Alex's Norway Trip

Norway | Sep 1 - Sep 11, 2024

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I stayed at the Hotell Bondeheimen. The hotel checked me in extremely early, the concierge GiGi was very kind - all staff was friendly and responsive. I slide my room key into a port by the front door to turn all the lights on in the room between the shower and bedroom - something that I was not accustomed to but encountered in every hotel throughout Norway. The full bed was very comfortable; great sheets, fluffy pillows, lovely little view of the street from my 5th floor room (out of 6 floors).

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I stayed at the Radisson Blu Plaza Hotel. The hotel was flawless. My room & shower were exceptionally clean and new; the building itself is the tallest building in all of Oslo. The rooftop bar had a magnificent view, and the nearby pubs that a local I stopped to speak with recommended, Pier 42 and Papa Borracho; both were fantastic for beautifully crafted cocktails and wide varieties of snacks.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I stayed at the Flåmsbrygga Hotel. This is 1 of 4 hotels right in Flåm - not the most luxurious as it is a smaller building with 41 total rooms but that was absolutely unnecessary because it was by far the best that I visited in all of Flåm, it sits closest to the water and is cabin-like with a cozy vibe, right next to the local brewery/pub that is extremely popular but not rowdy (can't hear any noise from the pub if your balcony door is closed. This hotel was top notch and my balcony view overlooking the fjord was unreal (until the next morning when a gigantic cruise ship came into town and took up my view).

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I stayed at the Heimly Pensjonat. This is a fairly older building, the rooms are very small which is tough for a bigger person like me, and it is far from the rest of town with a decent incline to drag your luggage up for about a quarter mile. I would suggest this place for backpackers and light travelers who would prefer some solitude from the small town. It’s surrounded by an orchard and the top-floor rooms have a great view of the fjord - there is no form of A/C though, so you can expect some bugs in your room from the orchard if you open your window to try to get some air during the day/night.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I stayed at the Kviknes Hotel. One of the greatest hotels I’ve ever been to in my life around the world - this would be 6 or 7 Stars if I could make it so. Even in the Modern-Section of the hotel, the rooms felt rustic but very high quality, and my fjord-view was breathtaking. Extremely kind staff that were insightful about the area and provided great recommendations for hikes, meals, and history of the area. A historical and modern side of the hotel (I would love to go back and stay in the historical side).

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I stayed at the Zander K Hotel. This is a pretty hotel but all of Bergen is cobblestone! You either pay for a $30-40 taxi, or do what I did and walk over a mile completely uphill. The breakfast was delicious, the staff were personable and helped as needed. The rooms are extremely spacious but not well-ventilated.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I stayed at the Bergen Børs Hotel. This place had the greatest breakfast buffet I've ever seen in my life. This is one of the nicest hotels in all of Bergen, and for great reason. This hotel was my favorite by far - the room was very modern and the shower was actually big enough for someone my size, thankfully! It sits right by the ports in the heart of Bergen and was absolutely amazing. 12/10

