Day 3 (June 24): Oslo.

After a good night’s rest, we were able to grab brekkie at the hotel and head over to Ekebergparken to see one of Oslo’s sculpture parks, but really to get a nice view of the city. The sun was shining and it was a nice hill climb up to the top. It was good to see lots of rainbow flags all over the city celebrating Pride month (but how about being empathetic every month?!).

We then walked back into the city center to check out Oslo’s central library, Deichman Bjørvika. They recently completed a new version of the main library in 2020, which is pretty cool. Carl Deichman, whom the library is named for, bequeathed 7,000 books and 150 manuscripts which formed the basis of the library's collection.

Lobby of the Deichman.

We had lunch at a place called The Vandelay, which is a tribute to Vandelay Industries of Seinfeld fame. The WiFi password was literally ‘importexport’. HA!

We then checked out the Munch Museum, which is a massive structure and a homage to Norway’s most famous artist, Edvard Munch. The building is impressive and the museum was well organized, including the Chamber of Chaos. The top floor has a rooftop bar with commanding views of the city.

In the Chamber of Chaos at the Munch museum.

I was looking forward to going to SALT, which is the world’s largest sauna and has a live DJ spinning tracks on Friday and Saturday evenings. Marc had to be cajoled into going, but he was a good sport. It’s right on the water and the main sauna is in a triangle shaped building has room for I’m guessing 100+ people in it. The seating is reminiscent of sitting on bleacher style benches. They have a lounging deck as well as a cold plunge pool so you can do some hot/cold therapy. And Scandinavians love their saunas!

It was a lot of fun. The sun was shining. And the main sauna wasn’t too hot but I suspect if it was full, it would be just as hot as the smaller ones. It was hot enough. But the cold plunge pool was COLD. Holy sh**! We listened to some tunes, wandered through the open beer garden, which had a massive Pride celebration going on so the place was packed.

After that, we cleaned up and had a table reserved at Savage, Oslo’s newest Michelin star restaurant that opened 7 months prior. We sat at the chef’s table (aka bar) and got to chat up the chef, sommelier and the rest of the team. The food was fantastic (yay for black truffle ice cream for me) and the service was even better. The chef gave us some restaurant recos for further on in our trip, so obviously we have to check those out!

We went back to Oslofjord to see the sunset again, but it wasn’t as good as last night. Oh well. A great 1st full day for ‘Operation Midnattsol’.