Layover in Oslo in December- What to do?

We will be flying home on December 29th and have an 8 hour layover in the Oslo airport. We would like to see some of Oslo rather than just sitting in the airport all day. We may never have the chance to see Oslo again. I found a taxi service, Oslo taxi, who will pick us up at the airport and give us a 4 hour tour for $500. Has anyone used this service?

I would love any alternate suggestions if anyone has any. Thanks!

Lori

What time of day is your layover?

Oslo is an extremely easy city to get around. You can catch the Flytoget airport express train to/from the airport for 170 NOK, and it takes 20 minutes. You can also take the regular NSB train for 90 NOK, which also takes 20 minutes, but it only runs twice an hour (:03 & :43).

Get down at Oslo S central station, and buy a one-day transit pass for 90 NOK. You can get one at any convenience store (7-11, Narvesen, etc), which are all over the station.

It's easy to get just about anywhere in the city by public transit, so what you do next depends on your interests and the time of day! (The usual things mentioned are: Vigelands Park, Viking Ships, Folk Museum, Fram Museum, Munch's "The Scream" at the National Gallery)

If there's something in particular you're interested in doing, I can offer suggestions on how to get around.

we arrive at 8am and the plane departs at 15:45.

What about the Nobel museum? On our visit to Geneva last year we went to Cern and he was thrilled. Is there anything for us to learn about the Norwegian culture? Do many people speak English?

Everyone speaks English! It's very impressive!

The Nobel Peace Center is very well done. It's full of impressive technological exhibits that explain the history of the award and the laureates. If you visit, don't miss the "magic" interactive book that describes Nobel's life! It's in a small room and doesn't look that cool until you open it and start playing around with it.

To get to the Nobel Peace Center, take the bus 30, 31, or 54 from the stop across the street from the front of central station to the stop Rådhuset (the city hall). The center is the old building almost directly in front of the bus.

For Norwegian culture, the best bet is The Folk Museum (bus 30 towards Bygdøy, stop Folkmuseet). There are lots of old buildings that have been relocated from around the country, and many contain exhibits on various cultural aspects (all translated to English). There is also an iconic wooden stave church on the grounds. The only catch is that it involves being outdoors, so if the weather is bad....

You can find opening times and links at VisitOslo.com and Ruter.no is the transit system with a useful route planning function. Both sites are available in English.

Thank you so much! It sounds perfect. Do you happen to know how early we will need to be back at the airport?

Thank you so much! It sounds perfect. Do you happen to know how early we will need to be back at the airport?

If it's a domestic flight, I'd aim to be there 1-1½ hours before. You technically don't need that much, but security is very unpredictable. Usually the security queue is 10 minutes or less, but I've seen it reach 20+ minutes and have never figured out a pattern to when it's bad. (Though you can check the current estimate in realtime on the airport's home page, complete with webcam: https://avinor.no/en/airport/oslo-airport/)

If it's an international flight, I'd aim to arrive 2 hours before. My general rule of thumb for all international flights is to leave home downtown 3 hours before my flight. That usually puts me there around 2¼-2½ hours before the flight if everything goes smoothly.

Then I don't have to think too much about the other variables:

- Are you flying to a Schengen or a non-Schengen country? Flying to a non-Schengen country requires going through passport control. This can take quite a while (~20 min) around 10-11 in the morning, because there are 2-3 US flights and a London flight that all leave quite close together. I'm not sure what the passport queues are like in the afternoon.

- Which airline is it? Norwegian and SAS are the bulk of flights, so there's a lot of service for them. Lufthansa is served by the SAS counters, so it tends to be fast. KLM and Air France share counters, so I haven't had problems with them. United can take quite a while if you don't have status, because you can't usually check in online and there aren't a lot of counters. British Airways also doesn't have many counters, and they don't even staff all the ones they do have. I've never gotten through BA check-in quickly (I've waited over half an hour sometimes). Brussels Airlines is kind of in-between. Not speedy, but not as bad as United or BA.

