The second half of the day I connected with an Instagram friend of mine Ursula, @ursula_uriate, at a local Joe and the Juice where we met up with Julia and Nicole. Ursula and Nicole had already met up and were waiting at the location nestled across from the Oslo Concert Hall and an Ett Bord. And, despite using my phone’s GPS, I got confused which direction this particular Joe and the Juice was, having already passed one in the Aker Brygge neighborhood with large crowds of celebratory Norwegians making their way to restaurants and cafes open on May 17th. (Can’t you tell I am not the best with directions or even a map?)
We began walking away from the Vika neighborhood. I’m not particularly sure where, we had no set destination at first. What probably would have only taken a 20 minutes by tram or subway, it felt like we walked a long way – from one end of town to another.
We stopped first at a 7-11 shop so I could get a one-way pass valid for one to two hours, I think, before walking to an international food market. (Though I don’t quite know where it was located, I know we did not take a shortcut to get there.) I wasn’t the only one directionally challenged.  After getting some ice cream, it was 5:00 pm and time to head home.
At the end of the day, Julia, the local resident, declared: “This is the year of the long walk.”