Oslo
Oslo is built with brick and cobblestone and the buildings are painted bright pastel colors. When construction required stretching a net up the side of the building to catch falling masonry, they use bright transparent green mesh. It was picturesque and the one or two times I didn't have a camera with me, I regretted it.
There is plenty of mass transit available in the city; buses, the underground t-bane, and street trolleys. We did most of our exploration of the city on foot, walking kilometers every day. The city is currently refurbishing their payment system for the t-bane and we would walk around the payment stalls to get on the trains. Ja said they sometimes did sweeps to make sure every rider had paid but we were never challenged.
I walked a lot during my stay in Norway - probably more than ten miles every day of my week long visit and my feet ached when I removed my shoes in the evening. The city is big and we could have taken the train to get around but it was easier (and cheaper) to just walk. Having a bike would have been ideal but ja couldn't ride with his broken foot and they're expensive.
The one time he and Celine went out to buy bikes, they made the mistake of making their final decision a few minutes after 5pm and the shopkeeper refused to take their (substantial amount of) money because the store was closed.
We saw these rent a bike vending machines all over the city.
Most of the buildings were unbranded and generic with only small signs indicating the types of shops within and though the facade was small, the stores were often huge and labyrinthine inside with stairs leading to multiple levels and claustrophobic rooms.
The city is peppered with hundreds of bronze and stone statues. The statues mostly depict naked men and women and were larger than life size. I saw very few abstract art installations of the type you find in every corporate park in the US. The barren aesthetic that values say, a huge metal sculpture of three triangles stacked on one another and painted brick red isn't strong in Norway.
Though I didn't get to bed until 10pm the first night, I woke the next morning at 4am with the bright sun streaming in my face and had to force myself back to sleep. The seasonal change from excessive darkness to excessive light happens quickly in Norway and it confuses the cat. Mephisto often howls for food at 5am because obviously, it is morning and everyone else is just sleeping in.
There isn't much traffic in most places at 5am but even in Monterey I expect to hear some signs of life at dawn. In Norway the city remained eerily silent until very late in the morning. It might be a cultural thing for Norwegians to spend most of their mornings sleeping in, or it could have been ja's neighborhood. Regardless, the problem was compounded by store hours in Oslo.
The work ethic in Norway, like much of Europe, is very lax by American standards. By law, Norwegians enjoy at least a months worth of vacation every year and most shops only open at 10-11 in the morning and close at 15-16. We tried to visit a coffee house (advertised by a big sign on the side of the road) and found the place was only open from 11-14. With three hour workdays, and a mandatory month of vacation time every year, it must be nice to be a shopkeeper in Oslo.
When the sun comes up at 4am and shops not opening until 11am, Norwegians must enjoy the most epic breakfasts of all time.
