Part 1: how we got to Norway and then to Bergen.

Part 2: Bergen, where we got lucky and also unlucky

Part 3: The Fjords, not terribly af-fjordable, but terribly beautiful.

Part 4: Back to Oslo, for longer than expected.

I thought I’d dedicate today’s post to some of the things I saw on my own when Louie was in his conference. I’d initially planned a few more guided tours but canceled two things due to being sick and not feeling up to it/not wanting to be around people.

One of the conference days was my birthday, so I treated myself to a nice lunch sitting down at a restaurant. I went to Engebret Cafe and enjoyed a delicious shrimp sandwich: the best I had the entire trip. It was huge as well (with a price tag to match, but oh well!).

I never mind sitting alone at a cafe or restaurant if I have my kindle, at least, plus people watching can be fun.

I wandered around, either walking or taking the tram somewhere, with some days not having any specific plans. I took a tram all the way to the end of the line once, thinking I could stay on and ride back and finally realizing the driver was trying to tell me I had to get off! That was a little awkward.

I always felt comfortable walking around Oslo on my own. The only place anywhere in Oslo that we felt was a bit iffy was just around and north of the Oslo Station. Nothing terrible, just iffy.

I walked around the Fortress/Festning for a bit one day and found the Norwegian Resistance Museum. I spent about 45 minutes to an hour going through and looking at the exhibits, learning how the Nazis occupied Norway and the risks Norwegians took to fight back in a variety of ways.

I also went to the Nobel Peace Center. Most of the Nobel Prizes are given out in Stockholm, Sweden, but the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in Oslo, and there’s a nice museum about it. There’s also a little gift shop with a lot of neat gifts, and (good to know) there’s a bathroom that you can get to directly from the outside, no need to go through the museum lobby. We used the bathroom another day when wandering around, and just went in and used it, though then I felt like we should shop a few minutes to act like that was our intention.

One day I had a boat trip booked. It went from Oslo to Oscarsborg Fortress with a ferry to Drobak. The boat was not at all full, so there was plenty of room on the ride to spread out and wander around, and the views were terrific.

After about 1 1/2 hours we landed on Oscarsborg Fortress, an island in the Oslofjord. There is, obviously, a Fortress there. It’s a neat place, with a museum, hotel, boating, and such.

There wasn’t much to do that I could see, so I wandered around a bit, and then caught the ferry to Drobak.

The tour I bought came with “ferry tickets” for certain times, but I will say this: the one at the end of the day would have been difficult. I came back earlier because the connection they give you is only 5 minutes and it is more than 5 minutes walk away. I saw some people getting on the boat who I believe made it, but they looked like they had run for their lives. I would recommend coming back 1 hour earlier and walking around the island more instead, even if that means less time in Drobak.

When you get off the ferry in Drobak it’s about a 10 minute to town, some of it scenic, some of it less so.

It started pouring rain when I got to Drobak, so I just went straight for lunch at a place called Det Gamle Bakeri. I got fish soup.

Drobak was very picturesque, but after wandering around a little bit, I was ready to head back. I was early for the ferry, but I thought I’d go back and sit and read. I waited a bit and then a smaller ferry showed up, and the captain offered to take me and another couple back instead of us waiting for the larger ferry. We were happy to go with him and the couple and I chatted about Norway and the United States and Sweden, where they were from. They were staying overnight at the hotel for research purposes for a travel tv show, I think.

When I got back to Oscarsborg, the sun was shining, so I walked all around the island some more and it was quite warm. And then after awhile caught the boat back to Oslo, which was pleasant after a full day.

I do recommend this tour, if you have been in Oslo awhile and want a day trip, as I did.

The last day of the conference was when we ended up having to change our flight to stay in the country longer. At the time we needed to get negative tests in order to fly home, and we didn’t think we both would, so we made an appointment with a doctor. The doctor said since we didn’t have official proof of being positive, he needed to have that proof first, and then 4 days later if we were fever free and our lungs were clear he could write a “proof of recovery” note for us. (We didn’t both need this, but one did.) Anyway, that meant changing our flight and finding new lodging.

