As I mentioned in an earlier post, I´ve been really jealous of all the people with boats, summer houses or cabins this summer. Not because we haven´t had a holiday or been out drinking wine most evenings, but because the weather has been so perfect and no matter how close we live to the harbor, it´s not the same as being somewhere else entirely, a place you get to take a break from daily routine and chores.

So I remembered I had a lot of hotel points from that time I worked in Bergen for three months in a row and ordered a weekend in Tønsberg for the two of us. Tønsberg is a cute little summer town 1,5 hours away from Oslo, not much to do there, but very picture perfect for a short trip.  Thus we took the train, even upgraded to first class (called “Komfort” so it sounds less class-oriented- haha!) so we´d avoid sitting with chatty teen-agers and there we were by mid-day Saturday, ready for check-in and lunch. We ate at Kolonihagen, a nice spruced up place with emphasis on local and organic food.  They were terribly busy that day, so the service wasn´t great, but the meals were as lovely as always. We had Jerusalem artichoke soup and pie with salad and for desert we shared a pannacotta.

After a round in the “city center”, a couple of pictures of quaint wooden houses and wondering if we should or we shouldn´t have some ice-cream, we headed for the hotel for a nap (we´re known as the nappers in our circle of friends!). Besides, the 4th season of the Killing was just posted on Netflix, so we were dying to see what was happening. After a couple of episodes we freshened up for dinner at Champagneria, a classy place they have in Oslo, too. We ordered lots of tapas, skipped the bread and the “patatas bravas” for once and gorged ourselves on “jamon iberico”, baked chèvre, chorizo and so on. 😉 Unfortunately Peppes Pizza, their neighbor, were having an open-air private party of some sort and they were so loud, we couldn´t even hear our waiter speaking, let alone converse. After a heavy dinner with lots of bubbles, a walk was in order, so we strolled around white washed houses and said hello to many cute cats on our way up to Slottsfjellet, the Castle Rock, to put it in a Games of Thrones way. The view from there was sublime! The sunset, the wilderness of it all, who would have figured they´ve just had a festival a couple of weeks ago? Everything seems so untouched and for an asphalt girl, as I called myself many years ago, to experience that in the middle of the city is just surreal!

On Sunday everything was closed, even some eateries, so walking about with no purpose proved little fun. And it wasn´t warm enough to swim, so we mainly hanged in our hotel room and watched the Killing, except for eating mussel soup for lunch and burgers for dinner. The burger place is worth a trip, it´s called Kverneriet and it´s a hipp place with pretty good burgers and nice atmosphere. Vuong´s conclusion was that Munchies in Oslo is still the real deal! That was our weekend! How was yours?

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