One of the privileges of being a teacher, at least in Norway, is that you get a lot of holidays. I had a beautiful seven week holiday during the summer and after eight weeks of work I was allowed another week for the autumn break last week. Me and 
We were there for four days and we did so much awesome stuff that I decided to make several smaller posts from the trip instead of one giant one. Bite sized content is easier to swallow in my opinion. This first post bites over the first day we were there.
We arrived at a fairly decent time with our plane arriving in Oslo at 1130 in the morning. Check in at our hotel wasn't until 15 o clock so we parked our bags at the hotel and just walked around for a bit. The hotel was pretty much in the core of the city right next to Oslo S (train station) and just one block down from the main street called Karl Johans Gate.
We browsed some stores and shops just looking around before we decided we were hungry. We just walked through Karl Johan until we found the Parliament building which lies next to the street that leads up to the Royal Palace. This street and everything surrounding the Parliament was blocked off by the police and the army. We had no idea why and we didn't really care as we went into a nearby restaurant called Olivia. A really nice Italian restaurant chain you'll find in Norways biggest citys.
We sat down for some delicious Italian pasta before heading back out. As we got out about an hour later a lot of people had gathered at the blockades so we decided to go check out what was going on. A quick look in the newspaper told us that today marked the opening of the Parliament with Norways new government. Only about a second later the King and Queen of Norway drives by us waving. Very random and totally unexpected.
This happened so fast that I wasn't able to snap any good photos of his majesty but I did get this one where you can see the back of his head in the car. You can see the Royal Guard lined up down the street with the Royal Palace looking in the distance. Pretty cool.
Just a couple of seconds later the former Minister of Health, Bent Høie, ran past us at full speed as well. Probably late for a meeting or something. Very random and quite funny. We were quite lucky to randomly witness this just as we came out of the restaurant.
When we arrived at the hotel we just laid down to chill for a bit before getting ready to go meet some friends who live in town, one of them being one of my closest friends that I talk to pretty much every day. I only get to see him in person a couple of times a year so this was great.
We met up at this place called Oslo Street Food which was pretty cool. It's an indoor food hall lined up with booths and benches sporting food from all over the world. This place had food from India, Hawaii, Argentina, Vietnam, Japan, China and several others. They even had arepas which I really wanted to get a taste of because 
After finishing up we headed off to a bar that was on the same block called Tilt. This is by far our favorite bar in Oslo. It has a great selection of beers, mostly from Norwegian breweries, but most importantly it's an arcade. This place has a ton of pinball machines, good old arcade games like Crazy Taxi, Pacman and more as well as some shooting games and shuffleboards. Me and
After our friends took their leave we decided to visit another cool and special bar on the way back to the hotel. This place is called Himkok and is pretty hidden. It doesn't have any big signs outside to lure you in and you pretty much gotta know about it to find it. All you'll see is this small logo on the outside of the building to let you know you're in the right place. The windows are blocked off so you would have no idea this was a bar if you randomly passed by.
You have to ring a doorbell to get in and if you're lucky enough for them to have free tables you get into this low key classy bar. The waiters are always wearing classy white and black outfits, serving you at the table and refilling your water glass as soon as you've taken the smallest sip. What's so special about it though is that they only sell drinks and only with liquor they've brewed themselves in the bar. They have vodka, gin, rum and probably more and you an see all the brewing tanks and tubes in the back.
The drinks are absolutely awesome and the whole place is just so unique. We only sat down for the one drink and the night ended quickly when
All photos in this post are taken by me.