Sunday in Oslo feels like a lazy day. It takes until 10.30 for me to make it to breakfast, and all I want to do afterwards is go back to bed. By 1pm, I decide I need to get up and walk to shake off the feeling of lethargy. Oslo on a Sunday is pretty quiet – the vast majority of shops are closed, and once you’re off the main street of Karl Johan’s Gate, the streets are pretty clear. I decide to walk to the new Opera House, which was under construction on my last visit in 2004, and was completed in 2008. It is an unusual building – the forecourt runs straight in the water of the harbour, and the roofline of the building is designed to allow people to walk up and down a steep slope to reach the top of the building.
There is a significant amount of (re) development occurring around the Opera House, including a set of new apartment buildings being built on reclaimed land nearby. The locals also appear to be either extending or dismantling a flyover the railway lines, and there is an extensive renovation happening of an old ports building opposite the Opera House. The global companies seem to be clustered in a new development nearby.
Whilst walking on the roof of the Opera House is free, eating out in Oslo is far from it. A takeaway salad roll and a 0.5l bottle of Diet Coke works out to be NOK88, or about $AUD17. This is significantly more expensive than Paris for example, where the price of an unfilled baguette is EUR1.10. Eating out in Oslo is an expensive pastime, but fortunately I have found Deli de Luca, which has a number of outlets around Oslo, and sells everything needed for a picnic dinner. It’s a well stocked store that sells cold drinks, packaged and fresh ice-cream, biscuits, sweets, hot meals (such as noodles with chicken or beef, lasagne etc), sushi and filled rolls. Even so, a picnic dinner still ends up costing $AUD34, but still a vast improvement on the $90 for the steak and small dessert in Aker Brygge that I had on my first evening.
