A guide to Oslo
Great, if you can a-fjord it
Posted by: Josh, 12 April 2026
Norway has a special place in our hearts, as the first country we visited together.
Safe, well-designed, friendly and blessed with long fjords, high mountains and vast stretches of tall green trees and open slightly-less-green farmland, it ticks all of my boxes.
Even so, we’d heard mixed opinions about Oslo before spending a few days there over Easter this year. We’d heard it's a better place to live, than to visit, with fewer things to do than in other European capitals.
But by the end of our five days there, we’d come to love the city.
This is our guide to visiting Oslo for a long weekend, along with some final thoughts on why it might be a perfect destination for a would-be traveller with anxiety.
Contents
Things to do in Oslo
Museums and galleries
Travellers looking for culture and museums will love Oslo. The only challenge is deciding which to visit, and – in typical Norway fashion – deciding how much you can budget for entry fees.
The National Museum and the Munch Museum are two of the most popular options in the city centre. Tickets for the National Museum are 200NOK (£15.68 / $21.03) for adults and 120 NOK (£9.41 / $12.61) for under-25s, while the Munch Museum is 220NOK (£17.24 / $23.13) for adults and 100NOK (£7.84 / $10.51) for under-25s.
If you have to pick between the two, the decision will come down to what you like and what you’ve seen before. The Munch Museum is entirely dedicated to the life and work of Edvard Munch, the artist most famous for The Scream. It’s an art gallery, with some extras that help bring Munch’s life to life.
The National Museum has much more variety of exhibits, as you’d expect. The first floor is a typical European museum, with rooms set out in chronological order. Truthfully, Liz and I were a bit underwhelmed by these displays, probably as we felt a lot of exhibits were similar to those we’d seen in museums elsewhere in Europe. For us, too few of the exhibits told the story of Norway: about its indigenous Sami people, the dissolution of the union with Sweden, and how its modern culture came to be.
There are some good reasons for this – in particular, Norway's efforts to ensure that Sami people have the right to own and manage their own cultural heritage – but we came away feeling like there’s still work to be done for this relatively new museum to live up to its cost.
Upstairs, it’s a different story. The National Museum also houses the works of the former National Gallery, and it’s here that the museum delivers on the entry price. We loved the Munch exhibits here and, yes, you can still see one version of The Scream here. We also loved the amount of works by other Norwegian artists that we weren’t familiar with, seeing how they represented Norway’s identity and its natural beauty in the past.
This chap's just learned how much a bottle of juice and a pastry will cost him at the café outside
If that’s not enough museum for you, there’s far more of them on Bygdøy – which is also known as Museum Island, despite not actually being an island.
On Museum Peninsula, you can choose from: The Folk Museum; The Maritime Museum; The Fram Museum, dedicated to polar exploration; and the Kon Tiki museum, dedicated to a voyage undertaken by a man who believed Easter-Island was first settled by “white-skinned gods”. I’d gently suggest you don’t go to that last one.
We only found time to visit the Fram Museum. While I knew there were going to be some parts of the exhibitions I’d need to skip (animal suffering and existential dread being two of my biggest triggers for a panic attack), those parts I could take in fully were very interesting. While polar exploration often had its own dubious motivations, particularly in our home country, it’s still moving to be on the ship that took Amundsen on his voyage to become the first man to reach the South Pole. The exhibits show why Norway’s explorers succeeded where British explorers initially failed and properly pay tribute to indigenous people’s role in the triumph of the expedition. If you’re interested in the subject, it’s well worth two or three hours of your time.
Walking around Akershus Fortress is a nice, free way to spend an hour in Oslo
You’ll also find more places to visit at Akershus Fortress, including the Armed Forces Museum and the Home Front Museum, which teaches visitors about the Nazi occupation of Norway during WWII. You don’t have to visit the museums to enjoy the fortress though; it’s free to enter the area, walk around, and admire the views out to the fjord from a different angle. We spent part of our first evening doing so, having a lovely time until we briefly lost all sense of direction between the maze of buildings and walls on our way out.
One last note on the museums: the Viking Ship Museum is closed for renovations until 2027, so cross that off your list for now.
Walks near Oslo
If you’ve only got a couple of full days in Oslo, then make sure to spend at least half of one of them at Sognsvann.
Only about 20 minutes on the Metro from Oslo’s main station, this 3.2km-circumference lake is a peaceful escape from the city centre shops and streets.
We visited at the start of April and the lake was still part-covered in ice. We can only imagine how beautiful it must look in winter months, when it’s fully frozen over and the pine trees that ring the lakeside trail are blanketed in thick snow.
Walking the full circumference will take around 90 minutes if you don’t take a break, or far, far longer if you can’t help stopping to take pictures or to breathe in the scenery like Liz and I were doing every five minutes or so. If you’re travelling as a group, you might want to pick up a disposable barbecue and set up at one of the dedicated spots for it close to the lake’s edge.
