Originally Oslo – Day 4: Vigelands Brothers and a Fjord Cruise

It’s our last full day in Norway before we fly home tomorrow morning. After that it will be five straight months until my next day off, so I’m going to just cling onto this for just a bit longer.

Our final full day here is a Sunday. Like in Germany, this means that a lot of places are closed apart from some tourist attractions, convenience stores and restaurants – good thing we stocked up on a multipack of drinks in advance. In all honesty, if anyone is reading this and is planning a Oslo visit – make use of the big supermarkets like Rema in town. We got 6 1.5 litre bottles of Pepsi Max for 80Kr – which is a steal considering the best deal we’ve seen on a single 500ml bottle is 20Kr.

Frugality aside, let’s get into what we did on our final day in Oslo.

A bit of a leisurely start to the day as we made our way over to Telthusbakken and Damstredet. These are two streets that have very beautiful and colourful houses that a lot of people tend to like putting online. As a walk they are both incredibly short – not even 10 minutes if you take out the time to travel in between them.

They are, however, a really nice way to have a leisurely start to your Sunday. Also, there are some cool places nearby if you have the time to make a detour.

First, near Telthusbakken is the Old Aker Church. As it was 10am on a Sunday, there was no way we were going to be allowed inside as the parishioners were entering for service. This is, at nearly 900 years old, the oldest still existing building in Oslo. Of course there have been some renovations along the way, but that’s some cool history to stumble upon.

Also nearby is Vår Frelsers Cemetery. It’s a beautifully maintained graveyard from the 19th century and if you know bits and pieces about Norwegian culture, you may recognise some names here. I could only recognise two: the playwright Henrik Inbsen (who is consistently referenced in Kongen Befaler – the Norwegian version of Taskmaster) and, by some coincidence, Edvard Munch. A bit of nice continuity within this trip to see his life’s work and then his final resting place.

Time for a snack. Something you see mentioned a lot for Norwegian desserts are waffles with a specific heart shaped surrounding. Since it was the weekend, the kiosk on Karl Johans Street was actually open and we could satisfy our sweet tooths. Where my husband got one with cream, nutella and banana, I went for something more Norwegian with my jam, sour cream and brunost waffle. I finally got my Norwegian brown cheese and it tasted great.

Now, despite it being Sunday not all is lost. In fact there is a very underrated attraction that only opens its doors for four hours on a Sunday. I am talking about the Emanuel Vigelands Museum. From the outside, it looks innocent enough – but then you go inside.

First thing you notice is that it is near pitch black and apart from some spotlights you just cannot move without fear of knocking into someone or something. In 5-10 minutes you fully adjust (you can also use the Night Sight mode as a pair of night vision goggles if you have a Google phone if you want more immediate results).

The more your eyes adjust, the more of these rather twisted frescos start to emerge. It’s meant to be a vision of life from birth to death – but as you’ll be getting mixed glimpses of it as you adjust your vision, the whole thing combines into some nightmarish vision. Probably doesn’t help that the birth scene is pretty horrific.

The combination of the incredible acoustics of the room, the time to get used to the low light and the frescos make for an incredibly affecting experience. Very few people were there and, I hope this remains one of those well kept secrets for those who want to find something a bit weird.

Thanks to this weird museum, this has become a bit of a Vigelands day – but first the second of lunch. Sure it’s just a convenience store hot dog. But we’ve seen so many people getting these over the last few days and I wanted to try one. I must say that if we had these in British convenience stores, I would be in a bit of trouble.

Final proper place on our visit to Oslo and that’s the Vigeland Statue Park. This is part of the larger Frogner Park and is packed with sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. There are hundreds of his works in stone, bronze and wrought iron throughout this section. All of the sculptures are of naked human figures in various stages of life and motion.

On entering, you are presented with a bridge with figures lined up on both sides. You can even find some in a lovely miniature garden overlooking the pond that this bridge is crossing. There are just so many of these that I am sure there are some we ended up not finding in the park.

For the stone, the most impressive work is the tall monolith covered in various figures as if clambering over each other in order to reach the top. This square is surrounded by a number of wrought iron gates with different designs of naked humans.

Like with the Munch museum a few days ago, the sheer prolific nature of these artists and how high the quality is across the pieces just blows my mind. This is another one of those parks that I can imagine locals spending a lot of time in. As well as all the great sculptures, there are wide lawns, plenty of trees and flower beds. Feels like a nice day can be spent here, granted we saw a group having a lovely time with an outside art class with a nude model – so there’s fun for all at this park.

Back to the hotel for a shower and a change of clothes before the last activity of the holiday – a dinner cruise on the Oslo fjord. Definitely feel a bit bougie writing those words down, but if this wasn’t just the nicest way to end a holiday.

Two and a half hours of leisurely cruising around the Oslo fjord and having to go back into the boat every now and then for a three course meal made with local ingredients like Arctic char. Never let it be said I don’t like eating local stuff when I go on holiday. Every course was delicious and so will be the pack of paprika crisps that we have to consume to make up for the portion sizes.

So that’s it for the trip to Norway. There’s still plenty of places like Bergen, Stavanger and Trondheim that are highly tempting, so it’s very possible that we’ll be back here eventually. Just needing to find those good flights and hotels.

Originally Oslo – Day 3: A Leap to Lillehammer

With us booking five nights in Oslo, I knew from the off that there would need to be a day trip to somewhere else nearby. Not a slight on Oslo, which feels so livable if it wasn’t for the cost, but I wanted to see something else. Immediately, the obvious place was Lillehammer. As someone who collects trivia, Lillehammer has always been in the back of my mind because of their hosting of the 1994 Winter Olympics. The fact that it was a two hour ride away on a very comfortable train just sealed the deal.

We got an earlyish train, that meant we got into Lillehammer just before 11. Since nothing much opens before then, this felt like the perfect choice. The ride here was through some incredible idyllic landscapes – basically how I assume Pippi Longstocking would have lived. For the latter section of the journey, it was almost uniformly made up of lakes and mountains. Just a pity that we were on the wrong side of the train.

As a first impression, Lillehammer is small. It is consistently referred to as a city, but in the UK it would very much be a town (then again, the rule of town vs city in the UK is pretty stupid so who am I to judge). In any event, it’s a lovely little town that has one major flaw – it’s very much built on the incline. Sitting here on the train back into Oslo, I can feel my thighs begin to go into the ‘afterburn’ stage – so they are going to be very angry at me when I ask for more steps tomorrow.

To start off, we made our way to Maihaugen and were there not too long after opening. In the off-season, this place offers two attractions for a cheaper ticket price compared to summer (where we’d pay extra for an attraction neither of us would care to visit).

The first, and smaller, of these is the Olympic Museum. Lillehammer is so proud of their place in Olympic history to the point where it feels like the whole city still wears it like a badge of pride. Seeing this 30 years down the line is so incredibly heartwarming.

As museums go, it’s pretty small. However, they do have some really nice pieces of memorabilia on show if you are at all interested in the Olympics and their history. There is a case with a number of different Olympic torches from throughout recent history, examples of different mascots and of course things related to Norwegian medallists. It’s actually pretty bad of me for not recognising any of them (for the Winter Olympics I would only know figure skating), but it was nice to see every gold medallist being mentioned somewhere.

The main attraction of Maihaugen is not the Olympic Museum (which I am surprised it not at the actual Olympic Park). Instead the reason we really came here is because it has a large open air museum similar to the Folk History Museum in Oslo.

