No way!

The first stop in Norway was the capital, Oslo. With a population of only 600,000 this tiny little city has more to offer in the way of cafes, bars and restaurants than one would think! 

Do yourself a favour and grab The Oslo Guide, an independent tourist guide aimed at the younger kind of traveller. I felt like I could spend a week here just exploring the places featured in the guide!  But alas, one would need to save for a lifetime to make it feasible. Actually that's a lie, Oslo is pretty expensive but I've also lived in Perth which is equally ridiculously overpriced. Mai and I had to try one of the featured cafes called the Fiskerget, basically a fancy fish and chip place. We had the Bacalao and the Skaldyrsgryte, two hearty seafood dishes, which cost us about $35, ouch! We ate mostly supermarket food after this. 
                       

Oslo is a very neat little city. A novelty was the fact that you could catch a 20min metro to the ski slopes. A little expensive for us though as we would have needed to hire the gear, a day could easily cost  us $120aud. We managed to entertain ourselves by wandering around town in the snow, taking photos and visiting the kings garden and the opera house (has nothing on Sydney but still nice).  

To make our stay in Oslo possible without spending a small fortune, we couch surfed  with a lovely Sri Lankan guy for two nights. We also stayed at a hostel one night, which was surprisingly below average (especially for $40aud!). You’d think such a trendy city would have more choice in the way of youth hostels.

That night we decided to explore some of bars around the area. We went to the microbrewery which made a fantastic roast espresso stout (cost me about $11.50). It was in this old basement style building so it had the potential for atmosphere, but it resembled a uni hall with a lot of booths, all you could hear was loud meaningless conversation and worst of all, they had no music (an outright crime). 

We then went on to explore Youngstorget, a little closer to town. We went into a fancy bar where we felt out of place in uggies alongside all the after work drinkers and then settled at a cosy café/bar, where the DJ was mixing some epic tunes. We quite happily sat and drank our one drink allowance for the night. Mai paid $18AUD for a Midori and lemonade (I don’t think you’d ever pay that in Perth!)  Since it was so expensive it was hard to get into the mood to party, but there were heaps more places to explore. Maybe next time. Oslo would be a fantastic place to live if you were earning Norwegian Krone!