magnificent Nordic sunset.

The sound of the sea gently lapping the shores as a mellow backing track to the sun melting into pink and orange was so calming and peaceful. There weren’t loads of people about, just maybe the odd couple or solo passer-by who all stopped to take in the vision before us.

Once the sun had completely set, the air quickly grew a lot colder. Time to head to my hotel to check-in, get a hot shower and change into warmer clothes. If you’re wondering what type of clothes to wear in Oslo in the winter, I suggest thermal base layers, thermal socks, thermal gloves and a thermal hat! Over the base layers (which I had from a skiing trip in Austria, bought cheaply from Decathlon), a warm jumper/ jumper dress with thermal tights will do or jumper or hoodie and jeans/ tracksuit bottoms.

I went for an evening wander hoping to find somewhere interesting to eat but I ended up back in Oslo Street Food but this time for a Thai curry. I suppose that the lack of options in the new year were offset by cheaper flights and hotels!

I have never felt safer anywhere in my life! Obviously, I kept my wits about me whilst walking around in the dark and I wouldn’t become complacent just because somewhere seems safe, but I didn’t once feel intimidated to face any creepy characters whilst out on a walk. Norwegian people (at least the ones I met and interacted with) seemed very friendly and chilled.

DAY TWO

I had booked on to a cruise of the Oslofjord at 10am to start the day off in a refreshing way. It cost around £31 from Get Your Guide for 1.5 hours with downloadable audio tour and was probably the best thing I did on this trip!

You board the boat at Langkaia and can take a seat on the bottom deck or top deck or go up on top of the boat into the crisp open air. I stayed up there until my hands went numb even in my thermal gloves but got some great photos of the breathtaking views. You know when you look at a view and can’t believe how beautiful it is? That’s the only downside to a solo trip for me, because you want to experience it with someone else, but at least we have cameras.

Blue is my favourite colour, and it was such a treat for the eyes to take in so much blue sea and sky. The air is so cold it actually feels refreshing on the eyes and to breathe into the lungs.

Coffee was served on board so I went back down to the bottom deck for one to warm up along with a Norwegian sweet treat called a svele, a sort of scotch pancake with another Norwegian delicacy, brunost (brown cheese). I am an absolute cheese lover, it would be on my hypothetical death row dinner, but brown cheese did not exactly sound appealing. In fact, it gets its name from the caramelisation process it goes through to produce a lovely sweet, nutty cheese which can also be served on desserts such as the svele and waffles.

Towards the end of the cruise, I did treat myself to a glass of crémant as it felt like a nice thing to do when on board a boat.

Once back on firm ground, I walked over to the other side of the harbour, to the MUNCH Museum which celebrates the life and work of Oslo artist Edvard Munch.

The ticket was around £12/13. Please note that Munch’s most famous painting, Skrik (‘Scream’) is not currently housed at the Munch Museum; you can find it in the National Museum.

In the museum, you follow up escalators or take the lift to each exhibition on each floor. I particularly enjoyed the printmaking table where you place paper on to a carved wooden surface and use a waxy paint block a bit like crayon to draw over to reveal a design.

The highlight of the building was the view over Oslo from the top:

I had booked on to a torchlit forest walk which sounded amazing but unfortunately, it was cancelled at last-minute due to strong woods which meant the torches and campfire wouldn’t have lit.

Instead, I stopped off quickly for sushi then walked on to the National Museum to see The Scream. Again, I think entry was around £13. It was a pleasant 20 minute walk where I got to see more of Oslo’s streets and the few cafés/restaurants that were open.

The National Museum showcased paintings by Norwegian and wider Scandinavian artists and I noticed that so many of them painted light beautifully, obviously inspired by the power of light in Norway, a country that has such natural phenomena as the ‘midnight sun’ around the summer solstice and occasional sightings of the Aurora Borealis.

Of course, the real reason I was here was to see The Scream. I’ve been intrigued by that painting since I was 11-years-old when a print of it was hung on a main corridor at my high school. It was arresting every time I passed it for those five years, always capturing my imagination and making me wonder.

It is world famous because its strangeness and depicted sense of alienation resonates with people from all walks of life so to see it in person was fascinating!

Upon leaving the museum, the sun had gone down and the purple night was back. It was hypnotic, the gold of the illuminated boats against an indigo sky was just stunning and I couldn’t stop looking. The crescent moon hung heavily as if from the illustrations of a nursery rhyme, with Venus positioned clearly just above. There are no filters or editing whatsoever on these pictures:

I walked back over to Bjørvika and found an inviting looking wine bar called VIN Bjørvika. I wasn’t hungry so reckoned a mini cheese board and two glasses of red wine would make for a sufficient early dinner.

I often like to read books set in my holiday destination so I brought the pictured book with me on this trip to Oslo. It’s called A Woman in the Polar Night and is a stunning memoir written in the 1930s by an Austrian woman named Christiane Ritter, who went to live in Svalbard in the Arctic Circle in northern Norway with her hunter husband for a whole year, braving the most brutal winter you could possibly imagine with zero daylight for a portion of the year, and how she lived in solitude and with meagre resources while her husband was off on his hunting trips.

Living like this sounds like it becomes a transcendental experience where she regularly writes of such peace and inner bliss that actually made it really hard to leave. I highly recommend the book, I was captivated by it and it made for the perfect read whilst in Norway, albeit in a cosmopolitan and much less cold area of the country!

I would LOVE to go to Trømso which is just inside the Arctic Circle and you can fly there from Manchester so I will go at some point in my life. You can go even further north and fly another 1 hour 45 minutes from Trømso to Svalbard, which is the northernmost inhabited place on earth. I do behold an intrigue for that but I would need to go with somebody else or in a group and following plenty of research. Trømso would be a slightly easier trip, still with the necessity for plenty of thermal clothes and knowledge on how to make the most of it.

Anyway, I had just over an hour until my train to Sandefjord as I would be staying in a hotel there to be closer to the airport for my 9am flight home. Time for one last walk around the harbour to see it lit up in the dark. SALT again delivered with this:

The air smelt sweet and smokey from the saunas as soft music drifted over the freezing still night air. The winds had calmed down and left just the chilled atmosphere of Norway’s ultra cool capital. I felt sad to be leaving!

I eventually gave in to time and wandered back down to the train station and jumped on for the hour and a half to finish reading my book and get to my hotel in Sandefjord to get my head down for the night. It felt much colder there yet my hotel room felt really cosy with the radiators on strong and a view of snow all along the motorway.

The next morning as I waited for my taxi, a friendly Norwegian couple perhaps in their 50s or 60s approached me and explained that they had been told the next taxi to the airport at that time (7:30am) wouldn’t be for a while and they were worried about missing their flight to Trondheim, so asked if they could get in my taxi and they insisted on paying for it. I had no cash on me to offer and they wouldn’t let me split the bill on my card.

Again, you have to have your wits about you when abroad, especially sharing a car/taxi with a stranger, but in these obvious circumstances with their suitcases and slightly worried expressions and the hotel manager telling the taxi driver in clear English where we were going, it felt safe. It was only a 5-10 minute drive and I felt it was an example of the kindness of strangers and those fleeting yet lovely encounters you can have with people on your travels.

Torp airport was a breeze to pass through and the flight home was short and smooth, landing into a drizzly Manchester where I caught a train home, already wondering where might be next! I will return to Oslo one day but I say that for everywhere I go which is surely a good sign!

What other cities would you recommend visiting in Norway?

Leave your suggestions in the comments box below!

Laura