The grounds here in Maihaugen are larger, but the scope is a bit narrower with the buildings coming from the more immediate area. However, given the more natural settings with ponds, wildflowers and so many trees – you could more easily give into the fantasy that you were roaming around a Norwegian farmstead in the 1800s.

There was another Stave church here, this one also from the 1200s and beautifully decorated on the inside. It was smaller and so felt less imposing and more warm than the one I saw two days ago.

Given they have the room here, it felt like they made their best efforts to place buildings as they would have been back then, some very close together as you would expect in a movie set and others very far removed from one another. Some of the buildings have been so long and placed so expertly that the actual terrain around them has begun to morph around them.

I can definitely see that, with a picnic packed, this would be a wonderful longer day out with the family and the dog to take in some culture and some nature. It also would appear that the more recent town section was used in a Christmas film back in 2022 – so I may need to try and find that to try and recognise some places.

For lunch we went into the main shopping area to the Lillehammer Bakeri. I saw online that they had won some awards last year for their food and it was no more expensive than the sandwiches we’d had two days ago. Alongside a really delicious brie and speck sandwich, we split something they referred to as a Lillehammer bun – think a lightly spiced sweet dough with a raspberry-custard topping. I don’t know what makes this Lillehammer especially, but it sure was good.

Fuelled up, it was time for an extended hike, which pretty much took us four hours if you add all the pieces together. To start, we walked up from the city centre up to the Lillehammer Olympic Park. This was so steep in places, I don’t think either of us had quite expected what this was going to be like. However, despite almost zero recent hiking experience we made it up there. Given my recent weight loss, this was definitely a whole lot easier than I thought it would be.

In the summer months, there isn’t too much going on at the Olympic Park – especially if you have a history of back issues and don’t want to take your chances going down the bobsleigh track. What they still have here to look at is the ski jump (which is cool) and an active chair lift to take you to the very top and get some lovely views of Lake Mjøsa and the surroundings. Fun fact – Mjøsa is the largest lake in the country and I’ve now seen it by sheer accident.

Now, for a bit of a happy accident. On the train ride here I saw a pin in Google Maps that looked like if we took a short detour, we’d see some lovely waterfalls. All I had to go on was the name Mesna. So, we took the bait and walked there (took half the time as expected thanks to previous hikers carving shortcuts between the curves of the main road). Lo’ and behold some gorgeous waterfalls.

What we were able to loosely ascertain from the plague here was that these waterfalls were part of the Mesna river that flowed into Lake Mjøsa – and there was a full hiking trail to follow this all the way back to the city. In retrospect, we could have turned left and done some more hiking to actually start from the river’s source, but we didn’t see that mentioned until we were a fair distance down the trail.

So rather than a boring road path back into the city, we were going through the birch forest and following the river as it flowed and made beautiful waterfalls. Did, at one point, I see a pair of hikers having sex across the river from us, sure, but I guess that’s what happens when on a Norwegian hike and you are next to a waterfall.

Anyway, things like this just go to show how some of the best things that happen on a trip are the things you cannot plan for and decide to just go with the flow. In this case, literally. Helped that we weren’t exactly short on time and could make the detour.

Once we were back in town, it was time for one more thing on our list – to walk along the Vignesbrua. This is basically a pedestrian bridge that connects Lillehammer to the smaller town of Vignes. However, we are talking about a pedestrian bridge that crosses the largest lake in Norway and so is a great place to just find a place along the bridge and just stare out across the lake uninterrupted. It began to rain a little bit whilst we were on the bridge (so sadly, my idea of a sunny lake photo didn’t come to pass – at least from this viewpoint).

We had a nice walk alongside the lake before deciding it would be a good time for us to get a dinner worthy of the stupid amount of hill walking we’d been doing.

Keeping with my rule about being okay with chain restaurants as long as it’s local – we went for a Peppe’s Pizza. This is the largest pizza chain in Scandinavia, although all the outlets would appear to be in Norway. I did grumble a little bit about the price of the pizza to share… then it came out and it was bloody massive. We went for a half and half made up of the Thai Chicken Satay and Heavy Heaven and it was more than enough for both of us. It’s a pity their attempt to launch in the UK failed because this is so much better than Dominos and Papa John’s.

So with half a massive pizza tossing around in my stomach it was time for us to get a lateish train back to Oslo. I have a window seat this time, so have been able to type up this post whilst breaking for the occasional stare at some incredibly blue waters. Tomorrow is the final day in Norway where it’s a third and final day spent in Oslo. Definitely feels like, despite the short time, we’ve managed to pack a whole lot in.

Originally Oslo – Day 2: A Big Museum Day

Even for extreme planners like us, today was a bit nuts. Having something like the Oslo Pass really helps given how expensive the museums are – so you can dip into a bunch of them for a shorter amount of time and not feel like you just wasted £20 because you finished in about half an hour. I guess this is my way of saying: buckle up as there’s a lot to cover.

I broke my intermittent fasting rules and went for some breakfast down in Pipervika as this was going to be one of those heavy walking days. Also, I saw some delicious pecan buns the day before when I grabbed my double espresso. So it was a nice chill time on a bench overlooking the bay as I slowly tore into a really delicious baked good.

Our first visit of the day was Akerhus fortress and castle. The fortress is open early and is free to roam if you just want to see some nice views of Pipervika and outside snaps of the castle. Given how most attractions open at 10 am, it’s nice that there is something for us early birds to do.

Once the clock struck 10, we were one of the first people in the castle itself. There has been a castle and fortress here since the 13th century when royal duties began to move there from Bergen. Interestingly though, despite the long history it is only the most recent monarchs who are here… since until Haakon VII was crowned in 1905 there hadn’t been a Norwegian king since the 14th century. It’s amazing the things you learn on holiday.

Going around the inside there were two things that were particularly striking. Firstly, some of the most beautiful tapestries I’ve seen in a castle – including one from 1700 that was so well preserved that it could have been weaved in the 1990s. The other was the main banqueting hall on the top floor that, despite having some scaffolding up, was still very eyecatching.

Time for a trek across the city from Akerhus to the Natural History Museum and Botanical Gardens. It was one of those cases where public transport would not have saved too much time and I had a pecan bun to walk off.

Let’s talk about the Natural History Museum first. It’s more like three buildings with different themes, although we didn’t go into the climate-themed one because I already have semi-frequent dreams about being older and the world being on fire.

The other two buildings are the Zoological and the Geological museums. The former is near-exclusively made up of taxidermy animals in tableaus. I don’t deny that, other than the freaky capybara, the work done here is really impressive… it’s just that in modern times, something like this feels a bit ghoulish. Which is why I didn’t take any pictures.

The geological museum is a place of two halves. On the bottom floor you have the dinosaurs and other fossils, nearer the top are the crystals and rocks. It was cool to see that the dinosaur models were more up to date with current thinking around colours and feathers. To see the understanding of dinosaurs shift so much in my lifetime is weirdly magical and why I’ve always loved science. Not going to lie, the fossils and the sperm whale skeleton were the best parts of the museum.

Surrounding the museum buildings are the large grounds of the Botanical Gardens. As with most botanical gardens, there are a mix of (albeit small) buildings and some outside themed areas. With these being free and having to withstand the Norwegian climate, they aren’t as heavily themed as others I have been to, instead focusing more on plants that can actually survive here.

For the buildings, the best for me was the Victoria house and the mega lily pads. As for the outside sections, I think the Rock Garden as a facsimile of a mountainside was particularly lovely with its waterfall and bright colours. I think being here in late spring/early summer really was a perfect time to come to these gardens… especially when we usually seem to get to them once autumn hits as that’s when we tend to go on holiday.

