Oslo

Ahhh, Oslo. Home of King Harald V of Norway, who is also 71st in line for the British throne; the Vikings; and the stave churches.

When I arrived, it was too late for dinner (hence the McDonalds), but I had more time here than in Stockholm, so I was in no hurry to go out and find a restaurant immediately. Big mistake.

The next day, I did a lot of things to try to prepare for my London leg which were not related to food. In fact, I didn't had an opportunity to eat until the afternoon when I arrived at the Norwegian Folk Museum (translation: the Norwegian Folk Museum). I went to the cafe after buying my ticket and I thought it would be a good idea to buy an ice cream. The cafe, after all, was warm and full of the smell of coffee.

Yet when I went outside to eat my ice cream ... I realised that I must have been crazy. It was cold. And it started raining just after I entered this open-air museum. Although ice cream is not a gastronomic marvel, the sprinkles were abnormal. I do not know how to describe them except to say they were like the love child of American sprinkles and Pop Rocks. Norwegian sprinkles did not exactly explode in my mouth, but they were crisp and hollow. Yet they seemed solid. A real mystery.

That night, after another day not eating, I'm starving. I went to a store like 7-Eleven to try and buy tickets for the Royal Palace in Oslo the next morning. To enter the Royal Palace, you need to be part of a tour. To be part of a tour, you need to buy a ticket. One can only buy tickets at 7-Eleven or this similar store. Bizarre. But this store's computers for bookings were broken. So I went to the other side of the same street to the same chain. There were no spots open until 17:00 the next day, but I was leaving at 13:00, so I guess I'll have to do that next time. Beside me, there is a case of hot dogs. Which looked very good to someone who is really hungry and on a tight budget. So I bought one. Or two. For about $6, which seemed cheap at the time. And they really were delicious, these "spicy" hot dogs. I would buy them again if I come back because they were good and relatively cheap. If two hot dogs cost this much, can you imagine what a decent meal would have cost? And they also had, in the true French style, croissants. In fact, they were having a sale. I could pay $2 less than I paid for the hot dogs and get one croissant, OR I could pay the same price as hot dogs and get three. These croissants were also delicious. Soft and flaky - it was like eating a croissant in Paris. However, after days of these meager meals, I thought: "Tomorrow, I am going to enjoy a good meal, damnit!"

Yes, it is Subway. So my plan was to find a restaurant at 11:00 and eat there. Finish around noon and head to the airport via the train station. After I used AirBNB again to find a place to stay here, I found that my host was - surprise! - a cook in a Mexican restaurant. She recommended some restaurants with good, but cheap (for Oslo) food. So my plan was to pool the money I hadn't used in the last two days and enjoy myself. So, Isabelle, how did you come to SUBWAY? Hmm, well, all the restaurants my host recommended were closed. Until 13:00. When I needed to be AT the airport. So, on the way to the station, I saw Subway, which I knew would be faster and maybe even cheaper. It was not the cheaper and the salami seemed kinda odd.

My friend just told me it doesn't look too weird, but when you compare pictures of the American Subway's salami and this salami ... you can see a difference. Maybe because there are more fat (or what I assume is fat because it's white).

Looking back, eating Subway was better because, even though I knew that London is expensive, it proved to be a bit more expensive than I had realised.