If you are in a foreign country and want to change your flight with American Airlines, do not bother calling the 1-800 number, use the local country number. We were told an 8 hour hold with the 1-800 number, but the local number got us through right away and rebooked within 10-15 minutes. I was able to extend our stay in our AirBNB except for the last night, where we had to relocate to a nearby place.

That seems like a natural place to stop this blog post, so I’ll continue with another post soon. If you have any questions, please let me know! I love to hear from readers, otherwise I start to feel as if I am just writing into a void.

Okay, and since I’ve actually stopped traveling and even have a few “days off” at home, I have more time to blog.

Let me tell you. The hardest part of trip recaps is figuring out what photos to include. I took around 1400 pictures on this trip, but of course some are better than others. It’s so hard to decide which those are, however, looking at the phone screen. And since I have an iphone but a pc, that means getting them from my phone to my computer takes a little finagling. So over the past few weeks I’ve finally settled on the photos I want to consider for the blog. Now that that is done, the rest should be easy!

Part 1 here: how we got to Norway and then to Bergen.

Part 2 here: Bergen, where we got lucky and also unlucky

Part 3 here: The Fjords, not terribly af-fjordable, but terribly beautiful.

And now we are back in Oslo, for a day or two to recover before Louie’s conference started up. I think now is when I’ll stop doing a true day by day and instead just show you some pictures and tell you some cool stuff we did in Oslo.

We stayed at a fantastic AirBNB. While we could have stayed at a hotel for the conference, I thought it would be more fun to have an apartment of sorts. Initially I’d thought we might even cook, but that never happened. We did use the coffeemaker and refrigerator often though. What was BEST about the AirBNB we had was the location. It was in the Frogner neighborhood, only a few minutes in any direction from trains, buses, and trams, very walkable, with grocery stores, restaurants, etc all around. I would highly recommend this location if you are in Oslo, with one caveat: the bed is a loft. We loved it, but if you have mobility issues or young children it wouldn’t work.

The first morning I discovered we were around the corner from what ended up being our favorite coffee house and bakery ever. We didn’t go every day, but we stopped by almost every day, for coffee, baked goods, or bread. We had been wearing masks of course, and one of the employees, being very friendly, said, you know you don’t have to wear masks in Norway! We said, yes…but we have to test negative for COVID to get back to the states so we are being extra cautious.

Our first few days we were still recovering from COVID: I was feeling better, just tired. Louie was still feverish and with a bad cough. We finally got to a pharmacy to get him some medicine for that: note to readers, bring some NyQuil tablets with you when you travel, as at least in Norway they wouldn’t give us anything to help him sleep without a doctor’s note.

We did a bunch of outdoor stuff first: Vigeland Park is a real gem in the city. It’s a whole park dedicated to statues by one man, Gustav Vigeland, and as I exclaimed at one point, it’s just a bunch of statues of naked people! Louie pointed out that most statues are of naked people, which is true. We went on a beautiful weekend afternoon and the park was full of families, people grilling on little “one-time grills”, and it seemed like the entire city was out enjoying the beautiful weather.

One of my favorite museums was the Norwegian Folk Museum. It’s an outdoor museum (perfect when you are trying to avoid people) and is on the Bygdoy peninsula. We took the bus there and enjoyed the public transportation.

Oh, notes again: you can use the Ruter app for travel. It’s so easy to buy tickets on your phone and use the app for directions places. We both got weekly passes, which meant we really used the system during that time.

The Folk Museum is a large collection of buildings used throughout Norwegian History. We spent over 3 hours there and felt like we could have spent 3 days there.

Some of the places were more modern: there was an apartment building that had a variety of apartments set up like they might have been during various times in the 1900’s. We were surprised to find that one was like an apartment would have been way back in the 1980’s…who would even have been alive then???

I think I’ll stop there and keep this post shorter. I know I may have promised less posts overall, but I think I will return to more Oslo in another post. In a nutshell, this was our first weekend back there, and then Louie’s conference started.

I know, I know. It’s a bad joke. But seriously, Norway is expensive.