Also, a note if you're cutting it tight getting back to the airport: The Flytoget costs more, but it almost always gets priority on the track to the airport if there are any delays, and it comes with a pretty nice travel guarantee http://www.flytoget.no/eng/Travel-info/Travel-insurance

wow, you must do a lot of traveling. We are flying on Norwegian to Ft Lauderdale, Florida, USA. We start in Stockholm and have a layover in Oslo. Since the flight arrives at 8:00 and leaves at 15:45, I was hoping to see some of Oslo. We have GOES (trusted traveler cards) but it will be the first time we are using them, so I'm not sure how much time it will save. Theoretically, I won't have to go through the passport line, just put my card in the kiosk.

So, if I am reading your instructions right, we should leave downtown by 12:45. If this is accurate and it takes 45min to get to downtown Oslo, it would leave us only 3 1/2 hours to sightsee.

wow, you must do a lot of traveling. We are flying on Norwegian to Ft Lauderdale, Florida, USA. We start in Stockholm and have a layover in Oslo. Since the flight arrives at 8:00 and leaves at 15:45, I was hoping to see some of Oslo. We have GOES (trusted traveler cards) but it will be the first time we are using them, so I'm not sure how much time it will save. Theoretically, I won't have to go through the passport line, just put my card in the kiosk.

 

So, if I am reading your instructions right, we should leave downtown by 12:45. If this is accurate and it takes 45min to get to downtown Oslo, it would leave us only 3 1/2 hours to sightsee.

I would aim to be at the central station by 13:00-13:15, so no, you don't have a lot of time. Especially since you'll need half an hour to get into town after you land. However, you can definitely do a little bit. If you're interested in the Nobel Peace Center, that's right downtown and easy to get to. In fact, if you end up on an NSB train or on a Flytoget that runs all the way to Drammen (every other Flytoget departure), you could take the train all the way to Nationaltheatret, which is just a few blocks away. But even from Oslo S, it's not far. Additionally, if you're interested in the Nobel Peace Prize, you might stop into the city hall (Rådhus), since it's right next door. From there, you can walk over a few blocks to the central street of Karl Johans gate, and walk back down to the station that way, past the National Theater, Storting (parliament), and Domkirke (cathedral) with a view up to the royal palace.

The Folk Museum tends to take a few hours on its own, and it's farther away, so you'd probably be better served staying in the city center with such a short visit.

GOES will save you time in Ft.Lauderdale, but it doesn't matter in Oslo, since you're going through European (Schengen area) immigration. It's the stamp in your passport that you're leaving Europe. And while it's usually a pretty quick process, the non-European line sometimes backs up when they suspect someone of overstaying their limit and living here illegally. Usually it goes pretty quick, but you need to give yourself a bit of extra time to get to the gate just in case there's a long line.

(FYI - There's not much shopping or dining on the far side of passport control, so if you want souvenirs or snacks for the flight, buy them in the rest of the international departures before you go through.)

I guess I do travel a lot! But I've been here a while, and until recently there weren't a lot of places you could get to directly from Oslo. So I've flown a lot of airlines just to make connecting flights over the years.

so much great info. Thank you so much. You mentioned "if someone overstays...". do we need a visa to leave the airport?? No one said anything about Visas for Sweden and since Norway is a stopover, I didn't think to ask.

On a separate note, if I may ask... where are you from and what brought you to Norway??? I find it fascinating when I speak with ex-pats. I guess I have wished that I thought of doing that when I was young.

so much great info. Thank you so much. You mentioned "if someone overstays...". do we need a visa to leave the airport?? No one said anything about Visas for Sweden and since Norway is a stopover, I didn't think to ask.

 

On a separate note, if I may ask... where are you from and what brought you to Norway??? I find it fascinating when I speak with ex-pats. I guess I have wished that I thought of doing that when I was young.

No, you don't need a visa to visit, but you can only stay 90 days. Since many nationalities do not require a visa to enter the country, sometimes people enter under the visa-waiver system as if they were tourists or on a business trip, but they actually intend to move here and are hoping to stay under the radar until they can find a job that will sponsor them to stay. Most of the time exit immigration is just a quick stamp-and-done situation, but once in a while something raises a yellow flag or has issues to sort out, and that holds up the queue.

As for my story, I'm originally from Indiana, but I work for an international company (oil industry). Norway was my third international assignment, but I really like it here, so at the end of my original assignment I accepted a local contract instead of moving on. I've always had a bit of wanderlust, but now I satisfy it by just traveling instead of moving!