norway

for valentine's day, alex bought us plane tickets to norway during the easter holidays. hurrah! we spent 2 days in oslo and 1.5 days in a the coastal town sandefjord and half a day in stromstad, sweden.


View oslo in a larger map

it was like being on the west coast of canada. the scenery, the cleanliness, the friendliness of people, the taste-free drinking water straight from the tap, it was all very canadian feeling.

then there was the price. holy hell, norway (and scandinavia in general i gather) is shockingly expensive. i thought i was prepared for the expense, i had been warned but i didn't truly comprehend what people were telling me. alex and i spent £500 in 4 days and we were not being extravagant in any way. i have 4 pin badges and 2 post cards to show for my share and alex has 8 postcards and 1 flag badge to show for his share.

we shared a £10 basket of nachos (without cheese or other fixings besides a small ramiken of salsa) in a train station for lunch. we were forced to resort to eating a £7 fillet o'fish meal at mcdonalds. our guide book recommended a cheap pizza place that served us up a good sized pizza for £12 each. unfortunately the menu was in norwegian and i ended with an olive, shrimp, bacon and tuna pizza. it was surprisingly good. we longingly walked past a norwegian restaurant that served wonderful sounding food for £40 a head...main course only. we spent £1.50 for a chocolate bar.

*sigh* we went all the way to norway and didn't eat anything norwegian, it was pizza every day.

then there was the transport. £18 for the coach to oslo. £7 for a day pass around the city. £22 for the train to sandefjord. £4 for a train to the airport.

jeepers!

the museums were quite reasonably priced considering, £5 each for entry. the museums were also very unique and interesting and were the highlight of the trip for me.

the fram museum houses the huge arctic/anti-arctic exploration ship *fram*. the norwegians are very proud of their polar exploration exploits.

the kon-tiki museum houses 2 of the reed rafts that norwegian explorers used to prove that early civilizations could have sailed to each other and traded across large expanses of water. i cannot imagine spending months floating along on a reed boat across the pacific.

the viking ship museum was my favourite. i was hoping to learn more about the vikings while in norway but this seemed to be the only museum accessible to us.

we took the ferry from central oslo across the harbour to the suburbs to get the these museums. that was a nice trip.

sandefjord had lovely scenery to walk around and a whaling museum. that was pretty gross and i didn't so much enjoy learning how to catch, kill, and take apart a whale.

there was nothing to do in stromstad. literally nothing. everything was closed so we had to eat pizza at the only open restaurant. the 2.5hour ferry ride there and back was beautiful though.

when i'm a millionaire i will go back to scandinavia and live like a king and i will not eat pizza every day. i'm so used to travelling on the strong english pound, this trip was a shock to the system and bank balance.

scandinavia would be a wonderful place to live, but travelers beware.

check out flickr for all the photo glory.