Part 1 here: how we got to Norway and then to Bergen.

Part 2 here: Bergen, where we got lucky and also unlucky

We left off when Louie and I had boarded our express boat to Balestrand. When I first started researching Norway, I knew we were going to Oslo, and then I had to figure out what else to do. Bergen seemed like the other obvious choice, and then I started looking at the small towns…some people say to just do the fjords and small towns, and I’m sure that would have been a perfectly gorgeous trip. Once I found out about “Norway in Nutshell” which is a way to see fjords using only public transportation from Bergen or Oslo, I knew we wanted to do something like that. I ended up going with a version of it called “Sognefjord in a Nutshell”, which for the record, several people on Trip Advisor poo-pooed as being boring because of the long boat ride. Our first segment of the ride was 4 hours long, and even with not feeling well I found it to be phenomenally beautiful and I am so glad we did it!

I took a video from the top at one point after getting back on the water after a stop.

After about 4 hours, we started coming into the Balestrand Harbor, our home for the next two nights. A large group were getting off with us, so we had to wait our turn to disembark.

Our ship, the Njord.

We had about a 5 minute walk to our hotel, the Midtnes Hotel. The fancy hotel in town is the Kviknes, but we aren’t fancy people (aka it was way more expensive). We weren’t able to check in yet, but we were able to drop off our bags and headed back out to explore. We ate a picnic lunch and then looked into getting information on short hikes.

Initially I had planned for us to hike this afternoon, but it looked like it was about to rain, in fact, rain was forecast in one hour. (We didn’t know it at the time, but rain would be forecast in one hour for the next day or so, until it finally rained.) I also felt utterly exhausted and wanted to rest. Louie decided to go for a quick hike on his own “before the rain” and I went back to the hotel to rest. The hotel room was nice: it had a balcony that overlooked the fjord (if you angled a little bit) and while the hotel was dated, it was perfectly lovely.

It turned out Louie got in a nice hike for a few hours in the sun, while I was able to check into the room. When he got back, he crashed for the rest of the night. I ended up having to go to the grocery to get supplies for dinner in the room and he had a rough night of sleep as well.

This was a portion of our visit that definitely didn’t go as planned. I am still a little sad writing it. I wanted to have done the hike, we planned to take the boat to Vic in the morning to see a Stave Church/maybe even meet up with a distant relative of Louie’s since the area is where his great-grandfather was born. But I was also thankful that we weren’t stuck in the hotel room as we might have been in another country!

As far as the hotel: we had asked about breakfast in the morning, because initially we planned to leave early for the boat to Vic before breakfast at the hotel was served. The owner put the spread out early for us, and even though then we didn’t go, it was still so nice! I took plates of food up to the room for us to have: at that time Louie was in no position to get up and we didn’t want to eat around others in any case.

We rested in the morning, and then met our afternoon tour: a boat to Fjaerland to see a Glacier! Like the day before, we kept our masks on, and spent as much time as possible outside. The tour only have about 10 people on it so there was plenty of room to spread out.

We got on the boat and stayed on top in the open for awhile, until it just got to be too cold and windy. There was a nice area below to hang out, with windows and a cafe selling coffee, snacks, and even pasta bolognese. We did not order it, but somebody did on the way back!

I had wondered if going on another boat ride was overkill, but it was not. This fjord was different enough (smaller) and the views, frankly, never get old!

The weather was more overcast today than the day before. We had been lucky with the weather in Norway so far, but today was a bit more overcast and seemed to threaten rain.

We disembarked in Fjaerland and got on a bus to the Glacier Museum. You can see us getting into Fjaerland here.

It was a short drive to the Museum, where we were given an hour to look around. There was a wonderful introductory video and then various exhibits to learn about Glaciers and other related topics. It was a small museum, but an hour was just barely enough time.

Next the bus took us close to the Jostedeen Glacier. This was an amazing view!

I took a video you can watch here.

