Once again we have one day to visit a new city - Oslo this time. Our accommodation is about 5km out of the city and the bike is tucked away in a garage under the hostel. We like to try out public transport in large cities for several reasons - its always interesting, reasonably priced, and it gives us a relaxing day off the bike. Today we walked 15 minutes to the nearest tram stop and caught the tram in to town, only a 20 minute ride. We checked out the Tourist Information Office and found out that we could get a Hop-On-Hop-Off bus tour just across the road, so off we went.

The bus today was the most expensive one we have had so far, 350 Norwegian Kroner (NOK) which is about $55, but then everything is more expensive in Norway as we have discovered. A full trip around the circuit would take about 90 minutes. We had been thinking that we didn't know much about Oslo but after a few stops on the bus we realised that we knew more than we had remembered. The first museum we drove passed was the Munch Museum where most of the art of Edvard Munch is housed - one of his most famous pieces being "Scream".

Next was Oslo University where 5 Nobel Prize winners have been educated. We passed the Norwegian Parliament building and Historical Museum, both huge elegant buildings. We continued along the route until we came to The Viking Ship Museum where we checked out 2 huge Viking ships and the remains of other artifacts found in the fjords. We continued on down the road to the Kon-Tiki Museum. Thor Heyerdahl rose to fame when he sailed the Pacific Ocean from Bolivia in South America to Tahiti in the Kon-Tiki balsa wood raft in 1947. The Kon-Tiki and Ra 2 reed boat were on display along with artifacts from Easter Island. This Museum was right next to The Fram Museum dedicated to the explorations of Roald Amundsen.

We returned to the beginning of the route and decided to walk back to see a few sights up close. While walking to the Royal Palace the traffic was stopped by the Police who were escorting a VIP - no idea who, but we stopped to watch anyway! We strolled back towards the Parliament building before heading to the Opera House for a better look, this futuristic building contains 3 concert halls.

Some useful bits of information for your next Trivia night:

• Norwegians drink more coffee than most.
• Oslo is the capital city of coffee lovers.
• A new high-rise complex in Oslo is known as the Barcode.
• You can walk on the roof of the Opera House.
• There's over 19 hours of daylight in Oslo in the summer.
• There is a monolith in Oslo made up of 121 figures all carved out of a single block of granite.
• King Harold of Norway married Sonja a commoner because he loved her.
• Edvard Grieg was the Norwegian composer of In the Hall of the Mountain King (Peer Gynt).

With our day in Oslo complete we headed by tram back to our hostel and packed up to get ready to explore a bit more of Norway over the next 5, 6 or 7 days.