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I stayed at the Thon Hotel Tromsø. The staff were friendly and helpful with providing plenty of suggestions for local pubs or restaurants to try during my free time. The room was comfortable but it felt cramped with minimal ports for chargers because a desk was in my room with "ports" for charging but none of those ports worked, and there wasn't enough room to move the desk to access the outlet that desk was plugged into. Shower was very tight but worked. With each night, you get a ticket for "Evening Fare" in the dining room on the lobby floor - the light fare is a great little appetizer selection of bread, cold cuts, soup, little snacks, etc that you can enjoy before going out to dinner for a real meal. The hotel has no views in any direction of any room, so you will see other buildings in the city nearby only.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced A Norwegian Evening on the Fjord. The cruise really started boarding just before 6:30pm, so when I got there at 6:30pm, there was already a large line that had already started taking most of the seats along the sides of the boat (highly recommend claiming one of those side-seats, especially along the stern or a seat up top along the bow because they are all side-of-the-ship-seats). The boat workers were very funny and informative throughout the cruise about local island names and some history of the fjord. The Prawn dinner wasn’t bad, definitely gotta recommend travelers take advantage of the dill and lemon that come with it as they make the prawns delicious but it is fairly bland without the seasonings, you also literally pick apart a full shrimp/prawn from head to tail, so some travelers may be a little grossed out like a few people around me. Sunset was insanely beautiful along the fjord, the cruise had blankets and heat lamps all across the boat, and they played a lot of fun American tunes from the 80’s that had many passengers dancing.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Private Tour of Oslo's Highlights. Lisa was my tour guide and she was absolutely phenomenal! We started out our tour by going up above the city to a lovely viewpoint where you could see a panoramic view of Oslo, she described the various sections of the city from the far edges of wealth to the bustling city center mostly full of businesses vs residents, and the areas of homes and apartments just below us from our view that was filled with the majority of everyday contributors in the city and the nieghborhoods filled with a younger crowd of citizens who recently graduated from university and move back to Oslo. Next, we went to the Oslo City Hall where she shared the history of the Norwegian murals all along the inside of the City Hall auditorium. Some depicted the religious transition from Catholic to Lutheran while others showcased the start from farming and fishing up to the noble expansion of the land surrounding Oslo. She also shared information about Alfred Nobel and how the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony take place December 10th every year in Oslo. After City Hall, we tried to visit the Kvikness Art Museum but it is closed on Mondays, there is a special seat within the museum you can reserve to sit in that was once sat upon by the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, Kaiser Wilhelm. We instead headed to the Fram museum which was incredible! We passed by the Royals’ away home by the beach, and pulled up to the museum which is located in the wealthiest district of Oslo. The Fram museum is dedicated to Norwegian polar expedition and has several subsections in the museum dedicated to Viking sailing and Maritime revolutions from Norway. It holds 2 gigantic ships that you can go on and explore inside, as well as a fantastic 5-minute film, with headphones to translate the commentary into 10-different languages, that tells the story of how dog-sledding was invented and the 3 different Fram-ship expeditions that led to the northernmost exploration of the Arctic. After the Fram museum, Lisa brought me to the Olympic Ski Jump Centre which was enormous, truly a wonder of engineering - followed by a fantastic little Norwegian-Germanic hotel-like restaurant atop one of the nearby mountains. Our final activity before finishing the tour was exploring the The Vigeland Park, a city-sponsored park filled with work exclusively from the famous Gustav Vigeland - it was a cloudy day with sprinkling rain, the park is composed of a dark color palette, and it was practically empty of other visitors; the aesthetic provided a perfect experience for what Gustav would have wanted his visitors to see. Afterwards, Lisa dropped me off at the Munch museum to finish my day before dinner and sleep. I bought my ticket and entered - it was a beautiful museum filled with art from a very distressed man who expressed tremendous emotion in the most subtle ways. I made it upstairs just in time to see the Scream be revealed (it is unveiled for 3-minutes every hour). A must-do aside from seeing the Scream painting is to go to the top floor of the Munch museum - there is a rooftop restaurant and bar that overlooks the harbor and downtown Oslo.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Private Floating Sauna Experience. This was incorrectly scheduled; I did not have a private experience, I was crammed into the sauna with 2 other couples and a family of 6. They were all friendly but none of us were terribly comfortable. Aside from the lack of space in a sweaty environment, the sauna felt great and jumping into the fjord a dozen times was insanely fun, especially being able to climb a ladder on top on the saune to jump/dive/canonball into the water.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Ægir Pub: Viking Dinner Experience. This is the most popular spot in all of Flåm (extremely small town with only a few hundred people, during peak season), a reservation is paramount. The dinner experience was phenomenal - I was overjoyed from the moment it hit my table; the 5-beer samples were all beautifully colored with perfect pairings for the flavors of the incredible little meals assigned to each plate in front of each mug. It was colorful, delicious, unique, and full of some items I had never tried but can’t wait to eat again. My dessert was an apple compote with a strawberry & rhubarb creme that I’ll never forget, along with a great espresso martini.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Summer Kayaking Excursion. My guide, Patryk, was a fantastic German exchange traveler who actually lived about 10-minutes from where I spent some time living in Stuttgart! He was a great guide who helped everyone tremendously, gave informative knowledge about the fjord, the waterfalls we passed, Flåm, the city of Aurland we passed, and a sunken WWII battleship that could be dove to if you’re certified! Patryk and I talked for a bit after, he suggested a couple waterfalls that I could hike to from Flåm, and we plan to connect when he visits Colorado at the end of next summer for a kayaking trip.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Summer RIB boat Safari & Local Taste of Undredal. This was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve ridden plenty of RIB-boats while my dad was in the military and I’ve seen some cool places on the water in the past but this experience was like none-other. First & foremost, being a solo traveler has its perks - everyone else on 1 of the 2 boats was either from a giant group or a family. Although the captain asked the tallest people to sit in the back (eyeballed me jokingly), others filled the back first, and only the very front was left - he said it was ok for me to sit up front, so I sat alone up front! When we were going 30kmph most of the time, it felt like I was completely alone on the boat seeing the most incredibly mountain views and waterfalls in EVERY SINGLE DIRECTION THAT I LOOKED!!!!!!!! (Counted 58 but I think I missed a few, definitely at least 60+ in the 1.5 hours we went outward from Flåm). Our boat captain, Robby, was hilarious when he would stop and tell stories about the different areas of history we were viewing - he even drove us up under a waterfall to get the edge of the boat wet and splash a little water on me, after asking if I was okay with it, which was great. We finished the tour by stopping in Undredal which was incredible - it’s a tiny town founded in 1127 which hadn’t gotten a road until 1992 and WiFi until 2014 - it’s famous for the brown cheese you find all around Norway! They have 50 people and 400 goats in the tiny town surrounded by mountains - we were given a cheese tour of how the cheese is made and sampled plenty; the story is basically that a road was built in the early 1900’s between Oslo to Bergen, and branches were built to lead to Flåm and a couple other cities - Undredal was only accessible by boat and wanted to give the state of Norway a region to blow a few miles of holes into the mountain to make a road for Undredal, so they took great care of the goats and developed a technique for making a mildly sweet cheese that could be stored without refrigeration for up to 75 days, it is now a globally-known award winning cheese!

