Day and 1/2 in Oslo Suggestions on Plans

First of all, be aware that the Viking Ship museum is closed until 2027 for renovations. As one who has visited Oslo more than 20 times, I speak as one who has seen and done everything in the Oslo area. Vigeland and Frogner Parks are not worth your limited time in my opinion and I think the changing of the guard is ho hum. There are better ways to spend your time in that city. My recommendations are, in order: (1) The Resistance Museum at Akershus. The display signs are in Norwegian but you can use the translator on your phone. (2) The Munch Museum, if you like impressionist art. (3) The Natioinal Museum, which has the original Munch painting The Scream. (4) As time permits, The Fram and the Folkemuseum which are at the same place. Bear in mind it is a long bus ride out to the island, so if you are going there to see the Folkemuseum and the Fram, that will require a full day. For anything you plan to visit in Oslo, check in advance not only the opening times for the days you plan to be there, but also whether the site is even open this summer. Closing thought: the best things to see in Norway are not to be found in the Oslo area.

I would plan to see the Norsk Folkemuseum on Sunday when you’ll have the several hours it takes.
The bus ride from downtown Oslo takes you past a lot of interesting sites on the way. I think it passes the Royal Palace on the way. The Norsk Folkemuseum is one of the best attractions in Oslo— along with the Akershus Fortress.

The afternoon when you arrive. you can take your walking tour to Akershus Fortress, City Hall, Nobel Peace Center, and Karl John’s Gate. On Sunday, with any remaining time, the National Museum is well worth the time with its Edvard Munch “Scream” paintings and other works of his on display. Munch personally chose the paintings on display in the gallery today as what he thought were his best works.

I agree that Frogner/Vigeland Park is located too far away from the rest of your list and is way too large to see in the little amount of time you have available. I would skip it and use the time elsewhere. Same for keeping 1:30 pm open to see the changing of the guard at the Palace. It’s going to cut your day in half and force you to eliminate other possibilities.

My flight arrives at 11:00 AM and I have a private transport to my
hotel Amerikalinjen.

Take the train instead, it will save you both time and money

My plan is to quickly catch the changing of the guards at the Royal
Palace at 1:30, but unsure I would make it there on my day of arrival.

Probably. Assuming your flight is on time, you take the train to Oslo and check in goes smooth at the hotel.

I agree that the National Museum is wonderful and would make a visit there if you have time. When we went it was free on Sundays, tho I have just googled and it seems this is no longer the case.

I seem to recall that we took a boat to the Folkesmuseum. I think that the kon-tiki museum is right there also.

This may not be your cup of tea; but the most fun thing we did in Oslo was swim in the fjord. There is a place just in front of the Opera house. You can just get in. There are also options with lockers, showers and saunas. This would be a real wake up after a long flight. Life changing. No joke.

Safe travels.

Yes, the boat will still be running in Sept when I am there.

Have you checked that the City Hall and Cathedral are open for "touring" on Sunday if you intended to go inside? I am not going to look them up now, but often civic buildings are closed on Sundays and the Cathedral viewing may be limited due to services. You are probably aware, just mentioning.

I found the Palace quite underwhelming. Given your timeframe and apparent interests, I suspect you might better enjoy the Folk Museum - I agree the stave church is impressive. The rest of the museum is terrific also. Do check the ferry timetable. We took that instead of bus as it was faster. We walked to the Folk Museum from the landing point at Bygdøy along with many others. You could google map the distance. There is a bus from the landing point also but I don't remember the number (my visit was June 2023).

It seems that you were hoping for an overview of the city with your various walking routes. With such a short time and an interest in the Folk Museum, I wonder if you would better enjoy all day at the Folk Museum or combining that visit with something like Kontiki (unique) as suggested above. Kontiki needn't take long. The other museum suggestions above are very good also (my opinion). It all depends on your interests.

The initial route Palace, Fortress, Frogner would have you back-tracking. I assume that is to accommodate closing and guard changing times? To me, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Is that a GPT Chat suggestion? (rhetorical question)

I have not seen the Nobel Peace Center - I left it off our itinerary based on reviews and the better options available. I wouldn't trust GPT Chat to choose the "best" spots if that is where the idea originated. (Of course, this may be a personal interest - but not clear from your post.) I did a quick google ("Oslo itinerary") and noticed several blogger suggestions with 1,2,3 day itineraries. If you haven't looked at some of those, it might be worth your time.

I am a big walker - I've walked many cities on multiple continents. Frankly, I found Oslo one of the harder to get an overview sense of. Bygdøy has sites close together; in another area, the Fortress isn't terribly far from the National Museum; Munch Museum is close to the Opera House. We taxied to Frogner from our hotel near the train station, then walked back past the palace. Many residential areas in between - pleasant, but nothing unusual. If you are wanting to see something unique to Oslo, one of the museum sites might be better.

I found after our trip that I had one fewer day available than I would ideally have liked. We were in Oslo for 5 nights - 4 full and one half day. Lots more to see than I had realized. Good luck planning! There are hard choices to make!!

Actually, those were not Chat GPT suggestions, just me plotting things out on google maps and checking distances. I'm thinking now that I might come up with a good weather option and bad weather option. I'm also going to rethink Frogner. I'm getting very mixed opinions from several sources on whether or not I do that this time. It is the most far out and I would need to Taxi. I typically find that I cover more than I think on the first day because I walk and walk and try to stay up as long as possible to adjust to the time. The ferry will still be running when I'm there in mid-Sept. I've seen changing of the guard in so many countries, that I wanted to cover it here, but as many have said I may be placing too much on that. Maybe I could do muesums and the Fortress on Day 2 and just cover the main city sites on Day 1 - my 1/2. Thank you so much for the thoughts.

One more memory from our Oslo visit two years ago. I had trouble with taxis from our hotel near the train station. We took several, but a few times had difficulty finding a driver who would agree to take us to typical tourist location. I think they wanted to go only from the station to the dock for cruise boats. I really can't imagine that they didn't know how to get to the National Museum (for example), but that was the claim. Whenever that happened, there were several taxis and someone else would agree to take us. I had photos of the locations - language wasn't the issue.

We then discovered that the distances weren't as far as we'd thought and began walking!

The tram goes to Frogner Park. No need for a taxi. There should be time in the evening when other places are closed. Maybe take a picnic dinner there and have a stroll? I love the Vigeland sculptures. I also really enjoyed the modern art museum, mostly for the building and location.

We visited Oslo a couple of years ago and purchased the Oslo Pass from the Visit Oslo website. It’s an app, easily purchased online. It covers most of the attractions mentioned as well as all public transport. We found it quite economical and a good way to see the highlights of a number of museums.
We hit the Fram museum on opening, I think it was 9.30, then Kontiki and then the Maritime Museum (probably could have skipped that one), followed by the Stave Church and a wander around the Folk Museum and were done by early afternoon.
We also visited the Historical, National and Resistance Museums, but we had longer than you.
The Munch Museum was open later one evening, so that was easy and we used the tram to go to the Frogner Park.
The admission prices are all listed in the information on the Oslo Pass website so you can see if it’s worthwhile for you, but we felt we saved quite a bit of money, and also felt like we could just pop into places briefly if we wanted to rather that having to get our ‘money’s worth’ at each place. The included public transport was very easy to use along with Google Maps.