Definitely take the Fjord and Glacier Tour if you are in Balestrand. Some of the reviewers complained that it wasn’t an active tour, or that you were herded from place to place. Well, maybe if the tour was full: we were only about 10 as it was early in the season and I can imagine if the boat and bus were fuller it might feel more like being herded. But it’s a lovely boat ride and then you see a cool museum and a beautiful glacier, which plenty of cars were parked at as well…what’s not to like?

The boat ride back was uneventful. It was a bit rainier feeling and we were more tired, so we mostly rested inside.

After we got back from the cruise, we went back to the room to rest up for a bit, and then decided to get dinner outside at a nearby restaurant. We chose Gekken’s since it advertised a special that seemed more affordable than some places, and had outdoor seating. It was cold and finally did rain for real, so we were the only ones seated outside, which was likely for the best!

We got fish soup and salmon. It was good enough!

We enjoyed watching a seagull nest nearby. The seagull had chosen to make its nest on top of a shed, right near the restaurant. At one point another seagull came and they squawked back and forth a bit and then traded off.

After dinner we got a cider to split in the room and went to sleep.

The next morning we got “takeout” breakfast again and rested in the room until check out time. We were sad to leave Balestrand, but we had tickets (nonrefundable) to go through Flam en route to Oslo and needed to keep moving. I do wish we had felt better while in Balestrand, but what can you do.

We had a picnic lunch before catching our boat, the same route that dropped us off two days ago. Louie felt particularly bad this day, and it was to be a rough travel day for him. I hated that, since this was supposed to be a wonderful scenic day of finishing up the “Sognefjord in Nutshell”: the boat to Flam and then the Flamsbana Railway to the Bergen Express back to Oslo. It was a lot of travel, all quite scenic, but not fun if you are sick.

The boat was relatively crowded but we found some good seats anyway, and relaxed and enjoyed the view for a few hours. We continued along Sognefjord, took a tiny detour into the start of the Nærøyfjord, and finally arrived in Flam. Flam could have been a cruise port anywhere, and I found it a little offputting what the cruise ships had done to what was likely at one time an adorable little hamlet on the fjord. We had lunch and looked at the Train Museum there and finally boarded our Flamsbana, the Flam Railway. I had chosen to have a few hours in Flam to look around rather than catch an earlier train, and I would say to you, eh, don’t bother. If you don’t have a particular activity planned, just keep moving.

Anyway, we boarded the railway for the journey. It was great! I didn’t think it was the greatest experience ever, simply because as a hiker, you can stop and enjoy things so much more, whereas on a train the landscape just whizzes by.

But it was a gorgeous ride, and we saw so many beautiful things. At one point we stopped at a waterfall and had a few minutes to get out. It was hilarious because a woman comes out and starts singing and dancing. This is when Louie recalled he had done this before, over 20 years ago, and he remembered the woman.

Anyway, we got to Myrdal after an hour or so, and then boarded our train to Oslo. I had hoped this would be relaxing, but it wasn’t so much. Our seats weren’t as nice as the way from Oslo to Bergen, and we ended up facing backwards the whole way and sharing a space with two people facing us, which was a little more uncomfortable, less foot space, etc. It was a difficult 5 hour journey because of this. I was able to enjoy the scenery still, but Louie was just barely hanging on.

Finally we arrived back at Oslo Station. Since we were exhausted and it was actually somewhat dark, we decided to just get a cab to the AirBNB that would be our home for the next week or longer. Cabs in Oslo are definitely expensive, and if we had had any energy to take a train or tram instead, it would have been a better idea. But we got there, met our AirBNB host, and found the place.

So that was Balestrand. Not quite as hoped, but we made the best of a bad situation. Maybe someday we will return and do more hiking!

I never know if it’s better to do day by day recaps or more of a general thing. Travel blogs that are monetized do lists like “the top 10 things to do in Bergen” or “7 Things to make your vacation in Bergen Ultimate!” I know those things have better SEO but when I’m looking at information and trying to research trips, what I love most is reading about someone’s trip, what did they actually do, how did they fit it into the days they had, that sort of thing. But what I don’t know is if I am the weird one for enjoying reading that sort of thing!

Part 1 here: how we got to Norway and then to Bergen.