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced Visiting the Stegastein Viewpoint with a Bus. The 3 buses that were set to take us were severely overcrowded, as was the viewpoint as a whole. As a solo traveler, I had the perk of getting the last seat on one bus, sitting next to the sweetest driver - she admitted that every single day, the buses get overbooked by the company and they just give out refunds like it’s nothing because it’s so common. Essentially, you have to fight for entrance to the bus (a lot of folks were very aggressive, shoving their tickets at the drivers to get their group entry to the ride up the mountain). These buses obviously don’t have A/C, so the bus is very hot. The view was nice but a hike to a different peak would be just as good, and would not have hundreds of people within the space of a couple hundred feet just for an oversold view.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Cider Tasting & Lunch. This was a 12/10 experience - 6 Stars without a doubt. This was an incredible experience. You walk 15-minutes from the town center. There are over 1,000 genes of apples sitting on the orchard, and we were taught plenty. 7,500 different kinds of apples in the world. In Norway, the term difference between alcoholic and non-alcoholic cider is simply saying cider or juice, unlike the U.S. The ciders produced onsite had 4.7-16% alcohol. I was able to sample ciders on each end of that spectrum. Fun fact; heavy rain seasons may produce great amounts of product that year but they are actually not good, they cause water weight to hurt the trees and generally exhaust them, so the following 2 seasons after a heavy rain will only provide minimal amounts of product. The food pairings for lunch with each cider were perfectly crafted.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Fjord Cruise to Rosendal. I sat on top of the cruise ship to enjoy the views for the 2-hour ride, it was beauty in every direction. Plenty of comfortable seating in the ship as well if desired and a helpful cafe with an assortment of snacks and drinks. Roseldal is a cute town with an absurdly cool backdrop as you pull in with the ship. It is basically directly between two conjoining mountains and there is a large, steep waterfall cascading down between the mountains. The hike to the waterfall viewing area is extremely easy. It goes past the town, through a few miles of countryside, and you end up at a gigantic roaring waterfall! I knew I was going to hike to the waterfall, so I packed extra clothes, just in case… the locals I asked all said swimming in it was totally acceptable but chilly; If you’re as adventurous as me, that’s just motivation! I made my way through 30ish yards of extremely difficult brush and tore off my shoes to jump into the waterfall and pools beneath it - NO REGRETS, IT WAS AMAZING! The handfuls of people walking the trail up & over the falls cheered me on and applauded me while in the water. I dried off with the towel I brought and changed into fresh clothes to hike back to the town for lunch. Ate a chicken quesadilla which was super random but honestly one of the most packed and delicious quesadilla’s I’ve ever eaten. Sat inside the ship and relaxed on the Fjordcruise back to Bergen - it was very comfortable even with my dead phone.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Aurora Safari Minibus. This was a very nice experience that everyone needs to do. It was led by a young Austrian woman named Sonya, she was very informative about Tromsø facts and science related to the Northern Lights. The sun sets incredibly late this far North above the Arctic Circle in early September, so we started our tour by going Northwest, off the island and through an underground bridge over to the Kaldfjord - a beautiful view of the only fjord near Tromsø (all other bodies of water actually belong to the Norwegian Sea, and are not fjords). We were able to pick some wild blueberries, they were delicious. After hanging out by the fjord, we hopped back in the van and were driven 2 hours practically directly South (back in the underground bridge, through Tromsø, over a different bridge to the mainland, and down to an area called Solligården. Our guides know a man who owns much of the land, has a beautiful house atop a hill, and a small cabin with benches outside by the water that the guides are aloud to bring tourists to try viewing the Northern Lights. Our guides set up a bonfire after about 30 minutes of hanging out and telling us about the area. From about 10:15pm to 12:30am, we sat by the fire chatting and eating stew/drinking hot cocoa. At that point, we hadn’t seen much but had a perfectly clear sky filled with stars which was beautiful. The guides decided that they would slowly start to pack up and we would leave to head back. Almost as soon as they were done packing, another traveler and I noticed some weird movement in the sky that looked like off-colored clouds swaying. The guides identified those as the Lights starting to form - on camera, it looked bright green. 5-minutes later for the next 30ish-minutes, the sky started filling with all sorts of green wispy cloud-like forms filling up every area we looked, and the shots on our cameras were like gigantic rainbows everywhere! We were driven back at about 1:45am. The company will drop off certain travelers at the Tromsø campground on the way back and everyone else in Tromsø at different hotels will be returned to the Radison Blu where we were picked up originally.