A word of warning to hardier folks looking at the water in these pictures and thinking about packing their swimming gear: while you can go for a dip in Sognsvann, swimmers’ itch is a known problem in Norway’s freshwater lakes.
Oslo fjord and island walks
If Sognsvann hasn’t fully satisfied your need for hiking, then you might want to look into taking a ferry to one of Oslo Fjord’s islands.
I’m not going to pretend that a boat trip on Oslo fjord is as spellbinding as the fjord cruise that Liz and I took years ago in Stavanger (long before we started writing Anxious and Travelling, so read this recent in-depth guide if you want to know more about visiting Stavanger). That was a classic Norwegian fjord experience, with sheer snow-covered cliffs to our side and a seemingly endless stretch of water to sail along.
Oslo fjord is plain in comparison, with no mountains around you, but if you’ve never experienced Norway before you’re still likely to find it strikingly pretty. And even if you have been to Norway in the past, I find it hard to imagine you won’t like the views anyway.
As for the islands, we opted to visit Hovedøya and spent around three hours walking around its edge. While it’s the most popular island to visit, it was very quiet over Easter weekend – a period when many Norwegians spend time visiting families outside of the city.
Whichever island or islands you want to visit, don’t fall into the trap of booking with any of the operators offering you a guided tour of Oslo fjord. If you read the descriptions of these tours carefully, you’ll find that some won’t even involve a stop at any of the islands.
I’ve just double checked the prices with one tour provider whose adverts you’ll see at Aker Brygge harbour and found a two-hour fjord cruise with no stop-offs at any island will set you back 479NOK (£37.58 / $50.48), while a four-and-a-half hour cruise to Hovedoya, Gressholmen and one more island is a whopping 660NOK (£51.77 / $69.56).
Compare that to a 24-hour Zone 1 pass, booked through the public transport app Ruter, which costs 137NOK for adults (£10.75 / $14.44). For this price, you can take the ferry to any of six islands – Hovedøya, Bleikøya, Gressholmen, Lindøya, Nakholmen, and Langøyene – and spend as long or as little time as you like on each of them. The boat services are comfy, frequent, and far more flexible than the tours, and they loop around all of the islands so you can hop on and off as you please.
Take the ferry, take your time exploring, and put the hundreds of Krone that you save towards a nice meal, a museum or gallery outing, or a dozen Kvikk Lunsj-es instead.
Getting to Oslo and using public transport
Depending on where you're flying from, you might see two airports that serve Oslo: Oslo Gardemoen and Sandefjord, Torp.
Only one of these airports, Oslo Gardemoen, is actually close to Oslo. Sandefjord is 68 miles south of the city, but still an option worth considering if the flights are much cheaper for you. Direct buses from Sandefjord to Oslo on the Torpekspressen bus take around an hour and 40 minutes and cost 319NOK (£25 / $33.63) for an adult ticket on the day we travelled.
If you’re travelling from Oslo Gardemoen to Oslo central station, you do not need to take the Airport Express train. The airport express is quicker than a local train service, but only by a few minutes and it costs twice as much. Save yourself the 134NOK (£10.50 / $14.13) and put it towards four Kvikk Lunsj-es or two cinnamon buns.
How to visit Oslo on a budget
I wish you hadn’t asked. You can’t make a visit to Oslo cheap, but there are some ways to make it cheaper.
Oslo is a smaller city than you might be expecting, so you can pack quite a lot into one day. If you’re keen to see as many museums and other attractions as possible and don’t tend to spend as long in any one place as Liz and I do, then look into buying an Oslo pass. While it’s expensive, it’ll save you some money if you’re looking to visit more than two of the bigger museums in one day, includes travel on public transport (including trips from and to Oslo airport), and offers discounts at some cafes and restaurants.
Hotel prices aren’t prohibitively expensive, if you don’t need five-star luxury. Food prices are through the roof though, and we weren’t blown away by the restaurants we visited, so renting an apartment with cooking facilities might be a good choice for you.
We twice visited the Oslo Street Food Market instead of going to restaurants, partly to save time before a show and partly to save a bit of money. While the prices are higher than at similar street food markets in London – yes, Oslo’s somehow even more expensive than our hometown – the food we found was also pretty good. Samosa Chaat from Der Peppern Gror was so good we had it two nights in a row, and we enjoyed their butter paneer curry too. We’d suggest passing on the gyros from Zorba, unless you prefer milder flavours.
As we’ve already said above, you can get a full day’s hiking and fjord exploration for a cheap price by booking a day pass through Ruter and using the public ferry to explore Oslo Fjord’s islands. If you’re spending a long weekend in Oslo on a budget, that’s pretty much a must-do for you.
