Lilo's Diary: October 2014

It's been 2 years since I last wrote a post. Guess it's about time to write something now. I came back from a backpacking trip to Norway (the hunt for lady Aurora~!) last week. I owed it to the kind souls on the internet who made my planning much easier! Guess I should do the same to pay it forward as suggested by a friend~ I do like writing. Just didn't have as much time as I wish to. There's so much I like to do in life! Researching on future trips, practising my erhu, painting (if I have the time..), and read. I wish I have all the time in the world to read!

Anyway, here goes. Below are some of the details of my trip. I probably can only write 1 to 2 days of my trip each time. At the end of the write up, I'll upload the whole thing in word or excel, for anyone who wishes to save it, for future reference. Be patient~ ;)

Day 0

This is my 3rd self-planned trip (2nd backpacking). My backpack was about 10kg. I weight 47+kg. Couldn't walk too long with this weight on me. And if I am carrying my backpack I can't bend down, I might topple. LOL~

In summary, my trip goes like this :

Day 1 : Oslo (capital of Norway)

Day 2 : Oslo to Tromso (the city where we'll see the northern light)

Day 3 : Tromso

Day 4 : Tromso

Day 5 : Tromso to Stavanger (going to the Pulpit Rock or Preikestolen)

Day 6 : Stavanger (actually where we stayed is called Ryfylke. Stavanger is where the airport is.)

Day 7 : Stavanger to Bergen

Day 8 : Bergen

Day 9 : Bergen to Flam

Day 10 : Flam to Oslo (to take the so-called most beautiful train ride in the world)

Day 11 : Oslo to Singapore

(oops, I've been telling people my trip is 12 days. Got it wrong. haha.)

Took the overnight flight at about 11:30pm from Singapore to Helsinki. Reached Helsinki at about 0635, transit time 2 hours. Eventually Reached Oslo around 9am.

The ticket cost S$1300+ (Finnair). Finnair is not a budget airline, but we had to pay for the seats if we want to choose the seats… One way costs S$30+. The ticket itself originally was S$1200+.

At Helsinki Airport.

Oh by the way, I bought Aviva travel insurance for this trip. Costs abt S$77, cheapest I can find!

You can buy Oslo Pass if you wish, a lot of museums are free with it, along with public transport. I was not planning to go many museums in Oslo so I didn’t buy it. 24hrs Oslo Pass is 290NOK (roughly S$60). But Oslo Pass doesn’t cover the train from Gardemoen Airport to town, we bought a 3 zones / 24hrs transport ticket instead – 190NOK. This will cover the trip from where we stay to airport. There’s local train (end destination is not the airport – you need to check the train route) as well as the more expensive Flytoget (train) or Flybussen (bus) to airport. These two need to purchase ticket separately. Flytoget is 170NOK one way, pretty stiff. From the airport to town by train is about 20min.

Norway train company :
NSB – https://www.nsb.no/en/

Bus company :
Ruter – https://ruter.no/en/

(Oslo S is the town train station. Oslo Lufthavn is the airport train station)

They both have apps if you want to download. NSB does not accept foreign credit card on their apps. The 24hrs transport ticket can be used for train, bus and tram (I forgot whether valid for ferry).

(At the time of writing, 1NOK = 0.19SGD)

Note that in Norway, it’s cheaper to buy tickets beforehand than on the bus itself. To buy ahead, one way costs 30NOK. To buy it onboard the bus, 50NOK! If not mistaken, the ticket is count by zone, not no. of stops. On our last day, I didn’t manage to buy the ticket beforehand (something wrong with the apps), for 2 stops I have to pay NOK50… but we bumped into a nice bus driver who charged us only 1 ticket instead of 2 :D So grateful~

Day 1

We went to Vigeland Park on the first day we’re in Oslo. The park itself is free entrance, there’s a museum there – entrance fee NOK60 which we didn't go.

Quote from http://www.vigeland.museum.no/en/vigeland-park: The Vigeland Park is the world's largest sculpture park made by a single artist, and is one of Norway's most popular tourist attractions. The park is open to visitors all year round.

The unique sculpture park is Gustav Vigeland's lifework with more than 200 sculptures in bronze, granite and wrought iron. Vigeland was also in charge of the design and architectural layout of the park. The Vigeland Park was mainly completed between 1939 and 1949.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Vigeland about the sculptor : Gustav Vigeland (11 April 1869 – 12 March 1943), né Adolf Gustav Thorsen, was a Norwegian sculptor. Gustav Vigeland occupies a special position among Norwegian sculptors, both in the power of his creative imagination and in his productivity.

We also went for a walk around the Oslo Opera House. We didn’t go in.

We stayed in Scandic Fornebu the first night. I actually made a mistake here somehow. I wanted a hotel closer to airport. But I booked a hotel further from airport than town is…. I guess I was attracted by the view. LOL. But the hotel is cheap enough – abt S$140.

Nice view eh?

I estimated a daily food expense of S$90. On average, in the whole trip, we spent about S$50 per day per person. Sometimes we ate in restaurants, sometimes we have simple food like hotdogs, sandwiches, because of the timing and the location does not fit for a meal at restaurant, also it's too expensive to eat every meal at restaurants. Depends on where you are, 1 hotdog costs about S$10. A cup of coffee generally cost about S$6. A set of McDonals about S$18. We each brought 2 cup noodles and 1 canned tuna. Some days we need to leave the hotel really early, or arrive late, so this really is necessary.

There're not a lot of hostels in Norway. Even when I found one, the rate (for ensuite hostel room) is not much different from a room at hotel. So I chose to stay in hotel instead. All the hotels/hostel/apartment we stayed provided free wifi - which I was really pleased! Of the 5 hotels/hostel/apartment we stayed, only the apartment did not provide breakfast. Choosing a hotel with breakfast saved us money.

This is the first time we had to pay for toilet by credit card… so advanced.. 10NOK is about S$2. This was at the train station.

Finding our way to Kon-tiki Museum. There was a marathon going on, the roads were closed, so we couldn’t take the bus we wanted to take.. Walked 2+km to finally reach a bus stop that has the bus we want to take. We asked to confirm our direction from a tourist couple on bike. They told us, the route on the left is the “scenic” one, the route on the right is on the main road, nothing to see. But the “scenic” one is further. We decided on the “scenic” one. We saw some cows and trees on the way..