I think I’ll continue my day by day for now, but I may be more general in Oslo later. *shrugs*.

We arrived via train around 5:15 pm and walked about 15-20 minutes to our AirBNB. It was raining, and I had the hardest time following my phone map (jet lag/brain fog?) but luckily not raining too hard. We finally found the place and the keys were in the lockbox as promised.

The AirBNB was cute, great location, with an amazing view. It seemed as described, and we were excited.

We were visiting Bergen during the Bergen International Festival, an international arts festival. We wanted to take advantage of a few things, so the first night we were headed to a free Hardanger Fiddle concert played by Benedicte Maurseth in the public square, Torgallmenningen, so we needed to head out to get there. It was a 10 to 15 minute walk and we were eager to see Bergen along the way without the worry of our luggage.

The outdoor space! There were some chairs set up and we managed to snag a pair after the rain started up again. Most people just pulled out their umbrellas, so we did the same. When in Bergen…

The concert was about 45 minutes long and we enjoyed it. All of the commentary was in Norwegian, and seemed to be interesting and relatively funny based on the audiences reactions. After that we headed for our dinner reservation at Bryggeloftet & Stuene, an old restaurant in the Bryggen area that was supposed to be delicious and traditional. I had made a reservation because I didn’t know if Sunday nights were busier since some other places were closed and I also knew there was an International Arts festival going on! The place was packed, so I’m glad I made the reservation. We got seated promptly, and I decided to order the mussels which were in a cream sauce and came with fries. Louie ordered the Wolffish with his choice of potatoes and he chose potatoes dauphinoise. (Lots of potatoes on the menu!) They ended up bringing out boiled potatoes by accident at first, so he ended up with double potatoes!

We thought we were surrounded by Norwegians as we heard a lot of languages we didn’t understand, but the server spoke to nearly everybody in English, so I suspect we were surrounded by Swedish people, Germans, etc. Everybody in Norway speaks English really well, with American accents for the most part.

After dinner we were exhausted so we didn’t wander too much and headed home to sleep.

A word about Norwegian beds: everywhere we went instead of one large comforter, quilt, or duvet covering the bed, there were two smaller duvets. No top sheet, but of course the duvet cover is washable. So we each got our own duvet, which was weird at first but we got used to.

Our place in Bergen was chilly that night but we couldn’t (in our jet lag/brain fog) figure out how to turn on the heat, and only managed to turn on the heated bathroom floor.

The next morning we got breakfast at a nearby coffee shop called BKB coffee. I had a cappuccino and a scone. Louie asked for the apple scone and the barista was so confused until we all realized that Louie meant “applesin” which isn’t apple at all but is orange! VERY FUNNY!

It was a lovely day so we went to the Floyen Funicular to ride up and see the city from above. There no line to speak up and before we knew it we were at the top. It was a wonderful view!

We walked around looking at the view and then headed down a path and saw some goats!

We walked around a bit, and took a short trail to a lake, and enjoyed the Norwegian “countryside” a bit.

I was still feeling tired/exhausted so we didn’t hike too far, but we decided to walk down rather than take the funicular. We finished our exploring at Floiyan, had a coffee and quick snack, and then headed down.

We took a short break back at the house to change and rest, and then headed out in search of fish soup. We ended up having our (first) bowl of fish soup at a tented restaurant by the harbor.

We had tickets for a cello recital that evening at Edvard Grieg’s House, and needed to get ourselves there: it involved a train and a 20 minute walk, not a huge deal, but we wanted to be on the early side to look around as well. For those of you who don’t know: Grieg is the most famous and accomplished Norwegian composer of classical music.

After our soup we walked around taking pictures, looking at stuff, etc., getting a coffee and dessert to pack for later, and finally catching the tram or train to the stop.

We managed the uphill walk to Grieg’s house: it seemed somehow hotter than I thought it would be and I was still struggling with what I assumed was jet lag, with the niggling feeling in the back of my head that this was something more, but when we got there, wow, it was gorgeous!

