Our landlord told us of a lovely lodge with a nice view at the end of one of the subway lines. Seeing that we have purchased our subway passes for the month and the kids travel free on the weekends, we thought we’d go for a ride. The Frognerseteren Hovedrestaurant is about a 25 minute ride from the center of the city. We decided to walk down to the city center and start with a picnic on the lawns in front of the National Theater.
National Theatre
Picnic lunch in front of the Theater
This is a very popular area, packed with tourists, as it is off the popular Karl Johanns Gate. Kurt and I opted for the shade, while the kids wanted to be as close to the water in the sun. One thing Kurt and I observed was that while it was very crowded, we were the only ones sitting on the grass. Lots of people sitting on the benches, but none on the grass. I started to pay attention at the few other open green areas we passed on our walk to the subway and noticed the same thing. We are going to have to look into this.
Kurt can often be seen with his nose in a map. It has become our study object of choice lately. Note: the stroller — finally!!
Leah is obsessed with terrorizing every bird she sees. She is often heard saying “I’m going to get you old, stinky, bird” right before she lunges at them. Thankfully she has failed every attempt to date.
There is a beautiful tree-lined sidewalk that runs parallel to the Theatre
We all loved this fountain in Johanne Dybwad Plass
There are many, many statues of famous and well-respected figures all over Oslo. This is probably my favorite one to date, it is so beautifully simple. I have since learned that Johanne Dybwad was a powerhouse Norwegian stage actress and producer of the early 1900’s.
Johanne Dybwad
From the National Theatre metro station we took the T-bane (subway) to the very last stop, Frognerseteren. The ride up was not your typical subway blazing up the rails. Rather it went slower than expected and we were able to see quite a bit of scenery out the window once we came above ground. There were some rather beautiful views, but none that seemed to translate well in a photo.
They are serious about the soccer fields around here, this was only half of it
One of the many grassed roofs we saw on the way up
Once at the end of the line, we did as our landlord suggested and just followed the people in front of us to the lodge. We went down a rather steep gravel road and came upon it. It became clear to us that this area is a very popular destination for hiking and we have made note to come back. It is also a very serious mountain biking area. We have also heard there is a toboggan run around here that you take downhill to a subway stop lower down, then take the subway back up again.
The lodge itself was quite charming. Unfortunately the menu was out of our budget for the day (just a single Fanta in a glass bottle was $6, did we mention that Oslo is expensive), so we just got to go in and take a peak at the amazing pastries and other local Norwegian foods available.
1387 feet over the “crest of the sea”
The lodge and vicinity
The lodge is distinguished by these dragon-esque details on the woodwork
Inside the lodge
The menu for the cafe. If you want to know how much it costs in $, divide by 6. We would still like to try the Rømmergrøt that our landlord highly recommended.
The pastry table
The kids had a fine time playing with the rocks
We noticed many chimneys with stacked rocks on top of them. Going to have to look into that.
These houses sit in front of the lodge and it was all Leah could do to restrain herself from running down and going into them. She kept asking if she could go “…play with the little girl that lived inside.”
The boys clamored up through all the shortcut trails on the hike back up to the T-bane. It was all downhill from here.
When I was Leah’s age and would go to visit family in San Francisco I, too, was obsessed with pigeons.. except I thought them beautiful and lovely and wanted to keep them as pets..