Weekend in Oslo June 2006

day 2 - sight seeing and gay parade! | 24 Jun 2006

A little note in Norway in the summer the sun doesn't go down it stays like dusk until about 3am when the sun comes up again, so you're likely to be woken up very early in the morning by the sunshine. Having said this I really liked this little fact, it was nice it never being pitch black.

After our breakfast we made out way to the tourist information office by the station to find out some information about Oslo. We decided to take the sight seeing hop on hop off bus around oslo. this cost NK175 (roughly about £18.00) for a 2 day unlimited pass and took you all around Oslo. After passing the numerous buildings in Oslo including the palace, we made our first stop the Olympic ski jump. we had to get the metro for a few stops after we'd gotten off the tour bus, but once again this was pretty cheap by oslo standards. The ski jump is unbelievably high, I know that you expect it to be high, but you never quite imagine how high until you see one. It must be terrifying to go hurtling down one of them and then off the end of it! We had a little wander around here, finding a stone sculpture of some trolls which I was quite fond of. Oslo is full of structures, they are everywhere and are all beautiful and well made. A lot of them are quite random and get you guessing on why they are there!

our next stop was the Vigeland Sculpture Park, which as the name explains is a park full of sculptures! It's really beautiful and well worth a visit even if just to lay on the grass! As you enter through the main entrance you can see the main sculptures straight ahead. There is a like a path/bridge with sculptures on either side of women, men and children some together and some on their own. I think they're supposed to represent relationships. After the bridge there is the very impressive fountain and past that is the monolith which is probably the first thing that you notice on entering the park due to its vast size. Its around 14 -15 m high and is made up of sculptures of people. Around this monolith are further sculptures of people, which i absolutely loved. This further represents the relationships between people. The final main structure is the wheel of life which is executed as a garland of women, children and men holding on to each other. For more information on the park visit: http://www.vigeland.museum.no/

On our way back into the city centre we saw that the gay parade had started so we jumped off the bus to watch it go by. There were numerous floats and different groups of people in the parade. My favourite had to be the bondage float as it was hilarious (see photos!).

That night we walked down towards the water front and along to find a club to go to. We managed to find one and they let us in for free in exhange for hugging the bouncer (our group was 3 girls and my boyfriend....suprisingly enough the bouncer let my boyfriend off without the hug!). The club was really cool, it had a life band playing and a really good atmosphere and in the next room there was a bigger dancefloor with dance music. We even managed to get to a pint for £5 (we were very excited by this low price!). It was an excellent night, and was good walking home when it wasnt pitch black. We felt completely safe the entire time. On our way home we spotted our first prostitutes, but they were inoffensive and quite inconspicuous so its not a problem at all.

Locations Visited: Oslo

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