• 1. Where to Stay
• 2. Where to Eat
• 3. What to Do
• 4. Insider’s Tip
• 5. An Oddball Day

Thon Hotel Vika Atrium offers colorful rooms close to the water's edge.   (Photo: Courtesy of Thon Hotel Vika Atrium)

Snag a sea-view suite at Hotel Continental (from $250), a 112-year-old institution in central Oslo that’s home to the famous Viennese-style café-restaurant Theatercaféen. All 155 rooms and suites sport refined touches like hand-painted wallpaper, gilt moldings, and antique furnishings, and the building showcases an art collection of nearly 500 pieces, including twelve original Munch prints.

Check into Grims Grenka (from $230), the city’s only design hotel, where décor accents include reindeer-antler lamps and a moss-garden-adorned reception desk. Choose a room based on your color preference—shades of green in "summer rooms," white and blue in "winter rooms"—or splurge on a dramatic red-and-black loft suite with a bathtub that sits on a raised platform.

Walk a few minutes from your room at Thon Hotel Vika Atrium (from $160) to the streets of Aker Brygge, the city’s waterfront center for drinking, dining, and shopping. Though the property is ostensibly geared toward business travelers, its guest rooms feature color schemes that feel more playful than professional, and weekend rates are relative bargains.

Published on Mar 8, 2012 as a web exclusive.