Lunchtime and this is a bit of a revisit of a place we visited seven years ago in Stockholm. I didn’t know Max had made it over to Norway, but they sure did live up to the memories. I ended up with a jalapeno and avocado chicken burger alongside some of my husband’s fries. I have to re-enforce that the fries from Max are some of the best fast food fries in the world. I say this as someone who wouldn’t call themselves the biggest fan of fries.

A short ride on the metro and we found ourselves at the Historical Museum. Since the viking boat museum is under renovations, we hoped this would be the place to see some Viking stuff. Well, we kinda got to see some – but I think this is an itch that may just need to go unscratched as they only had enough to fill half a floor – the other half being taken up by a decidedly poor selection of ‘classical antiquities’ including a mummy whose bandages were so damaged that you could see a rib cage.

This is the joy of the Oslo Pass. If we’d paid the full £20, I would have been pretty down about the misaligned expectations. But instead, we just saw what we wanted and bounced on out – knowing this was low on our list of things to do anyway. I do have to make a special mention of an entire painted church roof that is on display here, complete with a bench for you to lay down and admire what’s overhead. This was easily the highlight of the museum for me.

The next stop was Palace Gardens. These were free to visit and had much chiller vibes than the Botanical Gardens. For one thing, the initial information display encouraged visitors to run on the grass and find a tree to hug. These are rules I am more than happy to live by.

With the Royal Palace in the middle, the park itself covers a fair amount of space. I can imagine it being incredibly popular on the weekends when the weather is right, which is why a sunny Friday afternoon was a perfect time to visit.

I think there are two main areas that, if you wanted a fleeting visit, that have to be hit up. Firstly, for the sheer humour of it all, there’s the Princess Ingrid Alexandra Sculpture Park. They took designs from a number of school children and turned it into a miniature sculpture park. This means alongside a beautiful geometric fox and bronze earthworm you have…

…a rabbit begging for death. I want a full play-by-play for how this design was one of those chosen and how the artist called to make this went out to make it. This is one of the wildest things I have seen brought to life in the name of public art and I low-key love that somehow this was brought into existence.

 

If you would rather not stare into the maw of a screaming rabbit, you can go to the more refined Queen’s Garden. With a fountain, a bronze statue of the queen herself and beautifully kept trees, this was an especially lovely part of the Royal Gardens. Perfect for a sit down as you question how much more walking there is still to do.

To keep us fueled up, we went for a snack that turned into more than a snack. One thing I read about is how hot dog kiosks are a dying breed. Since the famous one was very much out of the way, I went for the next best thing and found a hot dog bar and got myself a delicious reindeer sausage in a small baguette. My husband… ended up with a bratwurst with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut in portions that resembled a full blown meal. This man has hollow legs, I swear.

Time for the final use of the Oslo Pass, one of the most expensive museums we are visiting: the Munch museum.

I think, like most people, I only know of Munch for his painting of The Scream and that’s about it. So, how on earth did they manage to fill a 13 story building? The answer is not only is there more to him than just The Scream but he was incredibly prolific and did some absolutely massive paintings.

I have now been to a few museums centred around a certain painter: the two best being the Dali museum in Figueres and the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. Well, there’s a third in this list now. The Munch museum is modern, incredibly well designed and full of some pretty amazing artworks.

The thing that will stay with me the most were the scale of some of the paintings I saw. The largest was 50 square metres, which is larger than most of the hotel rooms I have ever stayed in. Hell, it’s many times the size of the room I lived in during the first year of university. Not only was it massive, but it was beautiful to look at.

I was similarly in love with many versions of ‘The Sun’ he painted, my favourite being the second largest that looked more like a biblically accurate angel than a giver of life.

As well as many galleries featuring his paintings, an area was set out similar to a black box theatre in order to depict his home. In it were interactive elements that played audio ranging from a greeting from his housekeeper, the sound of him painting you and music accompanying flowers sprouting from a bed. This is the area where you got to know Munch more as a person than just as a ridiculously talented painter and print-maker.

Another great thing about the height of the Munch museum is that it affords you some lovely views of the nearby bay and a more aerial view of Oslo Opera House. There would usually be access to an even higher floor, but something was happening today – but we could more than make do with the windows on the 12th floors.

Still more to do! After the museum came a visit across the road to the Oslo Opera House itself. Whilst there are tours you can do in order to see the inside, the reason to come here is to climb up the outside and onto the roof. The idea to build the opera house to feature a facade and roof that is completely publically accessible is so amazing. Like, London would never – at least not for free.

The views up here are lovely and I can only imagine what it is like to be up here for the sunset. Hopefully we will be able to do so before we leave Oslo, although given how late sunset is at the moment I have some serious doubts.

Final stop of the day was a walk through Oslo Cathedral which is open late on Fridays. It’s a protestant church, so the interior is never going to match some of the lavishness I’ve seen on previous trips. However, the ceiling paintings showed that just because the art is on the newer end of the spectrum, it still can fit perfectly into a major house of worship.

Also pretty different was the altar. Oftentimes these are covered in precious stones and metals – here you find a sculpture of the Last Supper where the perspective shifts as you move around it. Quite unusual.

And then there was dinner. It’s not been the healthiest day, but I saw some good things online about Illegal Burger – so knew I had to visit. Mine was the blue cheese and bacon burger – meaning this was the first beef burger I have had in months. It was so good and it was very close to Oslo Cathedral and, therefore, our hotel.

This may be one of the longest posts I have ever made and… well I need to wrap this up quickly because I need to be on an early train tomorrow. Definitely liking it here in Oslo, so let’s see what it’s like tomorrow on our visit to Lillehammer.

Originally Oslo – Day 1: Bygdøy

For whatever reason, there are two May bank holidays in the UK. Since the second one isn’t widely shared, it’s made for some ways to do some nice trips by using a minimum of holiday. For this trip, we took this a bit further by looking at flights from Gatwick, Heathrow and London City that we could reach after doing a full day of work. And lo’ this extended weekend trip to Oslo was born… where we arrived so late that I could see the sun preparing for dawn at 2 am. Insane.

With this trip, that is the last of the continental Scandinavian countries visited. It took us a while because we’d always figured that we’d want a longer time to be able to fit in Bergen as a second centre – but since there was a Bergen flight leaving from Gatwick 10 minutes before our Oslo flight, it might just be in the running for next May.

Despite it being a super late one, our plans weren’t too affected. Why? Because nothing tourist-friendly in Oslo really opens until 10 am, so we were able to get a decent sleep, an espresso and kick the day in the face. This gloriously sunny day in Oslo, where blue skies were plentiful and clouds were welcome whenever they visited.

For these first two days, we are on the Oslo Pass. Pretty much everything we wanted to visit is on here, plus it means a bunch of free transport options. If you are going to be doing a bit of museum diving, then the Oslo Pass is one hell of a good value.

The pass also gives you free boat rides from the harbour by the town hall to Bygdøy – a lovely peninsula that is referred to as Museum Island when you arrive. The boat ride itself is a gorgeous way to start your day (armed with that espresso) and set the scene for how chill this day is going to feel.

To start off, we went into the Kon Tiki Muesum. In brief, this is a museum named after the Kon TIki expedition in the 1940s – where a Norwegian crew set out to show it would have been possible for native South Americans to have travelled to Polynesia using technology of the times. He succeeded and became a national hero who went on to mount multiple other expeditions.

