Scandinavian Norway

I'm back from norway! It was a really short trip... 22nd feb to 25th feb (sorta). I'm quite proud of myself... I could actually spend 635 bucks travelling to the third most expensive country in the world. Kudos to Paul... for being such a brilliant planner. We saw so many places and stayed in comfortable hotels! Now I can travel to more places without feeling guilty about spending too much on one place =D

There were lots of coach taking for this trip... our journey to oslo by bus took about 7 to 8 hours maybe. Due to the really eeky and ugh snowstorms, we had to shuttle between quite a few places... like to flam, from voss back to oslo etc. So many hours spent on the bus! But I guess it wasn't that bad... we could catch up on our sleep during the looooooong bus rides and the scenery along the way was fantastic. We could see towering snow-capped mountains against a backdrop of burgeoning coniferous trees. It was white everywhere. Frozen lakes were part of the landscape as well... if you were lucky, you could spot several rapids and frozen waterfalls. At times, I found it difficult to distinguish between snow covered land and frozen lakes. It got me thinking... what if you're stuck out there in the cold and have no idea what you're stepping on. You might end up plunging yourself into sub zero waters. Scary eh? I think so. Well anyway, I just wanted to randomly point out how annoying it is to have irritating, chattering and inconsiderate people on the same bus as you. We encountered quite a few of those. I wanted to shout at them and kick them out of the bus. I especially hate it when people cough in enclosed spaces... without covering their mouths. I was trapped in a bus with this coughing girl... who wouldn't stop coughing AND talking. Wah. It was painful. My threshold for such experiences is pretty low. Okies enough bitching... and back to my narration of my nice lil trip.

We managed to get to flam despite the weather. We couldn't take the flam railway though *refrains from bitching some more* Luckily the ferry was working so we could still see the fjords and the plethora of mountains that came along. I guess it would be much nicer to see the fjords in summer or autumn... but then again, I wouldn't be able to travel during that period of time since I'll be on my way home. Sometimes, we just gotta be contented with whatever we have/see! Anyway, the ferry ride was fun cause we could get to the top of the ferry... and take lots of photos. It was really cold... with the wind whipping at your face all the time but ah well, we survived it! =D

The trip to Bergen was really worth it. Bergen has such picturesque scenery! Most of the time, I felt like I was staring at a painting... a really pretty painting. I saw colourful houses dotting the foot of high mountains. The waters in Bergen are sooo clear as well... we could clearly see the starfish at the habour. The wooden houses that we saw were tastefully flamboyant. And there was a fish market! The seafood there was soooo fresh. We tasted the authentic crabmeat and shrimp (which was free cause the guy selling them was really nice). We visited Bergen's St Mary's church...a castle and took the damnnnn niceeee tram which allowed us to land up at the top. It gave us a really beautiful view of bergen... and we had such a fun time building a snowman (who was named Sarah) and having snowball fights.

We went back to Oslo after that... and to me, I thought Oslo wasn't as nice as Bergen (which is more like a cultural city). Oslo reminds me of Copenhagen actually... it's very cityish and that's kinda expected since it's the capital of norway. Most of the shops were closed when we arrived in Oslo since it was a sunday but I guess I wasn't disappointed or anything; not really in for the whole shopping thing... not even window shopping. It was snowing quite heavily in Oslo so the mood was a bit dampened... we still covered quite a few places though. We walked around the city center, saw the parliament and the palace... went to the habour (had mac's there: I ate TWO burgers) and visited yet another castle near the habour. We went to this really really nice park as well. The park's famous for its many statues... and the statues were really interesting. Most of them were artistically carved... and most of them seemed rather wrong as well. (check out my picassa to know what I mean lol) I had fun at the park sliding down this slopey thingy. Yes I know I'm such a kid =D We kinda ended the trip with a yummy dinner at Dennis' Grill... which was relatively cheap compared to other eateries. We couldn't really afford traditional norweigen food... and we couldn't find a place anyway hah.

Well that's all I can remember for now!