Most striking feature:
This new opened Italian (May 2011) restaurant in Grunerlokka is already famous for their wines upstairs. If you’re after good wines and want to be inspired by a huge wine cellar you have to reserve a table upstairs. Personally I like the brasserie at the ground floor. It’s not that the interior screams ‘classic Italy’ because they’ve turned it into a modern place. No pizza’s on the menu, but dishes like spaghetti, risotto and tagliatelle.
Check out: www.popolare.no
Most striking feature:
Muji of Scandinavia. In the most expensive city of Europa (I’ve paid 25 euro for a burger and a cola at Illegal Burger, where the same dish costs 11 euro in Bruxelles at Ellis Gourmet Burger), Granit is really affordable. You can find everything in here: from Christmas ornaments to calendars and from clothing to storage boxes. And you can easily spend an hour browsing though all their stuff. Happily they have baskets so you can collect all of your finds. I bought a stamp, a postcard and tape with hearts on it for 10 euro. They also have stores in Stockholm and Malmo in Sweden.
Check out: www.granit.se
Most striking feature:
The lobby. A great mix of design furniture and a relaxing place to sit down after a walk through the city. Scandic is a chain and as you know I try to collect everything but chains on Petite Passport. But Scandic is innovating and making their newest hotels more and more for design travellers like myself. This hotel opened on October 20 and has several area’s to discover. There’s the lobby, the breakfast room (with a lot of lightbulbs hanging above the tables) and a bar downstairs. My room was like you expect in a chain, but with nice little extra’s like a Hay table and an Eames chair. No bathroom goodies but that’s because Scandic claims to be an eco-friendly hotel so you get a dispenser next to the shower (I don’t like that at all, see all the people who showered there before me using it, ugh, but I do like their eco consciousness). The bed is heavenly soft with thick duvets and pillows. Yes I slept like a baby here.
At the breakfast area (at night this is a restaurant) there’s a lot to choose from: from a traditional English breakfast to bread with chocolate paste on it. Another plus: the hotel is located on walking distance from Grunerlokka and the center. The Vulkan site is in development and I guess there will be a lot do to in the future (from my room I saw the rooftop bar of the Vulkan restaurant and that looks pretty amazing (when it’s summer, because it was freezing cold in Norway when I was there).
From 170 euro per night, check out: www.scandichotels.com
