Radisson SAS Plaza Hotel Oslo

Stayed here for one night while in Oslo for the Arctic Challenge. I would stay here again. A minute walk to the nearest underground station bus stop also outside the hotel. Hotel staff are friendly and knowledgeable.

I stayed at Radisson SAS Plaza in the beginning on December 2008. It was my wife that did all the booking and I think we had to pay about 1165 kroner (about 170 USD) per night. I have been to Oslo a few times before and I have also stayed at Radisson SAS Plaza before.

When we arrived at Oslo airport we just jumped on the airport express train that took us straight into downtown Oslo. From the central station it is only a 5 minute walk to the hotel and soon we were in the hotel lobby. The lobby was quite busy when we arrived so we had to wait a few minutes to check in but we were finally assigned to room 2217. The room was located on the 22nd floor (the Plaza is one of the tallest buildings in Norway…if not the tallest) and the lift took us up there quite fast.

The room itself seemed very average when entering. Painted in light yellow and with a dark carpet it seemed like any other hotel room. I was not very happy with the bed as it turned out that it was two individual beds rather than one king sized bed. But the bed itself was comfortable at least. In front of the bed there was a piece of furniture that contained the TV (a small old fashioned CRT TV), the minibar, water boiler etc. Having a minibar is great for keeping you own can of Coke cold as buying it in the hotel is normally too expensive. But the minibars at Plaza is a bit different – there is a sensor so if you remove a can I think it comes on your bill even if you put it back.
The room also contained a desk and a chair and as always you get free internet access on Radisson SAS hotels – this is excellent in my opinion.

The bathroom was pretty nice with light tiles, a bathtub with a shower option and a shower curtain to avoid splashing all over the place. I don’t really like the shower curtain option but there as not many alternatives in this case. The heat of the water fluctuated quite a bit and that is always annoying when you are in the middle of shampooing your hair etc. There was not anti-slip mat in the bathtub and that seems a bit strange as the bathtub was quite slippery. There were also the usual amenities: shampoo, conditioner, soap and lotion. I’m not that fond of the Radisson series of amenities so I actually brought my own…from Traders in Kuala Lumpur :-)

There was also a wardrobe and a mini safe for keeping valuables.

The breakfast at the hotel is quite nice in a Norwegian context at least. It is served on the second floor of the hotel and when we came in it was more or less impossible to find a place to sit as it was so crowded. And people had to line up for a few minutes to get to the bacon, eggs etc. But all in all there was quite a nice selection of bread, cereal, egg/bacon/sausages, spreads etc.

The location of the hotel is very good as you have more or less direct access to the Oslo central train station, you can walk to the shopping mall Oslo City in a couple of minutes and you can reach the main street of Oslo (Karl Johan) in 5 minutes.

Conclusion
I guess I’m a bit spoiled by visiting nice hotels around the world. Radisson SAS Plaza in Oslo is the largest hotel in Norway but my room was very average. I have stayed at the hotel before and I have had better rooms which have seemed to be recently upgraded. The room I had not was very, very plain. The good thing about the hotel is the location, the free internet and the breakfast.

Sorry about the quality of the photos - they were taking with my cell phone