Travel || Planning a 48 Hour Oslo City Break

Posted on June 18, 2019

After visiting Copenhagen last year and absolutely falling head-over-heels in love with the city, I was extremely excited to visit more Scandinavian cities.

On the top of my list was Oslo: notoriously expensive but worth visiting.

I ended up getting quite lucky: my visit to Oslo corresponded with their Independence Day, so I got to see everyone out on the street in traditional dress plus some exciting parades.

Planning a 48 Hour Oslo City Break

SEE / DO:

Since Oslo was such an expensive city, I focused on a lot of free activities. But there is a plethora of free options in Oslo. I have a whole post planned on what I saw and did.

But a lot of it centred around some amazing green spaces in the city, and art, especially viewing the work of Munch.

STAY:

Accommodation in Oslo proved extremely tricky, only because it was such an expensive city. I wasn’t willing to shell out the hundreds that it cost for a hotel (and it was even over £100 per night for a hostel!) So I turned to a traveler’s best friend, just like I did for Copenhagen: AirBnB.

I lucked out and found Katrina’s lovely home. It is usually booked up, so it was one of those rare finds. For about £80 per night, I had a studio flat entirely to myself, with a kitchen so I saved money on food by doing a fair amount of eating in.

Katrina’s flat was about a 30 minute walk from the centre of Oslo (or a few minute tram ride.) But it was just around the corner from Frogner Park with the Viegland Sculpture Park. So it was the perfect location for me.

Katrina was such a helpful host and I couldn’t recommend her more highly as someone to stay with in Oslo.

TRANSPORT:

So in full disclosure, other than the train that took me to the airport and back, I didn’t ride any public transport in Oslo. But the buses and the trams seemed quite logical.

I found the city extremely walkable and there was nothing that I wanted to visit that I wasn’t able to save some money and just walk to.

That being said, be careful when you are booking your flights. All the RyanAir flights to Oslo fly in to Oslo Torp, with is not actually anywhere near Oslo. It’s about 1.5 hours away on the train, or about 2 hours by bus. The train in to the city cost around £50. My flight was so cheap that that was still more economical than flying with another airline to Oslo’s proper airport (which is only about 10 minutes away from the city), but if you are on a super quick weekend break, you might not want to waste that valuable sight-seeing time going from Oslo Torp to Oslo and back again.

EAT:

As I mentioned before, I was trying to cut down on some of my Oslo costs by cooking and eating in my AirBnB as food in Oslo is notoriously expensive.

Something that I did find slightly odd is that you can buy beer in the grocery store, but if you wanted to buy wine or liquor you had to go to a special government run stores: Vinmonopolets. And pay attention to the hours because there are really strict selling laws in Oslo.

If you’re looking for super tasty and highly varied food in Oslo, I couldn’t recommend the Mathallen, the food market in Grünerløkka, more highly. There were so many stalls that I wanted to eat at, and there just simply wasn’t enough time to try everything!

And last, but certainly not least, the Norwegians are quite famous for their coffee consumption. (They rank just below the Finns in per capita coffee consumption.) One of the best coffee shops in the world is supposed to be in Oslo, so of course I had to visit. Tim Wendelboe has been repeatedly named the top barista in the world multiple times, and he was foremost at the front of Oslo’s coffee scene. His self-named coffee shop in Grünerløkka is a must visit.