An Unproductive Day

Today could have been a better day.

Stu's cold has developed into something quite nasty. It kept us both awake for most of the night and needless to say we both felt shattered this morning.

Our original plan was to go to Freikistad on the train, about an hour south of Oslo. However neither us felt up to a full day out (I was also now coming down with the dreaded lurgy) so instead we decided to stay Oslo.

We had one more museum on our 'To Visit' list in Oslo, namely the National Gallery which has Munch's The Scream on display.

After we had finished our breakfast in a nearby cafe we walked over the road to the museum to find it was closed on Mondays! This explained why we hadn't seen anyone even trying to enter whilst we were enjoying our breakfast.

With our back up plan foiled we started wandering through the cobbled streets of Oslo. We went past the City Hall, which had lots of status and engravings surrounding it that were reminiscent of a communist state. Further on we encountered Oslo's cathedral. The ceilings were amazingly painted with just enough to keep them interesting whilst not being overbearing.

Eventually we found our way back to the Opera House. Yesterday we had noticed that Don Giovanni was on this evening so we checked if there were any cheap tickets left for this evening's show.  Neither of us have been to the Opera before and thought we'd give it a go and luckily there were 2 seats available at just £10 each!

Given we were now going to have a late night as the Opera lasts 3h40 we decided to have a siesta.

Unfortunately even after a nap Stu's cold was an extremely nasty one so we decided to just wander down to the harbour front and sit in the sunshine (we didn't even need a coat!) and people-watch.

Whilst there we saw some strange things such as a mini electric car which you could only just about squeeze a single person lying down in and a bloke practicing skiing on wheels.

With the time for the Opera nearing we headed for dinner. Having only had lunch a few hours before we decided to have some delicious pancakes at Crepe di Mari, not the healthiest dinner but they had lots of fruit on them and they were absolutely delicious :-)

The opera, although an interesting experience is not one we are likely to repeat in the near future. Our cheap, restricted view seats meant we couldn't see around a quarter of the stage and Stu was feeling worse for wear so, at the interval (almost 2 hours in), we decided to call it a night.