 Greetings humans! Day 2's Tail comes to you once again from Oslo. As with last night, my ‘mewsings’ (I promise that will be the only cat related pun) are written as I sit looking out over Oslo city. As promised last night, we did indeed go places, eat food and walked a lot! After walking back into the city (and discovering a very steep staircase-based shortcut) we stumbled upon some old ruins. Basically, due to a fire in Oslo in 1624, most of the city was burnt down and the area rebuilt closer to the Akershus fortress (more on this later) meaning there were very few old buildings. These ruins are what little remains. Next to them was this stunning yellow neo-gothic bishop’s residence built in 1883 and a whole row of brightly coloured houses behind it.    For political reasons (probably), Oslo was temporarily renamed Christiania after the king following the fire, became Kristiania in 1877 but now of course it is back to good old Oslo, a fantastic name, I rather think. As a result of the Great Fire of Oslo, as I like to think of it, many of the buildings here are quite modern and there is a lot of construction going on. The cranes are huge, reaching to the tops of tower blocks and building many wondrous new things (including a giant public library of which I heartily approve). Despite all this modern post-Fire stuff, we were reminded of Oslo’s past by the chance discovery of a monument to Harold Hardrade of Battle of Hastings fame. After these adventures, we set off in search of dinner, we found (after getting slightly lost and resorting to the SatNav) three interesting vegan cafés, one of which was closed, but my humans eventually made up their minds as to where they would come back to for dinner. I didn’t mind getting lost, it was a great opportunity to check out the city – and we found a nice park which we returned to for lunch, near to the royal residence (whatever that might be). My humans now re-energised, we continued walking, next stop Akershus Fortress, via some more interesting buildings and the harbour at the end of the fjord. Get me away from this wet stuff, humans, you are perilously within 500 feet, back up! Ok, we arrived at the fortress without any major water related incidences. There was more hill-work involved – the humans will be fit by the end of this! We found an old (ish) building and some buildings built to look old and then found some stunning views down from the fortress to the city and the fjord (once again getting much too close to that dangerous water). There were some old cannons at the fortress which I very much enjoyed sitting on. We sat and looked at the views for a while before wandering around the fortress, found some ducks and stopped by a fountain. More water, what is wrong with you humans?! Next up was the opera house on the water edge where we could walk on the roof (I have no idea…) and experience some more views of the city and the fjord.  Akershus Fortress  The opera house and many, many cranes  There was a duck... but it swam away when I turned around My humans then took me out to dinner at Nordvegan, the café we checked out earlier before lunch. Dinner consisted of vegetable balls in breadcrumbs, a potato and vegan cheese wrap and enchiladas, although for reasons known only to the chefs, the enchilada contained pasta like a lasagne instead of the standard tortilla wrap. Who knows, maybe that’s a Norwegian thing? Well, either way, this was followed by a luxuriant gooey chocolate tart with a date and nut crust and a chocolate and almond protein ball. Luckily we were spared food selfies… but only because my humans forgot and I decided not to remind them. Next was a leisurely walk back through Oslo which contained more ducks (good) and more water (bad). Another park was involved and some ruins, more remnants of the Great Fire of Oslo. We also discovered some interesting architecture in the form of buildings that looked like escalators (my humans liked it, I was rather confused). On arriving back at the room, we met our host's cat although he decided to ignore the humans. I’m not surprised, after all us cats come when we can be bothered, not when you humans make kissy noises and click at us. We are not dogs! He looked rather comfy under a car, why would he want to say hello? But a black and white cat who lived downstairs did come and talk to us. This was, of course, because she wanted letting in, the timely arrival of my humans provided her perfect opportunity to make use of Homo sapien’s most useful feature, opposable thumbs. Well, that pretty much sums up today, tomorrow you can expect more walking in Oslo, see you then. Chesh. (Information about the Great Fire of Oslo courtesy of the Visit Oslo website - https://www.visitoslo.com/en/articles/history/)
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