The concert was great. It was played by a cellist, Amalie Stalheim, and a pianist Christian Ihle Hadland. Amalie had won the Norwegian Soloist Prize recently and she was fantastic. Also likely very funny but who would know: this was another time when the performer spoke Norwegian and we just smiled and nodded, haha!

One thing I particularly enjoyed about the concert was the end: the audience loved the concert and clapped wildly for her to return. They don’t do standing ovations and instead everybody started clapping all together in unison. It was very exciting to be part of, and of course they came back out and played an encore.

We went back the way we came, down the hill to the train stop, and made it relatively easily back to the city. We had a little trouble getting tickets, but it turned out one of the machines was broken. And we even had time to eat the aforementioned dessert before the train came.

I should say: we wore masks at the concert and on the train, even thought nobody else was. I was feeling quite tired/exhausted/warm on the ride back and luckily managed to get a seat after a few stops: I wasn’t sure I would make it all the way leaning against the wall.

We were hungry so we stopped at a sausage stand, Trekroneren, and got a street sausage. Not something we normally eat, but we chose to eat very little meat for reasons that do allow us to eat meat on occasion. This was reindeer sausage with lingonberry jam, mustard, and fried onions, which was how the employee suggested I try it.

Then it was time to say good bye to another day, even if the light was still with us. I was feeling not great, so Louie ran over to the nearby 7-11 to get a few drinks/sodas and a quick lunch to split. We did figure out how to turn on the heat as well: the evenings were pretty cold, down into the high 30s/low 40s. I also figured I’d run a load of laundry: there was a combination washer/dryer, which was pretty unusual to us, but we figured out how to use it. It took about 3-4 hours and didn’t finish until late at night, and sang a song then that woke me up, but in the morning when I checked the laundry was clean and dry!

The next morning we went to the supermarket first. We bought some things we needed and enjoyed browsing the aisles for all of the things that were different from here. After that we went for breakfast at a nearby restaurant called Godt Brød, meaning literally, Good Bread. We ordered coffees and scones and the barista suggested we get brown cheese on our scones. We had heard of brown cheese but hadn’t tried it yet so we enthusiastically agreed.

After our breakfast, we headed towards Bryggen and then to the Bergenhus Festning, the Fortress.

We decided to buy tickets for the Rosenkrantz Tower, which was a tower that kept getting added on to. You went down into the dungeon first (which made us really realize how awful being in a dungeon would be, if we didn’t already realize that).

The bathrooms were built into the dungeon area.

Then we started climbing up the stairs to higher rooms for various royalty.

The King had had his own bathroom!

And from the top there was a lovely view!

After the Tower we just walked around the Fortress a bit. We came across a museum about the Resistance and popped in. It was free, and seemed like a lovely museum, but it was really hot inside and I just couldn’t read anymore, so we didn’t stay too long.

We decided lunch would be more fish soup! Rick Steves recommended we try Søstrene Hagelin so we did. It was good, different than the previous soup, more chowdery and full of dough balls of fish. They also sold a lot of “fish cakes” so we tried a few of those as well.

And then we walked around a bit more, getting a coffee at Cafe Opera, before going to the Bryggen Museum. The Bryggen Museum was very interesting, about the history of Bergen and how people lived and lots of archeological finds. It’s also so interesting to think of how in Europe you are literally on top of all the places people have lived for hundreds and hundreds of years, and it just keeps getting higher and higher.

(Of course, we have the same here, it’s just different because we prefer to pretend nobody lived in the States before the white people “discovered it”. )

After the Museum it was time to face some facts. I wasn’t feeling well, and we had dinner reservations for a Michelin-star restarant, Lysverket, and that would mean sitting unmasked in a restaurant for 2-3 hours and…we took COVID tests.

Here’s where I hesitate, how much to tell you? I know that some of you will think we were wrong every step of the way, that if you got COVID on your trip to Norway for two weeks you would do everything perfectly and know exactly what to do. But I will tell you, nothing is black and white.

We took the tests. I was positive, Louie was negative. We were in shock for a bit, and then started trying to figure out what to do.

