Norway in a Nutshell | Sift, Stir & Savour

I meant to post this about a month ago but time flew by quicker than I anticipated. In case you missed my previous posts about my vacation this past summer I talked about our 6 days in Iceland here (part 1), here (part 2), and here (part 3). After Iceland we travelled to Norway, Sweden, Finland and Estonia. I plan on posting about each country we visited in the order we visited them and that, my friends, is why I’m talking about Norway today 🙂

Our flight from Iceland to Norway was at 7 AM so we had to leave the apartment we were renting in Iceland at 4 AM. Since we were packing until midnight that night, to say we were tired would be an understatement. Luckily I was able to have a nap in the airport and on the plane. When we got to Oslo, Norway I was awake enough to function and awake enough to bicker. Yup, our first day in Oslo was my partner and I’s bickering day. Oh the joys that sleep deprivation can bring. Regardless, we still had a lovely time, bickering and all.

Our first stop was the Oslo Opera House. It’s right on the water and was very modern in design. We didn’t go inside though, just walked around the exterior and enjoyed the view of the water.

There was a lot of construction around the Opera House so we decided to head more into the centre of Oslo. It was beautiful. Absolutely perfect, if you ask me. There were so many people just walking around and enjoying the fresh air and scenery. And then we found this awesome guy blowing MASSIVE bubbles. He really captured everyones attention. After all, how do you make a bubble that big?

Oslo was such a clean and beautiful city that my partner and I simply walked around for the entire afternoon. Even though we were completely exhausted, we kept walking and discovering adorable little shops, beautiful buildings and luscious parks.

After our afternoon of discovering we decided to take a nap and rest for the beginning of the evening. After nap number three of the day we headed out to the Oslo Ice Bar.

It was so cool. Literally, it was really cold. Luckily part of the experience was getting suited up. That’s right, they gave us capes and gloves and boots were available, but we didn’t use them. After we were appropriately dressed we went into the bar and got ourselves a mix drink that was served in an ice glass, of course.

I’m not going to lie, I was mildly terrified to take a sip out of my drink because I thought that my lip might stick to the ice glass. I may or may not have secretly waited until my partner took a sip of his drink before I indulged in mine. Clearly my three naps of the day hadn’t fully rested all of my brain cells because what kind of bar would serve drinks out of a glass that sticks to peoples lips? Anyway, the Ice Bar was definitely an interesting experience, however, we didn’t stay more than 30 minutes. I’m sure you’re shocked to hear that sitting on ice chairs wasn’t the most comfortable. The Ice Bar was also on the small side, so it didn’t take long to see all of the sculptures and detail work.

The next morning we were off to Bergen, Norway via a tour called “Norway in a Nutshell” (basically seeing all the highlights of Norway in one day). This tour took all day (13-14 hours) and we took 3 different trains, a bus and a ferry. I’m not going to lie, this tour was my partner and I’s least favourite thing that we did on our two week vacation. It was a good learning experience though. We both realized that we get bored very, very quickly if we’re either not engaged in some type of physical activity or if we don’t have control over what we’re doing. We did stop during one of the train rides though and got to see this beautiful waterfall:

Part of the tour was seeing Voss. I absolutely loved Voss. I specifically loved the Voss train station, how cute is it? I also loved Voss because the next day we went back there and kayaked, but I’ll cover that in my next post 🙂

While driving through Voss we passed by an old church that is apparently one of the only buildings in Voss that was not destroyed during WWII. I just had to snap a picture, even though we were in a moving bus- this church was just too important not to remember.

We also took a ferry through some fjords, but seeing the fjords during our kayak tour was wayyyyy more amazing, so I’ll cover the fjords during my next post!

By the time we arrived in Bergan it was past 10 PM so we headed straight for our apartment. Even though we were exhausted, we just couldn’t resist heading out for an exploratory walk of Bergan. We quickly realized that nothing was open at that hour but the streets were so beautiful it didn’t even matter. Eventually we made our way back to our apartment and passed out for the night. We didn’t sleep for long periods of time during our trip, but when we did sleep we slept like babies!