The raft on show in the museum is the actual one used on this expedition… and to think this was able to complete that trip feels ridiculous. The museum itself is actually quite compact, but it was very interesting to learn about Thor Heyerdahl and his different voyages. Even if his crew did harm a whale shark who got too curious. Minus points for that one.

Over the road is the Fram Museum – a museum centred around Norway’s amazing role in polar expeditions. Where Thor Heyerdahl is the hero of the Kon Tiki Museum, the hero of the Fram museum is very much Roald Amundsen.

Housed in the Fram Museum here are two original ships that made significant voyages – all the more incredible given that you are able to go inside both of them and walk through a pre-defined route. The smaller section of the museum, where we started, contains the Gjøa – the ship where Amundsen did his first polar voyage, becoming the first to traverse the Northwest passage over Canada.

The main part of the museum, however, is dedicated to its namesake – the Fram. As a Brit, I very much know of Amundsen as the man who beat Scott to become the first man to reach the South Pole. It was so cool to see the ship itself where he accomplished this and to see how he was not only able to beat Scott, but also managed to return alive without there being so many hiccups as those which plagued his British ‘rival’ who brought ponies to the Antarctic in what feels like the equivalent of bringing a knife to a gunfight.

In all honesty, the Fram Museum was on our list as a ‘if we have the time’ – something I am so glad that we did. I was also so glad to see how many of the other crew members of the Fram were given their time, especially Adolf Lindstrøm – the chef aboard both the Fram and the Gjøa whose importance and good humour was greatly stated.

Time for lunch. I am keenly aware that whilst in Norway, things are going to feel expensive. I say this as someone who has to deal with London prices. Given how much we are saving with the Oslo Pass, it means I feel a bit better when having such a delicious lunch where my husband shared a salmon and a prawn open faced sandwich. Also, there was a cinnamon bun because this is a holiday and the diet is on pause.

Was this cheap? No, but considering the prices and what I am used to in London it did feel like it made sense. Helped that both open faced sandwiches were packed with toppings – like I honestly was so pleased to see a mountain of prawns on that sandwich. Definitely something I would love to replicate at home if fish prices weren’t through the roof.

Our last stop on Bygdøy was our longest, The Norwegian Folk Museum. In a smaller area there are actual museum style exhibitions showing folk art, folk dress and a section about Sami culture. This isn’t the reason coming here – the massive open air museum containing buildings from all over the country from different periods is why.

The absolute jewel in the crown of this is the Gol Stave Church, which has parts dating from the 13th century. I’ve only seen these kinds of buildings in video games, in person it’s pretty awe-inspiring. The fact that bigger ones of these, built in a similar method, makes me just want to see more of them.

We really lucked out with the weather on this visit – it made for a perfect temperature to explore the entire open air museum. On the way we saw the oldest preserved wooden abode in the world, buildings with full family histories (including the egg collection of one of the children who died in World War I) and a whole apartment block that had been moved over with accompanying stories of the residents.

Punctuating these buildings are staff dressed in costumes relevant to the period of the building. One of them was just drinking tea in ‘their garden’ whilst dressed in period costume – truly a job made for a retiree.

A bit of transport later and we were off the peninsula and up in the mountains overlooking Oslo. By taking this journey from Stortinget in central Oslo out to Frognerseteren, we traversed the largest elevation difference in any metro system in the world (from 9 metres below sea level to 478 metres above). Nice bit of trivia there.

We made this journey in order to visit the Rose Castle – a large art installation dedicated to Norwegians during the Nazi occupation in World War Two. This is not your typical monument, this art installation, which is a only a few years old and a year from being complete, is a very different experience.

You snake your way around giant paintings depicting events or individual stories of the occupation. Throughout there are speakers disguised as hanging Greek amphora playing things in Norwegian, Ancient Greek and Latin. Being in the open air, these paintings are all in various states of newness – something that will be interesting to see develop over the years.

Overlooking the Oslo fjord are large gold coloured sculptures in various shapes including trees, a mountain and a sail. The views from up here are beautiful, which is somewhat at odds with how sombre and reflective the Rose Castle is. As a whole, this isn’t like anything I’ve ever been to and I am interested to see what happens now this needs to be preserved – since some of the art pieces are showing a lot of wear from being exposed to the variable Norwegian weather.

We stayed in the area for dinner, choosing to eat where we’d be able to enjoy more of the views over Oslo fjord. It was a bigger dinner than planned, with us having meatballs, potatoes and some kind of vegetable mash that, with the awesome gravy, was delicious. We split two different desserts, but the star of the show was the pecan pie. Again, I am glad to have put the diet on pause.

Tomorrow will be more Oslo Pass stuff, hopefully it will be a longer sleep tonight so I don’t have to rely on an espresso… other than just liking espresso.

Keeping it Kaohsiung – Day 6: Pier2 Art Center and Departure

Final day of this entire holiday because my husband refuses my delusion that we were instead flying out to Busan for a further week. With a 5 hour layover in Bangkok before another 12-13 hour flight back to London, this is going to go down as one of the longest bits of travelling I’ve needed to undertake.

That still meant we had a full morning and a bit of early afternoon before getting on the very convenient Kaohsiung MRT to the airport. This meant a proper time to walk through and explore the revamped old harbour area of the city. We’d walked through here en route to our boat to Cijin, back it was good to have some proper time here. Especially as this maybe my favourite area of the city.

The morning started out at the Hamasen Cultural Railway Park. This used to be a essential part of the Kaohsiung harbour and some of the lines are now part of the tramway loop. Now, you can walk around the now dormant tracks. Some old trains are standing here resting whilst in other parts there are some modern art pieces made from old bits of rebar or other reclaimed materials.

At this point it was just after 10 am, but the sun was so intense that my umbrella was up and I was playing the classic juggling game and the other classic game of ‘find the shade before I expire’. If it had been cooler I think I would have tried to persuade my husband to ride the little train that goes around the whole park. Thankfully the next place was inside and fully air conditioned.

Next was the Hamasan Museum of Taiwan Railway. This is a small museum housed in some of the old harbour warehouses (much like everything in this area) that takes you through some history of Taiwan’s railway. I think the Kaohsiung Museum of History did a better job, but that didn’t have one of the coolest rooms I’ve seen all holiday.

This museum has a massive room featuring model railways, split into multiple connected sections for different cities in Taiwan. It had a full day-night cycle complete with light-up buildings and it had working signals and level crossings. I am not a train person – that’s my husband’s area of joy – but wow this was a room I could have spent more time in.

We then entered the main Pier2 Art area. This is a large section of repurposed warehouses that have been renovated to be shops, cafes and homes for art. As you roam around the outside you’ll come across wall art and sculptures of all different styles and sizes. Including another big robot. I thought this was a Japan thing mostly, but Taiwan is really all in on these guys.

Whilst we were here, there just happened to be a warehouse with a temporary creative installation about that Dutch cultural icon: Miffy (or Nijntje in The Netherlands). As well as having the obligatory gift shop, the warehouse was full of Miffy dressed up or made up by local artists. Some of them were really cool and others, like the Hellraiser Miffy, were a bit odd. All added to the fun though.

It was after this where we ticked off the final food item from my list: pineapple cake from Sunny Hills. What we did not know was that the piece of pineapple cake and cup of oolong tea was free. It’s a taster to see if you’d buy more cake. That was deliciously confusing. The cake was like if candied pineapple was wrapped in soft almost shortbread. Once I realigned my expectations of what the cake would be, it was very delicious.

