Norway.

Ice bars and Vikings.

A couple of reasons for my trip to Norway, one perfectly normal - the Xmas markets! The second, was to see a favourite English comedian, as you do when everything in Europe is fairly close. I find out when booking travel that Norway isn't the easiest place to navigate. I leave Venice by plane to Amsterdam, then another plane to Oslo and a train into the centre so arrive at my very modern cool hotel quite late. It was one of the cheaper ones but Norway is expensive. I have to settle for a tiny room and single bed but it's right near the Xmas markets. I am so excited!

I dine on expensive Chinese near the market and then head through for a quick look before exhaustion takes hold. It's fairyland, a talking moose head welcomes us in and there are beautiful stalls full of handmade gifts, chocolates and goodies that line a park strung with a myriad of lights.

I sleep in as the sun didn't come up till 8.40! I wander through the markets again, there's fires hanging from tripods throughout the market, seats to sit around and drink the hot spiced wine and shops full of Kokosboller - plump mounds of meringue on a biscuit, covered in chocolate with different flavourings inside, which are delicious. Xmas decorations are everywhere, it's absolutely magical. I see what I think is a statue of a Viking in the distance only to discover it is a very tall man in a fur coat! There's a ferris wheel and a skating rink playing Xmas music. There's beautiful fresh wreaths for your door and Xmas trees to buy, my breath mists in front of me as I walk. This is what a white Xmas feels like and it feels strangely right, more so than the hot and bothered Xmas's in Australia.

I go to the Grand Cafe which unfortunately they've modernised but it's still an Oslo institution. I have coffee and eat the famed Norwegian Freia chocolate that comes in retro packaging and after I go to Tullins for lunch. It's quaint and colourful with very healthy food. Hoping for snow but so far, none.

Next day I wake at eight to darkness. After a hearty breakfast served across the road, I go to Drobak, a beautiful seaside Xmas village where supposedly Santa resides. The bus trip is beautiful, snow everywhere, the wooden houses with intricate carvings are like gingerbread structures strung along the edges of the lake. The bus driver is Polish and he's going to work in New Zealand next year. He loves to travel, don't we all? Drobak is small but full of beautiful shops and a shop that is full of Xmas decorations and nothing else. A child's dream, also an adult's. I buy a bauble for my tiny Xmas tree.

I return to Oslo for lunch at Bacchus, it's a restaurant in an old part of a church, it's so beautiful. I have an amazing seafood soup, rye bread with whipped butter and then just keep walking. If you get a chance, go to Indiska, an interior design shop that I could have bought a lot of beautiful things from.

That night, I head down to the port where more beautiful shops line the waterfront and the Xmas decorations are beyond imagining. I dine on Italian food and study the very slim, beautiful Norwegian men and women that are out and about, chic and glamorous.

The next day I'm on a bus to Bygdoy, to the Viking ship museum and Folkesmuseum. There's more snow out this way. I wander through the museum and am amazed at the beauty and intricacy of the Viking artwork and the magnificence of the ships that they would use for burials, dug deep into the earth, covered and preserved by the soil. Outside there's a soft dusting of snow that I walk through as I wander around the village that shows the different houses through the ages. The soft fall of snow on my face is beautiful.

Lunch is back in Oslo at the Engrebret cafe that dates back to 1857. They are famed for the sandwich buffet lunch. The restaurant itself is beautiful, warm and cosy. Outside, the temperature has dropped and I find another place for a dessert, a cake made of layers of raspberries, chocolate and cream. I have walked more than 19,000 steps today, I can afford the calories.

That night I head to the famous Magic Ice bar because that's what you do in Oslo. I pay at the door and they hand me gloves and warm coat and I head into the iced cave-like bar for a couple of drinks served in ice glasses, sitting on an ice seat at an iced table at minus 6 degrees. Around me are ice sculptures of the famed Norwegian Expressionist painter Edvard Munch, the Scream being one of his most famous. Surprisingly not, my visit is short as the cold is beginning to bite. Dinner is at a warmly decorated retro style pub. Loving the Norwegian lifestyle, the food is healthy, I have vegetarian tacos, the wine is expensive but necessary with the cold, the people friendly and welcoming. Tomorrow I'm off to Trondheim to see Michael McIntyre.