1. We canceled our dinner reservation. This was a no-brainer, but absolutely devastating!
2. We were supposed to leave the next day on a nonrefundable ticket. So our choices were: cancel, buy it again (when, it was purchased weeks in advance, so who even knows what is available) and try to find a place to stay somewhere in the city during a big festival. Or not. Just mask up, stay away from people.
3. Norway doesn’t care. Their official COVID information is: stay home if you don’t feel well. Don’t worry about testing, we don’t do that anymore. Effective February 2022, they stopped worrying about it.
4. The US Embassy website in Norway tells you to visit Norway’s health page to find out about COVID testing. The links they give are broken. So there was no real information about what to do, and we felt absolutely on our own.

So, we had Royal Kebab for dinner, got takeout and ate in a nearby park. We decided that our masks would protect others from us, as well as distancing, and we would just do our best to avoid people and be outside as much as possible if we felt up for it (we assumed that Louie would be getting it as well.) You can judge me, but you weren’t there, in a foreign country, away from all of your cold medicine and your box of extra food and your grocery delivery, having spent thousands on your trip and wanting to enjoy it after years of the pandemic.

Now, I realized that all of the weird symptoms I’d had, the extreme tiredness, the constant headaches, the fever, the chills, the sore throat, the runny nose, that was probably NOT jet lag and was actually COVID. So according to the idea that you get the latest omicron 2-3 days after being exposed, I likely got exposed the day before the trip, or possibly on the plane. Where masks are not required and few people wore them, even though WE DID.

I feel weird putting this out there on the internet, but I want to be truthful with you, and we did nothing illegal or wrong. Morally questionable, except we just didn’t see any other way that wasn’t horrendously expensive and would absolutely ruin the entire trip. If I sound defensive, it’s because I am!

So the next morning, we packed up, we got breakfast (outside at Good Bread again) and then went to board our boat to Balestrand, our next stop. I felt…okay. Stressed out beyond belief (would we ever be allowed to fly back home, remember at this time you needed a negative COVID test to return home) and worried about getting sicker, worried about Louie getting sicker, and frankly, feeling like we were in a lose-lose situation. I kept my mask on inside the entire trip and only removed it outside to eat or drink, or a quick picture, away from people (it was very windy outside so we weren’t concerned.)

Remember, I wear my mask to protect you!

So that’s Bergen. We were incredibly lucky with the weather: it was fairly warm and hardly rained at all, and incredibly unlucky to get COVID.

Sometimes I feel like my life is harder than it needs to be, but most of the time I feel pretty lucky. I think of how lucky I was to meet Louie when I did: both of us were recently out of long term relationships and absolutely nobody around us thought we would stick as a couple, yet nearly 9 years later, here we are.

Which brings us to Norway: because of Louie’s hard work and crazy life choices, such as pursuing a PhD while working full time, and after COVID travel was pretty much going again, he got asked to present at a conference in Oslo, so that meant I was going to, because of course! And if you’ve been reading the blog before, you know I made a plan for our trip which involved going about a week early to travel some other places in Norway first.

Between Rick Steves, Fodor’s, and Trip Advisor, I made a pretty good travel plan with the time we had. I prepared the itinerary, purchased tickets and tours in advance, and made documents of activities to do and good restaurants in each city or town we were staying. I was prepared!

This never stops people from asking questions a day or two beforehand as if I’ve never heard of the country before. “You should go to Bergen.” “You should make sure to see the fjords.” Like, sometimes I swear everybody thinks I am a complete idiot. Is it the smile? Is it that I’m a woman? Do they treat everybody they meet as if they are complete idiots? Are there seriously people who plan trips to a foreign country and do nothing beyond buying the plane ticket and wait for this person to tell them, the day or days before, what to do? But I digress!

I am a planner. I don’t always do well with changes. COVID taught me to be more flexible and to expect the worse, but I still prefer when things work as planned. You ask, why am I mentioning this, didn’t I have a nice trip?

Anyway, I think I’ll divide this blog into 4-5 posts. This is post one, and there will be one for Bergen, one for Balestrand, and then one for our return to Oslo, which may be turned into 2. So that’s the plan: stay tuned but also don’t stay that tuned, because going through pictures is tough, so many!