The rest of our time was the spent going around the different warehouses. Browsing the shops, taking pictures of art and enjoying the kismet of being here when there was a festival going on. I don’t know what the Megaport Festival is about, but it sure meant a lot of people, live music and huge selection of stalls (food, shopping and corporate sponsorship from the delivery brand Foodpanda).

If we lived in Kaohsiung, other than investing in some kind of all body cooling system, this is one of those areas I would want to come visit regularly. Even if it’s just standing on the Harbour Bridge and enjoying the views both towards the main city and towards the nearby mountain.

We had a final bubble tea (lemon and winter melon) before making our way to the airport. I do feel a bit sad leaving Kaohsiung. This feels like a city that, despite their tallest building laying abandoned, feels like it is moving forward in such a great direction. I can only wonder what the next 10 years will hold with all the works that are still going on. Maybe this will be one of those places I got to before it’s properly discovered by the West? Who knows.

One thing I do know, however, is that as long as China doesn’t make any rash decisions – there is plenty more left on this island to discover and I would love to see it. So who knows, maybe in another 5-6 years I’ll be writing about my trip to Taichung or somewhere else.

Keeping it Kaohsiung – Day 5: Tainan’s West Central District

Our last day here in the hot south of Taiwan. It was a bit of a later start as the list for our second day trip to Tainan was a lot shorter and more walkable than what was on the docket for the previous day. Being a Saturday, everything felt busier – which was typified by us having to wait for a while for a train that would allow us on.

Hey ho, all that meant was that we had a proper excuse to try a Taiwanese train bento. This was a pork chop bento, which also came with an egg, fish cake and a piece of tofu. Was it the best bento I’ve ever had? No, but I would easily buy this if it was available in the UK. Especially for this price.

So we ended up in Tainan a bit later than we’d first expected, but we’re here to make the most of it. The first destination was Chikan Tower. Together with the Anping Old Fort, this is one of the iconic buildings in Tainan. If you can’t guess where this is going considering the past few days… let me reveal that this too was covered in scaffolding. There’s a saying that things come in threes, so I guess this was bound to happen once more before we left for home.

A smaller building was left out to actually make sense of paying the regular ticket entry to go in. It was fine and the surroundings were nice enough, but when you got a peak at the actual tower through the scaffolding… well it just made things feel a little bit sad as it really is just that much grander. I think maybe if it was less humid, I would have been in better spirits to make the best of it but, for now, I’m just glad I didn’t get a Tainan souvenir with the tower on it from the Anping Old Street market.

Across the road is the Tainan Grand Mazu Temple. Mazu is everywhere in this area, which makes sense since this is a coastal city and she is a water deity. The temple complex itself is deceptively large with many smaller temple buildings all nestled into each other.

Like the Luerman temple we saw yesterday, there is a room to ask the gods for help in matters of love – complete with a wall of pictures of successful and in love couples. This is, again, next to a room where a many-armed deity is front and centre – so I am assuming this is a common pairing that I need to learn about. Something for the 5 hour layover tomorrow evening maybe.

Since it was very hot and sticky we tried to find some bubble tea… but a bit of confusion at the checkout meant we ended up with a taro milk instead. It was still nice though, especially since it had actual taro chunks blended in rather than the powder we get back in the UK.

We also took this as a chance to get some lunch from a very busy bakery. All the signs were in Chinese characters, so we took a punt and got four rolls to share completely at random. The first was a sausage bun, slight crispness because it had been finished out with a bit of a melted butter sear. The second with the seeds on top turned out to be a red bean bun. The little ones where there were two in the pack was something akin to a soft French toast kind of a bun. The largest one is… still a bit of a mystery. I think it was like some kind of chicken and pineapple curry bread with cheese – it was nice but I just want to know what it was!

I won’t dwell too much on our visit to Shennong Street. This is meant to be an old shopping street worth having a peruse through. We walked through, and didn’t really feel the need to stop. Moving on.

A bit of a walk away was a really lovely patch of Tainan, the Blueprint Cultural Park. It’s about a block of buildings that is completely pedestrianised, there is plenty of art work and the shops are all crafty and independent. That also meant some of the prices were a bit steep, but we found a lovely shop to get some presents for the family. Not going to elaborate further as I found out today that my mother-in-law will probably be reading this before we can give her the gift.

I wish there were more spots like this in Tainan as it really was this beautiful patch of quiet and harmony – all with cute blue robots. Still, it is good that this exists and maybe means that more spaces like this can have the room to develop.

Our final stop in Tainan was the Hayashi Department Store. This was an old-style Japanese department store that is still in operation and, in places, really feels like you are shopping somewhere that is a bit out of time. I really loved a lot of the things for sale on the ‘Innovative Designs’ floor – something where I can imagine that, if I were more local, there are plenty of things I would want for my home.

At the very top of the store is an observation rooftop and a Shinto shrine that was completed within the first year of the store’s operation. It is a shrine to the patron God of the store and is just a nice and simple reminder of this store’s origins.

The fifth floor of Hayashi has a café and, since we had some time to kill before our reserved train back, we popped in for a cooling dessert. This pineapple shaved ice was massive and was pretty incredible. Thanks to it having a mix of pineapple syrup, candied pineapple and jelly cubes at the bottom – there was so enough variation in the textures and strength of flavour that it never got boring to eat.

We made it back to Kaohsiung by five in the afternoon. Whilst we knew this had an anime store, we didn’t quite get that it had most of a floor of general geekery. So, we ended spending a bit too much on geek stuff, but more on that in a bit.

For dinner, we just wanted a sit down dinner – so we went to Hanshin Arena, where there are a wide selection of restaurants to pick from. Originally we tried to get into the hot pot restaurant, as that’s something we’ve not done in Taiwan before, but the queue was ridiculous. This is how we ended up going for a restaurant that provided one of my favourite Japanese things: okonomiyaki. Specifically the Hiroshima style of okonomiyaki.

Between us we shared some takoyaki, a pork yakisoba and a cheese topped mixed okonomiyaki. I do not believe that everything tastes better with cheese on… but this certainly did. Especially as okonomiyaki sauce contains a lot of similar flavours to Worcestershire sauce. Definitely one of the nicest versions of okonomiyaki I’ve ever had.

That leaves me with what has become a picture of our souvenir haul over the last week and a half. This picture does not include the presents we have gotten for other people, but honestly this picture shows enough. Unpacking these is really going to make things easier as try to readjust out body clocks.

Tomorrow is an almost half day in Kaohsiung, so there will be one more post in this series. Also going to be another scorcher, which makes me glad I thought ahead on laundry day to make sure I had a clean set of clothes for flying. Hopefully we’ll be able to tick off the last bit of food I was hoping to try whilst here.

Keeping it Kaohsiung – Day 4: Trip to Anping

So here we go with our first off two day trips to Tainan. For the sake of convenience, we did consider just having an overnight stay. However, with the right train, it’s like 30-60 minutes and the tickets are quite cheap. So it just made more sense to turn this into two individual day trips.

For this one, we aren’t going to be in the main part of Tainan city, instead we are going to be out in the Anping District. The more central Tainan day is due to be tomorrow.

To make sure the itinerary worked, we got a train just after 9 am from Kaohsiung main station. Interesting fact, nothing edible was open at the station when we were getting the train. They just open later, except for the convenience stores. There is even a bento place here which we weren’t able to try. Maybe tomorrow we’ll take a later train.

Once in Tainan, we took a bus out to an old fort called the Eternal Golden Castle. We found out the night before that it was under renovation, but this still worked as a starting point… even if the front was mostly cordoned off by the construction work. Oh well.

