Since the start of last weekend, I have been lucky to see probably the best weather that Oslo offers for sometime with bright blue skies and not especially cold days. Some of the great things that you have to do if you ever visit Oslo (at least in the summer time) is:

• Take a Fjord cruise around the harbour;
• Visit the Vigeland parks filled with spectacular scenery and some really interesting statues) – home of the famous Angry Boy statue;
• Visit the Cultural Museums to see the evolution of houses and see grass growing on the roof of them
• Walk around the Nobel Peace Centre
• Visit the Giant Ski Jump at Holmenkollen
• Walk around the grounds of Akershus Castle
• Hang out and people watch at Akry Bryge

I think that most people have a very good lifestyle and though things appear costly, the standards of living appear much higher. For example, for the same amount of rent you might pay in London, you may still get something smallish in the centre of Oslo, but it will at least be modern, well designed and, at the very minimum, very well built. Oslo still has its fair share of problems, with many homeless people and less welcoming people surrounding the area just near the central station.

Central Oslo is not very big, most things are well within walking distance, and trams, buses and ferries make getting around to other areas further out extremely easy.

I was fortunate enough to know a few locals from my time at University, and thanks to Kurt, I even was able to attend an extremely rare and popular afternoon tea event with Steven Twining (the tenth generation of the Twining family). Though I think of tea as very English, I was surprised to find out Norwegians are large tea drinkers (after coffee) and were the reason that Twinings created the less malodorous Lady Grey tea. I caught up with a bunch of other people from University, dining at some wonderful restaurants including Plah for dinner followed by Pascal for desserts. They gave me the inside to some great places to hang out but because of the fantastic weather I spent most of my time basking in the sun by the harbour down at Akry Bryges, or on the other side of Akershus Castle looking over the spectacular harbour front.

You can check out more photos from my time in Oslo here.