The day before we were to set out we were both still working, and I even picked up an extra gig to help out a friend who was isolating with COVID in their family. We wanted to check in for our flight but couldn’t, and this caused us some consternation: it didn’t say why we couldn’t and we were worried that something had gone wrong with something involving COVID somehow. Anyway, after an hour on hold with American, we learned that likely everything was fine and we could just check in at the airport.

It turned out the problem was that we were starting with American, but the second 2 flights were with Finnair, a partner, and Finnair didn’t let American customers check in online. No big deal. We got to the airport, got our boarding passes, seats, etc. Flew to Chicago, and had a long layover: had to change terminals, go through security, etc, so it was nice to have the time. We had lunch there, and facetimed family, and then had to get new boarding passes for our next flight (Finnair has some control issues) and we ended up with “comfort seats” which meant we would have slightly more leg room on our long haul flight…amazing!

In any case, our long haul flight was fine. We tried to sleep after they served dinner…I probably got 4 hours of sleep, which was pretty impressive. I had a neck pillow which helped tremendously.

We landed in Helsinki, and went through passport control, which means they stamped our passports and asked questions about why we were there. I was fairly incoherent and couldn’t remember at that point, but I’m sure the passport guys are used to jet lag and tired passengers. We had a short layover in Helsinki, and I was feeling lousy and nauseated from the travel (or was it), headache and dehydrated. We finally boarded our third flight, to Oslo, and I slept some more. The landing was tough and it was the first time to my recollection, that I almost threw up. In any case, we left Oslo airport without further incident (and no customs that we could tell unless we missed something super important) and caught a Flytoget train to Oslo S, the Central Train Station.

The Flytoget is the express airport train. In retrospect, for this journey we could have saved about $20 and taken a regular train since we weren’t in a hurry, but I’m not perfect in my planning. We go to the station and then found our first hotel for the night nearby: CityBox Oslo. It was early afternoon and before official check in but thankfully we were able to check in right away, which was great!

We knew we needed to keep moving, so we unpacked, cleaned up and then hit the streets, walking all over. It was a warm sunny day, and everybody seemed to be out and about. We grabbed lunch at a nearby restaurant first, pizza, which was a funny choice for Norway but it was easy and I thought it would sit well for me.

After we walked all over the place, we tried to decide what to do for dinner, and we settled on having a drink and a snack at a very old restaurant called Stortorvets Gjæstgiveri located relatively near our hotel. We had a lovely time there and kept ordering snack after snack until we no longer needed dinner. We went back to the hotel after that and I believe I was asleep by 8 pm (20:00 as the locals would say).

I woke up at some point in the middle of the night and noticed that while it was a little darker, it wasn’t that dark. It never really gets dark in Norway over the summer: the sun does set in Oslo, around 10:30 to 11, but it doesn’t go very far.

The next morning we had a train to catch for Bergen! We enjoyed a breakfast buffet at a nearby restaurant, Spor av Nord. It was somewhat attached to the hotel and offered a discount for hotel guests. We had coffee, orange juice, cheese, bread, smoked salmon, eggs, waffles, and more. Then we walked back to the Train Station and caught our train to Bergen. It would be a 7 hour journey, but everybody said it was a beautiful ride as well, and it was nice just to relax, since I was feeling exhausted, headachey, and still a little queasy here and there.

We packed food: caviar in a tube and crackers and Kvikk Lunsj, for the journey. It was a nice trip, and watching the Norwegian countryside as we traveled along was almost magical. We got to the middle of the trip, up in the mountains and were surprised to see that the landscape was changing to snow!

After a while, we struck up a conversation with the couple on the train across from us, who were British from London, and that was nice. And finally, we arrived in Bergen. It was raining a bit and was about 5 pm.

That’s where I’ll leave this travel blog recap for now. I may not be doing day by day in the future, I’m not sure. It seemed to make sense to start out, but may not make sense in the future, but I’ll decide later. Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts in the comments! Have you visited Scandinavia before?