Day 78: Oslo

We walked around some of the main streets of the city today. On Karl Johans Gate, *the* pedestrian street, we passed by the erotic shop Kondomeriet. From the outside, it fit right in with all the other usual high-end shopping stores next to it and inside, there were lots of people browsing the shop. It sort of gives you a feel for the openness here. They have a pretty cool commercial, too.

As expected for a Saturday, a lot of people were out and about. There were probably even more people out today because we noticed a lot of people staking out spots on the side of the street. It turns out there's a gay pride parade today! I haven't been to any gay pride parades before, so I have nothing to compare against, but it seemed everyone, from kids to adults, were very supportive of the gay community. Some people in the parade were indeed quite dressed up, but there were many who were just wearing normal clothes and waving rainbow flags.


A bunch of rainbow flags were blowing in the wind right across from the city hall, too.

K wanted to visit the National Gallery (free) to see one picture, Munch's famous "The Scream", so we detoured from the gay pride parade (well, actually, the gay pride parade was the detour, but anyways...). Strangely, walking through the gallery felt refreshing! Have we visited any other art galleries this trip? Hmmmm. After visiting more than enough art museums during our Europe 2007 travels, I pretty much cut them out this trip ^-^;; I especially liked seeing the landscape painters here.

Frogner Park, aka Vigeland Park. A lot of people were out in the park, hanging about and grilling stuff on inexpensive grills. Vigeland is a well-known Norwegian sculptor (maybe the most well-known?) and Frogner Park is filled with his later work. His huge 46-foot monolith sits in the center of the park...



There was a huge maze on the ground around his fountain!

Getting off the tram and walking back to our flat/B&B today, K remarked that it 'feels just like the U.S.', complete with plenty of SUVs parked on the road.

We heard/read Norway is expensive, and it's true. On basic foods, there's a 14% tax. 14%! In Cali, we pay 0% tax on these same foods. It's the same 14% if you take away from an eatery, but 25% percent to eat there. And I was surprised at Czech Republic's 19% tax on eating out only a month ago! It's all a trade-off. For the high taxes, Norwegians get free university education and health care.

We're hardly eating out here; everything is about twice as expensive as we'd normally pay back home. But the supermarkets are great... plenty of yummy smoked salmon, meatballs, fish cakes, etc. I bought some meatballs for dinner today and managed to set off the smoke detector again! I think it's sensitive to heat. When I open the mini oven door, the intense rush of heat into the room inevitably sets it off >_<