From here, we traced the coastline north through the different parks to end up in Anping itself. On the way, you can see some nice statues including one of Mazu and a really cool whale. Also walked by an old war boat that they had placed some Transformers on. Taiwan really seems to enjoy Transformers.

Once in Anping, we had a peek in on the Anping Guanyin temple, which is fairly small, before going to the big temple in the old town – Anping Kaitai Tianhou. At this point, we came to realise that this must be one of those days where a bunch of schools get to take their students on trips. I’d almost think this was a Good Friday thing… but this isn’t exactly a Christian country.

After the temple, we wandered the streets of Old Anping to do some shopping and maybe get a small bite to eat. I had two things to look for whilst here and managed to get both. First was shrimp crackers, which are so ubiquitous that we got to try them as a free sample. The other thing was coffin toast – think a coffin made out of fried bread which is then filled with corn and other vegetables before spooning in a thick fish soup. It was delicious and I wish I had bought two for myself.

Next on the list was Anping Old Fort aka Fort Zeelandia. The original fort was built by the Dutch when they came to Taiwan as part of their wider colonial trading network. What remains of the original fort is just two walls. The rest is mostly of Chinese or Japanese construction as the fort changed hands multiple times.

Of the additions, the tower is by far the best and I can see how this has become a bit of an icon for the area. We didn’t go up because it was hot and, honestly, I wasn’t too sure if Anping from above was going to give the best photos. Overall, this is an interesting thing to see – but it was a bit strange how much they made of the Dutch when so little of the original structure is left.

They even sell potato snacks using edits of classic Dutch paintings!

Our last site in Anping was the one we were most looking forward to: the Anping Tree House. On paper, this is a bit of a weird thing to preserve as a tourist attraction, an old storehouse that has been overtaken by local banyan trees – but this is just such a weird and cool place to walk around. There’s a reason that this is one of those things in Taiwan that a lot of ‘influencers’ will get photographed in.

To get the rest of this day to work, we needed to start using some local taxi apps. The buses can be super infrequent and even when they are running, they turn a 10 minute drive into an hour where you have to change buses. For two people, it just made sense to do this.

So that’s how we got to Sicao for the Green Tunnel boat ride. Sicao is within the Taijiang National Park, the home of a wide area of mangrove forests and wetlands. This boat ride takes half an hour and takes you through some mangrove areas and through a green tunnel of overhanging trees. Okay so the tunnel isn’t 100% natural, but the little crabs and the egret we saw were. It was just a lovely way to spend a half hour, especially as we all kept having to duck for some of the extremely low hanging branches.

Following this, we popper into another taxi to the Luerman Temple. Temples have been there for centuries, but when the current complex was completed, it was the largest religious complex in East Asia. It must also have some of the largest guardian deity statues in the world as those two gentlemen were massive.

The temple complex itself is like a warren of altars and incense. Also it’s basically a Taiwanese super church. The amount of money poured into construction and maintenance of the complex must be massive. Of the whole complex, I developed a soft spot for the building at the back that was devoted to those praying for love. It was three floors tall and the walls of the stairways were decorated with the photos and wedding invites of those who found love. Some of these photos were so old that they’d been sun bleached to white in the following years.

In the car park on the way out, we saw the second of two mini processions (the first was when we were waiting for the bus to get us to the Eternal Golden Castle). This second one, however, had the soundtrack of a whole bunch of firecrackers. Given how many of those involved were teen boys, and there was a fair bit of instruction involved, it almost looked like a bit of a rehearsal. It’s Children’s Day soon… so maybe it’s related to that.

Finished off at the Wusheng Night Market. This might be the last night market of the trip depending on how long it takes us to get through our list of things to do on our second Tainan day. We’d barely eaten today so was ravenous, it was early so most of the stalls were still setting up when we arrived. The highlights of this particular food haul ended up being a curried chicken kebab roll, a Korean style pork wrap and some fried pork dumplings. I was hoping the takoyaki stall would have finished setting up before I got full, but alas that wasn’t to be.

Tomorrow is the last full day of our holiday and we will be looking at some more things in central Tainan. It’s a return to the very hot temperatures and sun, so hopefully some of these places will have air conditioning for me to escape into.

Keeping it Kaohsiung – Day 3: Indoors in Kaohsiung

So last night we scrambled a bit to make sure we had an itinerary that would work with rain between 10 and 4 with most of the hours showing between 70 and 100% chance of heavy rain. When we woke up, the forecast hadn’t changed so we got on with the planned day. In the end, the thunderstorm got downgraded to a light drizzle that was pretty much over in under an hour. I wouldn’t change much of what we ended up doing though, it’s been a pretty nice not-quite-rained off day in Kaohsiung.

The day started off with us visiting the Kaohsiung Museum of History, so we could get to know a bit more about this city we’re staying in. About a quarter of the rooms were closed off to make new exhibitions, but all the overviews of the city’s history were open to view. First thing, in a previous post I talked about the rebranding of Love River as a bit of a blatant tourism ploy (as that’s how an Expedia video on the city made it sound). Not true – it originates from a journalist’s nickname which has just stuck.

Other than that. The parts of the museum that were translated into English were really interesting. It shows just how much investment has been put into making Kaohsiung function as a city. From the construction of vast networks of canals to massive railway projects to the huge land reclamation schemes made to properly exploit the natural lagoon to turn it into a major harbour. Depending on where you are, you can see just how much is still being invested into modernizing the city – just makes you wonder where it will be in another 10 years.

Time for brunch. One of the main things we wanted to get was beef noodle soup. This is one of the big Taiwanese dishes, so you need to get it whilst you are here. Last time we got it in a night market, this time it was from one of the many small food places that are everywhere you look. This time I wanted to get a thicker noodle and, since they were only a quid, we shared a plate of dumplings. Absolutely delicious.

We wanted to get some bubble tea for after, so just walked to the nearest place with a good rating. This just so happened to be us stumbling upon the cutest store I have seen since being in Kaohsiung. Everything is bear themed and the furniture is from an old elementary school. For an extra $49 dollars, you can get your bubble tea in a souvenir bear bottle with your choice of strap and bow tie. That’s like just over a pound, so of course I got him for my hazelnut bubble tea.

This place also did shaved ice, which is something I have wanted to have since getting here. We were able to pick four toppings and, again, it felt like a total steal. So with our little bear spoons we ate shaved ice with condensed milk, roasted wheat powder, taro and passion fruit jam. It was such a delicious mix of flavours and if I am ever back in Kaohsiung, this is getting a special visit.

Full to bursting, we rode on the tram line to get to the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. Not entirely sure what makes ‘fine art’ distinct from ‘modern art’ in this context because, in effect, this was a museum of modern art.

One thing I have to say about the Taiwanese museums I have visited over both trips: the buildings are beautifully set out and well looked after. Not necessarily the easiest to navigate, but that just becomes part of the fun.

Over the four floors we saw some truly brilliant pieces of art. Some that come to mind include a partially pixelated wooden sculpture of a stork, some whimsical pieces around perspective showing people looking into the distance when what they are looking for is right there beside them and this political art piece around a chicken puppet that was entered into a Kaohsiung election as a protest against politicians being voted into power for life.

The top floor felt very special. There is a yearly Kaohsiung art competition and the top floor was dedicated to showcasing the winning entries as well as some special mentions. I guess this is like an equivalent to the Turner Prize in the UK. I really enjoyed seeing just how different the pieces were to fit the loose brief. I especially enjoyed the entry inspired by the ending of The Truman Show, a mixed media piece that combined woodblock printing and jade-like islands and a video piece centred around trying to drill a hole straight through a piece of chalk.