Lastly, Oslo is a very walkable city. You can save a bit of money here and there by walking from place to place rather than taking public transport or taking a taxi to get around. Everywhere is just so nice and gently pleasant that you could easily spend a half-day not doing much of anything and still have a very nice time.
Following all the tips above, Oslo is not out of reach to budget travellers. Until you try a cinnamon bun or a custard pastry, that is. Then there’s simply no choice but to buy five more.
Why Oslo is great for anxious travellers
For some reason, I feel fellow anxiety-havers deserve a bit of extra honesty in our travel guides. So I don’t mind sharing that anxiety wasn’t the primary reason we travelled to Oslo. I do mind sharing that the real reason was that I had an improv show to perform in, but there’s a chance you’re one of the three people who’ll find that cool rather than tragically embarrassing.
I couldn’t help but think that Oslo would have been the perfect place for my first solo holiday as an adult, had I not met Liz and started seeing the world with her instead.
It’s especially the case on Easter weekend, when the city is very quiet but many shops, cafes and attractions remain open. Oslo at Easter is perfect for people who struggle with crowds but still want to explore a city.
Norway’s very safe, very clean, and very easy to travel around. Most people speak perfect English, so for native English-speakers or those who have it as a second language there’s no communication barrier to manage.
You can explore nature without ever getting too far from the city. Sognsvann is a treat to walk around, providing you’re able to manage the cold, and even if you never leave the city centre you can still appreciate the still and clear waters of the fjord and experience a little bit of something you’ve never experienced at home.
The only downsides are the cost and the food options. It’s not that I think Oslo has no good food; it’s just that you’ll have to dig deep into your wallet to experience it. If you’re not willing or able to do that though (us neither!), it won’t spoil your trip and I think it’s a small price to pay for all the other good things that Oslo offers. It’s so nice, and not at all overwhelming in the way that cities like Rome, Barcelona, or Paris can be.
Useful tips
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Kvikk Lunsj (Quick Lunch) is just a Kit-Kat with a different, Norwegian name and a different, no-longer-Norwegian multinational owner. But it’s better, I swear.
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If you’re travelling outside the summer months, remember to check the wind chill before you go for a walk around Sognsvann or the islands in the fjord. A seemingly mild day can feel pretty icy when the wind picks up, so bring an extra layer with you just in case.
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The coffee and pastries are good almost anywhere you find them. If you’re keen to find the perfect Norwegian cinnamon bun for your tastes, you’ll need to try a few different places. Some are sweeter than others, some pack more cardamom in to the mix, and some buns are knotty while others are softer and more bread-like.
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Less good are the 7/11s, which are perfectly fine if you need to pick up a soft drink or bag of crisps to keep you going but which aren’t anything like the ones you might have visited on travels to Japan, South Korea, or Taiwan. You can get a cheap hot dog (as a vegetarian, I can’t vouch for how they taste), but where you might expect to find shelves full of interesting snacks you’ll instead find 7/11 branded t-shirts and other merch. If that’s what you’re after, that’s great! But if you’re looking to eat on a budget, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
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Lastly, I’ll repeat a couple of tips here for anyone who’s skipped ahead. Look into buying an Oslo Pass if you’re planning to pack a lot of travelling or multiple activities into one day, and don’t fall for the fjord cruises unless you find one that offers a particular activity you just can’t miss.
Final thoughts on Oslo
Josh's final thoughts
Oslo would probably never have made it onto our list of places to visit, had it not been for the kind folks behind the Short Notice Improv Festival extending an invite to my group.
It’s a great thing that they did though, because Oslo is a much better destination than I’d been led to believe.
Sure, there’s not as many standout things to see as there are in some of the cities that first come to mind for a weekend break in Europe. And sure, it’s not a foodie’s paradise like San Sebastian in Spain or parts of Italy might be.
But everything about Oslo is pleasant and pretty, there’s more to do than I’d been told to expect, and I felt as relaxed on this holiday as I ever have on my travels. By the time we had to leave, I really didn’t want to.
Liz's final thoughts
Overall Oslo is a great choice for a less-touristy European break, especially if you have recently decided that you have too much money in your bank account and you’d like to spend a good chunk of it.
Even as someone who doesn’t appreciate the cold, I thoroughly enjoyed our time there. As Josh mentioned, it’s clean, spacious, and just nice. The town centre has beautiful old European-style buildings, the views over the fjord were lovely, and for a capital city it was surprisingly peaceful.
I was hoping for a nice relaxing sauna visit, until I read that they like to drink beer and sing karaoke in the saunas at the edge of the Oslo fjord. They even have stand-up comedy, film screenings and weekend DJ sessions at SALT. Not exactly the calming wellness experience I was after, but probably a lot of fun if you like that sort of thing.
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