Last Sunday we both had a day off and thought it´d be nice to spend it outdoors since the weather Gods were on our side. 😉 We decided we should take a stroll along the Aker river with Sammy, so he could run freely and take a dip here and there. There´s nothing like a bath in the river to cool off this happy dog of ours. We were heading towards the Food Court- Mathallen, but then we saw Nedre Foss Gård, a restaurant I´d just tried a couple of days before and that appealed to us now, as well. The court yard was pretty and summery, all “dressed up” in orange. 😉 The service was great and so was the food!
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sam the samoyed
A Barbecue in the Park
Yesterday we had our first barbecue in the park and it made me jump with joy! You see, in my opinion, one of the best things about Norway is being able to make use of the city´s recreational spaces- parks, forrest, waterfront, you name it. You can have a picnic right in front of the Parliament building and work on your sun tan from the Opera house´s marble shores. Not like back home where you can´t even tread on grass or else you´ll get a fine! 😉 haha!
And since the weather was sunny and I didn´t feel inspired enough to cook, I suggested a salad and some baked veggies to go with grilled sausages and flat bread (we got some Lebanese bread, from the corner shop). So I packed a bag, told Sam we were going out, although it meant following me everywhere around the house, and started on the veggies.
Today
Heia! How have you been? I´ve been running around these couple of days, between jobs, friends and home and my whole body hurts as though I´d been working with my back! Besides buying groceries and taking Sam out once out of three times, I haven´t done that much, but working as an interpreter sure takes its toll on me. After a 9 hours´ day, I usually fall half-dead on the couch and watch Hbo with V. (we´re on Brotherhood now and we love it!)
Today was not as busy however, so I managed to squeeze in a long awaited coffee with a friend of mine and Sam. We sat outside with our necks stretched towards the sun (while Sam was hiding under the bench) and I almost had a heat stroke, I swear! But it felt amazing, after all these cold days, when winter seemed to be never-ending, you need a bit of sun to feel alive again!
Oslo life
This week has been quite uneventful for my part- I started working on Tuesday, did some laundry and some spring cleaning in between, took a couple of longer walks with Sammy, “stole” some lilac branches from the park every other day and went to a dinner party yesterday.
Norway is still giving summer a thought, keeping us “en suspense” for now and I find it hard to dress, always ending up on the wrong side of the scale, either too cold for my outfit, or too hot. Layering is the solution, I just need to learn how to do it properly! 😉
Weekend glimpses
This weekend was great. We partied hard on Friday, slept in on Saturday, dragged ourselves from couch to bed and back and had a lovely beef steak, wine and cheese for dinner. Sunday was brunch at our friends´ and seeing my father off to his plane. We then had a weissbier in a beer garden (Sam was with us, of course!) and binge-watched The Wire until we fell asleep on the couch. 
Sunday fun day
We´ve had amazing weather this weekend, it was warm enough to strip down to your t-shirt in the sun, so we´ve been working on our tan from different terraces in town, enjoying a coffee or a beer with good friends. Yesterday we hit the flea market and found a lovely antique mirror and today we met Irina and Stefan downtown for a chat. My father´s still in Oslo and he´s been enjoying the sunny days as much as we have. We´be been walking until our feet hurt, showing him some of the cosy places in town, admiring buildings and churches and smiling at people sunbathing in their bikinis in the park. And Sam has been with us all the time, of course. 😉
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Pops is visiting
My father is visiting for a couple of weeks and since I didn´t have a lot of work these days, Sam and I got to be tourists, too. Today we went to the Akershus Fortress, where I´d only been a couple of times before, but which remains a “hidden gem” by the harbor. It´s from medieval times and they still use most of the buildings housing museums, the National Defense Guard, military offices and this sort of things. The cobblestone alleys and the low houses make you feel like you´re traveling back in time. If only there hadn´t been this many cars parked around!
A gettaway to Cristina´s cabin
I wrote about feeling a bit lonely since almost everybody was gone this Easter break and the city was empty of people. As a response to that, a fellow countryman whom I´d only met a couple of times, but who was on my list of fb friends, invited us over to her cabin! Can you imagine such an act of generosity? 🙂 And we said yes, although my man was so anxious after having watched so many horror movies in his life that he had to check her fb page and see what she was up to! Haha! 😉 Luckily it was all ikebana and benign stuff. 😉 haha! 
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Good Friday
This year we´re so lucky as to have 6 days off for Easter! 🙂 And since we stayed in Oslo and the weather has been on our side, we thought we´d take Sammy for nice trips here and there and enjoy our time together as a family. Now I won´t lie to you by saying that I couldn´t imagine a better Easter and that leaving town is overrated, ´cause I´d love to be somewhere nice and warm right now! However, since we´re heading to Romania in a month´s time and my father is visiting at the end of next week, we might as well make the best of our “staycation”, as they call it these days. 😉
Easter Break
The last couple of days in Oslo have been sunny and wonderful! And it´s been great, since it´s Easter break for most of us. Although I worked a tiny bit on Monday and yesterday and V is at the shop today, it still feels like we own the city, since many people have already left on a holiday. I remember a time when it used to depress me, especially hearing people saying they liked the quiet and empty streets. I used to think “what are you doing in the city, then”? But I don´t mind it anymore, it feels good to travel at other times of the year and we´re not so sporty, so the mountains are fine where they are, far away. 😉
Today it was spring in every sense of the word! Although only 3 degrees in the shade, the sun was warm and lovely and you could see a carpet of flowers on the ground and the trees getting back their green coat, too! A couple of weeks from now and everything will be in bloom! 😉 Can´t wait!
life in a bubble 