I really do love visiting art galleries in countries where I know nothing about the art scene. Like with my visits to Riga and Ottawa, I saw some fantastic works of art that I feel enriched by.

On the complete flip-side, we went from a fine art museum to Kaohsiung’s Dream Mall. This is the largest mall in Taiwan as well as being one of the largest malls in Asia. It’s 11 floors including a small rooftop theme park.

The theme park… well it’s seen better days. I think when it really gets going, it would feel a bit less haunted. But this is a Thursday afternoon where someone was having a banana boat ride for one and the model dinosaurs made everything that little bit more ridiculous.

It does have a Ferris Wheel though, which meant we were able to get another birds eye view of Kaohsiung. I am a sucker for a good Ferris Wheel, especially when there is an observation tower to make use of.

We had a good look around the mall and made a few purchases here and there. We also used our mall time to have a bit of a sit and grab a snack from one of the bakeries in the basement food court. Three purchases were shared between us to make up a starter (Russian bread with garlic), a main (pork floss bun) and a dessert (sweet potato brown sugar mochi bread). The dessert was the best bread and is one that I don’t think I’ll ever have again.

Some time later we got to having some dinner at the Ruifeng Night Market. This is not a street based night market, instead being set up in a specific area. This is a mix of food vendors, clothes, accessories and carnival games at this market, but we’re here for the food.

The top bite of the night was a Korean-inspired bite that was a take on tteokbokki, but with added chicken, flame-grilled cheese on top and with more of a rose sauce. It was delicious. We also had some watermelon juice and Taiwanese sausage. I also got to try some of the famous fried chicken made by Angel Chicken whilst husband got some flame grilled steak cubes.

Was this the end of the evening? No, we had one more stop to make at Sanfong Temple. It looked beautiful at night with the lanterns all lit… and what can only be described as a puppet show rave happening in the parking lot. If possible, it’s really special to see some of these Taiwanese temples all lit up at night. It just adds a bit more to the experience, especially if they are known for having lanterns out.

So, that’s it for what was supposed to be a nearly rained off day. It is so humid at the moment and it’s not going to relent tomorrow. This was the final full day in Kaohsiung, with the final two full days being spent exploring the nearby city of Tainan thanks to the train tickets being so much cheaper than back in the UK.

Keeping it Kaohsiung – Day 2: Fo Guang Shan and Lotus Lake

It’s the second day of this part of the holiday and the first of a few days where we’re in Kaohsiung proper. Before getting into the day, there is something that needs to be said about the city as a whole: it was not designed for pedestrians. At every point where we needed to walk between places, there was so much needless frustration.

For many smaller roads there is just not a pavement, instead you are walking as close to the edge of the road as possible. For a lot of them that do have some kind of walkway, you are actually ducking through shopfronts. There was a stretch of this where we went through multiple food preparation areas for smaller food places. Even when you do get to a major road with pavement, the number of mopeds and motorbikes makes crossings difficult as they are turning in. Just something worth keeping in mind when making plans for this city.

With that out of the way, let’s look at what we did today.

When looking up big things to do in Kaohsiung, there are two activities that repeatedly come up – so today was designed to check off both of the big hitters. This meant an early wake up time so that we could make an early shuttle bus for Fo Guang Shan. These buses are fairly infrequent and, thanks to us being half an hour early, we were not one of the poor souls left behind to wait for the next bus an hour later.

Fo Guang Shan is a massive complex affiliated with the monastic order of the same name. We started out at the end with the monasteries and worked our way north. Starting off, we made the climb to ‘Great Buddha Land’ to see one of the two massive Buddhas in the complex. Setting the tone for the rest of this visit, it was like we had the entire area to ourselves. It was so quiet across the complex that it actually got a bit eerie.

From here we explored the monastery area: visiting the Avalokitesvara pond, passing through the Gate of Duality and crossing the bridge to see the Great Compassion Shrine. Again it was so quiet in so many areas that it sometimes did take a while before we saw another person be they a monk, nun or tourist.

Then game the main shrine. Sadly, this is one of those situations where photography is not allowed because the three bronze Buddhas and the light jewel towers standing either side of them were truly beautiful. It was here where we got the first of some very friendly people working at the complex being incredibly helpful. By the end of our visit, we had someone thrusting religious literature at us and trying to get us to light incense… so I think there was a definite charm offensive going on.

We had a nice brunch at the place on the complex. Between us we split an order of sesame noodles and a thick butter biscuit toast. As we ate we were surrounded by some very nice Buddhist nuns who were seemingly here on a pilgrimage and were having a lot of steamed dumplings between them.

After visiting the Sutra Repository, with it’s beautiful calligraphy wall carvings and embalmed body of the order’s founder on display, we arrived at the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum area. As we didn’t come in from the main entrance, we didn’t the full effect of seeing one of the world’s largest Buddha statues looming in the distance as you walk through the pagodas – although we did see him peeking on the walk through the gardens.

The museum itself is very much aimed at being accessible to all and teaching the story of Buddha’s life and the many festivals of Buddhism. For me the interesting parts were the sections containing treasures and talking about a recently discovered underground palace in China. There was also a beautiful (and sadly unphotographable) reclining Jade Buddha statue flanked by two massive art pieces also made out of various colours of jade. This was definitely one of the highlights.

Finally, we made our way to the top floor and see the Big Buddha up close. There is no denying how impressively large he is, sat high above us as we stood on the sun baked roof having to smile and just take a bunch of religious literature after venturing into one of the four stupa.

Time was marching on and, given the infrequency of the buses, we took our leave and went back to Kaohsiung proper.

It took us two days, but we got our first bubble tea of the holiday – a brown sugar panda tea with two types of pearls. I think we needed this extra fuel for the amount of extra walking we were about to do.

The second of the two big destinations was Lotus Lake. When we first became aware of Kaohsiung as a potential destination back in 2018, it was the dragon and lion pagodas on Lotus Lake that made the biggest impression – this whole holiday (including the side mission to Okinawa) all spun off from seeing these pavilions.

So it took me a good 15-20 minutes to get over the fact that this was the state of them when we visited. Completely scaffolded over, pretty much closed entirely. I’m probably never going to make it back to this city given how many other places are on the wish list. So it was a bitter pill to swallow that this was it.

Thankfully they are far from the only things to see on Lotus Lake and it was far from a wasted journey. For one thing, there are the Spring and Autumn Pavilions next door. Here you are able to make believe what it is like to be eaten up and pooped out by a very long dragon. Honestly, it was this dragon sculpture that really helped to get me back in a good mood after the other disappointment.

Opposite is the Chi Ming Tang temple. Here you can see statues of Guan Yu, many carved dragons and the best view of the Spring and Autumn Pavilions that you can get. This was followed by visits to the Yuandi Temple and it’s huge sculpture of Xuantian, then the Confucian Temple.

Before leaving the Lotus Lake area, we stopped by the Chingshui Temple right across the pond. This small temple was utterly deserted, despite having a huge statue on the roof that, thanks to an elevator up to the fifth floor, you were able to get up close and personal with. There were also beautiful carved dragon columns and some impressive art pieces of a dragon and peacock made of cups, plates and other kitchenware on display.

Being in Taiwan, dinner had to be a night market. The one near Lotus Lake is closed on Wednesdays (we had to shuffle our itinerary for reasons I’ll mention at the end of the post) so we went over to the Liouhe Tourist Night Market. Tourist or not, we had some incredible food and filled our bellies on about £5-6 each.

