“Travel doesn’t become an adventure until you leave yourself behind!”
You may have been some of the pictures of my recent whirlwind trip, but I wanted to share with you my perspective on Norway, what we did, where we went and how we’re feeling now we’re back!
You may have heard that the trip was a gift that I surprised Brandon with for his birthday. It wasn’t a milestone birthday, it was just something I know he had been wanting to do for a long time, he is great at planning amazing surprises for me and I felt like it was finally time for me to step up my game 
He knew we were going somewhere, but had no idea where until his birthday on September 3rd. On that morning I woke him by giving him a raincoat (yes we definitely needed that), a new Patagonia rolling backpack hand luggage, and his detailed itinerary of our trip. Like I mentioned, it was a whirlwind, so let me take you on our journey…
Day 1 – Arrive in London (definitely jet lagged) but not too tired to do a little shopping and eat some good old fish and chips! After a brief tour of London, we went to the airport again and departed for Bergen, Norway.
Day 2 – Woke up in Bergen, and fell in love with the city. This quaint little fishing town is so much more than I imagined, mainly because it isn’t as small as I was expecting. It did have the beauty of being a small town, with the beautiful colored historical shops on the pier, but its boundaries were so much more. We visited a castle, walked the pier, took a funicular (very slow moving train) to the top of the mountain that overlooked the whole bay and the city. Later we had time to rent E-bikes and explore old Bergen and cycle through the hills overlooking the bay.
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Day 3 – Departed on a boat to take a Fjord cruise up the Sognefjord to our next destination, the tiny village of Leikanger. The scenery on the cruise was amazing, and the weather wasn’t too cold to be on the back of the boat taking pictures. Once we arrived in Leikanger, we went on a bike ride to the small village, ate lunch and explored a little.
After returning to the hotel, Brandon and our friend Dan, decided to take a dip in the Fjord glacier water (just so they could say they did).
Day 4 – A short boat ride to the amazing town of Flam (this town was definitely my favorite)…all the waterfalls, the hiking and the amazing rainbows completely made this place magical. We hiked a mile up to a beautiful waterfall, ate at a viking themed restaurant and took and relaxing bath in a historic themed room with the claw foot tub (perfect after getting wet and cold hiking to the waterfall). The dinner at the viking restaurant was delicious but we said no to dessert and headed back to the hotel to eat an after dinner treat at the hotel.
Click to view slideshow.Day 5 – Train from Flam via Myrdal to Oslo. An amazing ride through the mountains, along the river, through more fjords and amongst more waterfalls. It almost seemed like we were saying “Oh…there’s one more waterfall”. This train ride was so much fun, sitting relaxing and enjoying the beauty of the changing seasons. As we rode to higher elevations, we saw fall leaves on the trees, and even snow at the top of the mountain. Riding back down the other side, onto Oslo, the scenery was a little more commonplace but still amazing. We arrived in Oslo, immediately dropped off our bags and headed into the city. It was a little chilly and rainy, so we took ourselves to the Viking ship museum and didn’t do a lot of walking around but ate dinner in the city center and explored a few of the shops. Being like most big cities, a lot of stores were big chains, but it was still fun to see.
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Day 6 – After spending the night in our hotel, we woke up and headed to go take a look at the amazing opera house – definitely a landmark. After climbing to the top, we took a trolley to check out the naked statues at Frogland park. I’ve never seen anything like it, we may have had just a little bit too much fun taking pictures there 
. After that we collected our luggage and headed to the airport to take our flight to Edinburgh, Scotland. I had the chance to brush up on my driving on the left hand side of the road in a stick shift. .
We met up with some of my English friends in Edinburgh and watched the sunset over the skyline from a park on a hill in the outskirts of town. Our view from the hotel of Edinburgh castle was amazing.
Day 7 – We booked our tickets online for Edinburgh castle so we could get up early and head over there. We ate at the Elephant House, there JK Rowling wrote a lot of her Harry Potter books. I don’t remember ever going to the castle when I was younger, and it was well worth the trip. After the tour of the castle we loaded up the car and started the drive up to the highlands via St Andrews. I am not really a golfer, so even though my dad has played there, I had never even been to the town. It was very quaint and definitely worth a visit, even though when we were walking through the historic old cemetery and castle ruins, the sun was shining but we got stuck in a hailstorm. Finally after the hail let up, we loaded the car again and started the drive to Inverness (right at the top of Loch Ness). The even there was beautiful and VERY cold, but it was a really cool little town.
Click to view slideshow.Day 8 – After spending the night in Inverness, we had breakfast in this cute little town and prepared to go see a Scottish/English battleground and then on to Loch Ness. The little thatched roof house at the battlements was so cute and had been there for centuries. The Castle ruins and their view of Loch Ness were beautiful and a great place to explore. I found that driving on the country roads was a little bit of a white knuckle ride, because the roads are so narrow and there were a lot of big tour buses. We made it without a scratch but I won’t like, it definitely made me a bit nervous. I guess after being in the US with our wide roads over here it was a little more intimidating than I thought it would be. We drove alongside a few Lochs back down to Edinburgh to spend the night again.
Click to view slideshow.Day 9 – Our last day in Edinburgh, Scotland was spent exploring a little more of the city – including a little scarf and kilt shopping. Our friends found a pair of mini bagpipes that sounded more like a dying cat than musical, but it was definitely entertaining. We walked along a park with a fabulous view of the castle, and came across and ice cream van so I had to have a 99 Ice cream cone. Definitely worth the calories We walked down to see the castle that the Queen comes and stays in when she visits Edinburgh, and came across a restaurant over in Stockbridge that definitely warranted us taking a picture. After spending the day exploring, we headed back to the airport to take our flight back to London so we could depart the following day.
One thing I realized is that when I am planning things, I tend to move a little too quickly. There were so many moving parts to this trip – all the modes of transportation and hotels in each place. I had booked the flight to London Gatwick instead of Heathrow where our flight back to Salt Lake City was departing the following day…After beating myself up just a little for screwing that up, we hopped aboard our flight. Everyone’s bags came off the carousel except mine (which is even more frustrating when you consider that I only ever take hand luggage, but had decided on this flight to let my bag be checked! 
) .
The airport told me that British Airways who we flew with actually doesn’t track their luggage UNLESS they lose it and then they start looking for it. We did hang around the airport for about an hour thinking they may find it, but decided to take an Uber back to the hotel around 10pm. Right when we were almost at our Hotel near Heathrow airport they called and told me that they had located the bag but that they couldn’t get it to me in time for our flight but would send it back to Salt Lake for me. Moral of this story – always carry some spare underwear in your hand luggage just in case they lose your bag….
Click to view slideshow.
All in all, I have to say, this trip is going to be hard to top. Norway and Flam in particular were definitely a highlight, and we would love to spend more time up in the small Fjord villages. I did love Edinburgh though, especially all the nostalgia from my childhood and the quaint buildings, all the history and castles.
If you are ever looking for an amazing trip to take, there is a tour called “Norway in a Nutshell” that covers a lot of the ground that we covered, and they plan it all for you.
Now comes the hard part – how do I plan a trip for next year that will surpass this one?
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