Saturday, 22 March 2014

Travelling to Norway [Part 1] - Oslo

Writing from my Hamburg hostel.....
Just when I was all ready to head out to explore the night of Hamburg, it started raining.. I stepped out and braced the wind for a few steps and ran back to my hostel telling myself that there was no way I'm gonna head out hahahaha.

So...might as well make use of the time to write about my Norway trip right?
One of the main reasons why my family chose Norway this time was because we wanted to chase the Northern Lights a.k.a Aurora Borealis. For those of you who have no idea what it is...



Stunning isn't it?


We narrowed down a few countries where we could be able to catch the lights.. There was Finland, Yellowknife (Canada) and Tromso, Norway. After reading multiple articles and doing relevant research, I figured Norway has the highest activity.

Thank You Charlotte, Deborah and Eexuan for making their way down to the airport to send me off. Promise to buy some pretty useful souvenirs for yall!


The route : Singapore ✈ Oslo ✈ Tromso ✈ Bergen ✈ Oslo ✈ Singapore


Booked a return trip to Oslo from Finnair at a reasonable price, $1130SGD
There was a transit at Helsinki, Finland for an hour but it was not a big problem either!

Flight review? Definitely preferred my previous flight by Airfrance which was an A380.. The seat on this flight was so cramp.. Entertainment was bad too, there were only a few movies and tv shows to watch and most of it was not to my liking. Worse of all, the entertainment screen was the size of my palm or smaller?
Anyway, I slept throughout the flight and I guess the theory applies, ´You pay for what you get`.

After 13 hours of flight, my family and I finally reached Oslo!
Because there was a total of 8 of us, it made more sense to take a cab to our apartment.
I´ve always thought Switzerland was expensive but I WAS WRONG.... Norway IS EVEN MORE EXPENSIVE!!!


This cab costed 1392NOK about 290SGD!
I would take the airport express train and a bus to the apartment (which I did today) because the taxi fares here are even crazier than Singapore.


The people I went with for this trip were my family friends and childhood friends and yes, that´s Brandon doing the #duckface

I booked a 4 room apartment for a night before we headed to Tromso the next day at a steal! It was $320SGD for the 8 of us and there was cooking facilities, laundry room etc. Only downside was there was only 1 toilet for the  of us so we had to queue up to wake up early to get bathroom priority.




Couldn't help but took a picture with natural sunlight shining thru the attic windows.


The moment I took out my international extension plug...... It was almost filled with devices HAHAHA



Our apartment was located in the Grunerlokka district (15 mins away from town). 
The graffitis along the streets to our apartment were very impressive and the most prominent one has to be this crocodile.

There was a famous food hall just 10 minutes walk away from the apartment.

Mathallen Food Hall



 You could purchase several high quality Norwegian produce or sit in for a quick meal..
This was when we all found out Norway has bizarre food prices!!
A proper meal would cost up to $40-$50 SGD per pax therefore it is better to cook at the apartment.




 




This chicken burger was about $25 SGD.....


It looks like we ordered very little but it added up to about $70 for just bread... Now, you get it..


Norwegian children having a field trip and they look so adorable in their tick jackets and beanies!

The rest of the day was spent strolling along Aker Brygge and Oscars gate.















Didn't do much shopping at Norway because it just wasn't worth it.
All of us were starving and we resorted to having Macdonalds.


I'm not a big fan of bread and the thing about eating at Europe is that most places will often sell sandwiches/Bread/salad. I just get sick of it easily.


Coincidentally, I reached the Oslo Opera House when the sun was about to set.



The view from inside of the opera house. 



Oslo transport system is very easy to understand after you get the hang of it and most places can be reached by the local bus or tram. Buying the day pass allows you to take unlimited land transport but either way some people could still ride for free BUT don't get caught. Norway has high social welfare for their people.

That's about it! I took about 1.5 hours to blog this and it takes less than a minute to finish reading. wuttt.
Gotta head back to my bunk to wash up and get ready for a long day tomorrow!
Part 2 will be continued when I find time to write again.


Signing off,
Hamburg
21:24



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