The big highlight was a pork belly roll with kimchi, but we also had some Taiwanese fried chicken, a Taiwanese hot dog with rice bun, scallion pancake, papaya milk and some sugar-coated strawberries on a stick. This will hopefully not be the last night market we do whilst we’re here, I want to try more of the things

One of the bonuses of going to the Liouhe Tourist Night Market is that you need to stop over at Formosa Boulevard station – the home of the Dome of Light stained glass sculpture. When we first arrived, before going to eat, it had been switched off in preparation for a ‘show’ – but post-food it was on and looking absolutely gorgeous. I can see why this is one of those things people recommend to see whilst in Kaohsiung.

We finished the day with a boat ride on the Love River. They call it the Love Boat. It’s a whole thing and was hoping they would at least make a nod to the US show of the same name. For about £3.50 you get a 25 minute boat ride and the chance to see some really lovely buildings lit up at night. It was worth a bit of an extra walk to have this cap off the day.

Tomorrow is a bit of a bummer because it’s thunderstorms all day with properly heavy rain forecast until just before sunset. That’s why we ended up visiting these sites today and swapped night markets around. Still working out a final itinerary as nearly everything we want to do is outside – so seat of our pants time it is!

Keeping it Kaohsiung – Day 1: Cijin Island

We arrived in Kaohsiung late last night and the first thing that struck me was just the immediate change in humidity levels compared to Okinawa. This city’s weather is definitely not planning on playing nice with our week here, but they sure did look lovely on the ride from the airport to the hotel.

So here we are with the first official day. If the current forecast is to be believed, this was the warmest day we are going to get, although the UV Index is going to stay in the realms of ‘death from above’. Needless to say, I spent the majority of the day with an umbrella open to shield me as much as possible. Looks like this actually worked well in tandem with my super sunblock and so I guess this will be me during the high-sun hours until I am back in the UK.

The bulk of the day was planned to be on nearby Cijin (or Qijin) island. This is a long and thin island that acts as a natural breakwater for the city itself. To get there, you need a very short ferry journey which, if you can find the right place (aka Gushan Ferry Station) departs very frequently.

To get there from the hotel, we took a stroll along the Love River – actual name that works as a bit of a cynical bit of rebranding. For most of this walk, the path was basically devoid of other people. I know this is a Tuesday in the off-season, but I couldn’t believe how we had huge stretches of this river to ourselves.

On the way, Love River provided many photo opportunities with modern art pieces and the futuristic honeycomb structure of the Kaohsiung Music Center.

You also need to cut through the Pier 2 Art Center – something we are going to properly explore on a future day. But if the parts we saw today are anything to go by, it’s going to make for a good final morning before we leave on Sunday.

Once we got onto the island, we got immediately side-tracked by the sight of a beautiful temple in Cijin Old Town. I had forgotten this about temples in Taiwan, they go hard on the decorations. It acted as an appetizer for a temple we visited later in the day, to the point that looking at the photos now – this temple that wowed me looks more normal now. More on that later.

Given that the temperature still had a few degrees to climb, we decided the best option would be to do our own climbing now as we were fresh and willing to do so. Up this hill you find Kaohsiung Lighthouse. The lighthouse itself is pretty, but the draw are the views over the island and back over Kaohsiung itself. Another interesting tidbit is that the original lighthouse was designed by British engineers just like…

… the neighbouring Cihou Fort. Seeing British names being mentioned as part of the design of this building was truly bizarre. Equally bizarre was finding out that the fort was built as a reaction to the same incident that caused Japan to fully take over and incorporate Okinawa. This holiday that I have been thinking off as being two separate entities suddenly have this weird connective tissue of the Mudan Incident.

After descending back to ground level, there is then Cijin Tunnel – an old tunnel made during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan that is now decked out in LEDs and referred to as the Tunnel of Stars. On the other side? A gorgeous viewpoint looking onto Coral Reef Cliff and the sea itself.

At this point we had gone through multiple bottles of drink and it felt like the right time to take a break with a local beverage. Somehow we ignored the call of bubble tea and instead enjoyed a lemon jelly winter melon drink whilst staring out at the black sand beaches of Cijin. Truly, if it was a bit cooler, this would be a version of a beach holiday I could get on board with.

So began our leisurely walk alongside the black sand beach with its coconut palms and occasional tiki-styled huts. This is one of those areas where, in high-season, I can imagine how packed it would be. For us, it was so quiet and so we could get pictures of the Rainbow Church art installations without waiting for too long. Apparently it can really be busy.

Since neither of us were too hungry, we had a small lunch at a nice restaurant looking over the beach. We shared a plate of tofu skin wrapped shrimp balls and let some time pass while the sun was at its height and we were in an air conditioned space.

Our final destination before turning back was the Cijin Windmill Park. An open space that has a lovely view over the sand and sea but, in terms of windmills… only had a single one turning in what was quite a strong wind. Not quite the end to the walk I was hoping, but apparently this is where people come to fly their kites on busier days and I can imagine that being a sight to see.

We left some places for the way back so it would just be a route march. First we happened across a small war memorial museum to the Taiwanese victims of the Second World. It’s tiny, but it’s always worth a short diversion to learn more about the history of the country you are in. Again, I don’t think I properly realised how long the Japanese occupation of Taiwan was. Quite sobering.

The final stop was Cijin Tiensheng Temple. This is one of those places where it’s hard to know where to fix your eyes. There is just so much going on everywhere that I am sure that I will end up looking at some of my photos and spot details I previously missed. It was so extravagant and was a perfect final piece of eye candy for this part of the trip. Makes me so glad that there’s a fair bit of temple hopping in this section of the holiday.

It’s a long walk back to the pier, especially when there’s no real pavement and you’re sharing a road with the thousands of mopeds that live in the area. Doesn’t stop the street vendors though. On the walk back, we just kept smelling delicious food and drink – we gave in eventually with a pork and spring onion bun. It was so juicy and would keep us going until dinnertime.

Then just like that, we were on the ferry back to Kaohsiung proper. We had enough time before our dinner reservation that we grabbed something from the list of overspill activities – a trip up to the Love Lookout and the Kaohsiung Martyrs Shrine.

Without a motor-vehicle, there’s no easy way to get there. It’s either winding major roads with all the mopeds or its small alleys through some of the poorer areas of the city. We did both and it makes me wonder what happens in the main season. These narrow paths through people’s front yards must get clogged with random tourists.

The view from Love Lookout is worth the climb though. It is also the best view you are going to get over the city after the abandonment of the city’s tallest building. It was probably a stupid hike to do after so much walking, but I’m a sucker for a good viewpoint.

For dinner, we actually went to the dim sum restaurant in the hotel. The rating was really high, the prices reasonable and I jumped at the chance to enjoy dim sum from a trolley once again. It was a lovely meal at a fraction of the price of London and, thanks to not eating much all day, I was able to put away more than I normally would have. Got a good variety of plates in with the turnip cake and pork and oyster sauce buns being my favourites.

If that wasn’t enough walking, I wanted to see the Love River at night. It was a short walk, to be further elaborated on tomorrow when we plan to go on a boat ride. Night feels like the best time to see this river and the lights of the surrounding city, so tomorrow should be something special.

Such a packed first day here in Southern Taiwan. Tomorrow is set to have some pretty amazing landmarks on the itinerary, so it’s an early start and I am way past my bedtime.