Oslo is for hiking and IKEA

We are without internet so all our posts are going up a bit after the time they happened/were written. I can't tell you how much I miss internet. I know, it's a vacation, but you so quickly become accustomed to constant access and all the convenience and entertainment options that brings.

Day 2, oslo

Having seen the city, we were ready to go out into the wild. First, however, breakfast, which meant a short hike over to a shopping center that had a 'discount grocery' store. REMA 1000 feels a bit like an Aldi or Lidl, but at Ritz prices. Actually, I'm sure it's cheaper than a lot of oslo options, but then food is so amazingly expensive here. Apparently yogurt and bread are sold at a discount due to government subsidy, which meant we could buy a large single-serve yogurt for $3. We paid $6 for a rather stale and tame loaf of bread yesterday, and considered but then passed on buying some ice-cream ($9 for a somewhat generous amount for two people). Keep in mind, these are the cheap options at the discount grocery. For additional context, McDollands sells bigmac hamburger for $20, and most restaurant meals we have seen advertised on the street go for $40-60, on the low end. How do people eat here? Anyway, back in REMA 1000 I bought $6 worth of yogurt (one for each of us). At the hotel we mixed into that some musli we had purchased in Germany at Lidl (I'll miss shopping at Lidl, not a lot of selection but really low prices and what they had tended to be good), and had a pretty satisfying breakfast, on the whole (we ate that meal 4 times in Oslo, and it did start to get pretty old by the end though!).

As usual, we hadn't been vey good at getting an early start, so instead of hiking in the middle of the day, we decided to take advantage of the late sunlight, and instead go for another walk around Oslo (as long as you stay on the proper side of the street it's easy to stay out of the sun). Setting out in a direction we had not walked before, we ended up seeing less of note than yesterday, though there was a nice little river walk that we found and meandered along. Then we went back to the hotel and snoozed for a while to let the surprisingly intense sun die down.

Around 3 we embarked on our real adventure. IKEA has two stores in Oslo, and they offer free buses to those IKEAs, running one an hour. Usually a free bus to a single destination wouldn't be that exciting. But IKEA is a big deal, as you will see. Also, public transport to and from IKEA would have cost us about $40 total. We weren't the only people excited to go to IKEA - there was a line of people waiting for the free bus, and we have read that it's often standing room only on the bus, though we were lucky enough to get a seat, pretty easily.

So what's so exciting about IKEA? You probably think you can guess, but you are almost certainly wrong. Aside from the cheap way to get out of downtown Oslo, IKEA also offers really, really cheap hotdogs. We are talking $1/hotdog. And $1.30 for a drink with free refills. $2 soft-serve ice-cream. On our first visit to the IKEA food stand I had two hot dogs, and though I'm sure they were nothing to write home about, (but here I am!) they were soooooo good.  Perhaps it is because they are 100% yogurt free.

For once feeling actually satisfied with the food in our bellies, we set out for a hike. I'm not really sure what kind of hiking options Oslo has, other than they are supposed to be great. We selected this hike because the park was a short distance south of IKEA. The park has many miles of trails - probably 20 or 30. For reference, another park, north of IKEA by 1-2 miles has a least as many miles of trails. In any case, the trail we took (also selected due to the closeness to IKEA (15 minute walk, roughly) was very striking. The forest ground was covered in large patches of moss, there were lots of picturesque boulders and rocks to scramble over, and the trees were tall and provided great shade. After about a kilometer (their units, not mine!) we came to a gorgeous lake, almost crystal clear, with some ducks and people swimming here and there along the shore.

The lake was very nice,  but it was way too early to finish so after a short rest we selected one of the many trails in the area, somewhat at random. The trail was around the lake, which we hoped meant it might be more flat. We were very, very wrong. On the upside, however, about halfway around the lake we came to a sheer rock cliff overlooking the lake, with some amazing views of the area (and, I suspect, IKEA,  if we had been able to recognize it far in the distance).

The scenery was so great I think we would have considered hiking even longer once we finished the lake loop, but our bellies were getting empty, our water bottle was completely empty, and mosquitoes were keeping us from resting for very long. The only thing that did not stop us at all was available light, even though it was 9:30pm when we were done (it looked more like 2pm).  If I ever come back to Oslo, I think it will be to hike, rather than visiting the city. I'll pack LOTS of dried food, I'll camp instead of staying in a budget hotel (which was perfectly nice, except it cost as much as 5 hamburgers), and I'll bring deet.

In case you were wondering, we also had dinner at IKEA that night. two more hot dogs for me, bringing me up to a total of 4 for the day. Jymm tried to have a more balanced meal by having fewer hotdogs and adding a soft-serve ice cream.  We also took a quick trip around the non-food part of IKEA, and found it to be pretty much exactly what we expected from our San Diego visits.