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Husky Hike & Puppy Visit. This is a 100/10, 10-star experience. I was exhausted from the Northern Lights trip and minimal sleep but a few minutes after arriving at the Puppy Farm, everything changed and I was beyond revitalized. This is something every single traveler to Tromsø should experience if they aren’t afraid of dogs, and those that are but might be open to overcoming their fear absolutely will at this Husky Home. We started off by putting on rainboots and heading down to a marsh where a dozen puppies were released and came sprinting down to us. 9 travelers total, we split into teams of 3 and spread far apart with a bunch of treats in each group. We spent 30-minutes calling the 2 month old puppies to each of us to teach them to respond as a group! After they were put back, 8 older puppies came sprinting towards us and we all walked over to creek where each group spread out again and we proceeded to call them back and forth across the water to get them to practice being comfortable traversing water like they would have to during dogsledding. When training was done, 3 people (I was one) were allowed to put on harnesses and our group took 3 sled dogs on a 2 miles hike through the area! It was so fun - the other 2 people were dragged and stumbled a few times but the biggest dog which was pulling me was having a blast trying to yank me around but I was big enough that he couldn’t pull me around. We were given a traditional Norwegian/Portugese lunch and told about the history of Norwegian fish being shared with Catholic countries, how the relationships developed, and why the Portugese made a meal that is now famous in Norway. For the last hour, we were walked into a gigantic enclosed area outside where there are over 100 huskies housed, all of them were extremely friendly and loving, I was able to go play with all of them at least 4 times before the bus had us leave!

I'm a kimkim staff member and I was on a work trip when I experienced the Tromsø Cable Car. The cable car is off the island, across the bridge, on the mainland. I caught a Tromsø Taxi which was very easy - the walk would’ve been over 45 minutes while the taxi ride was 10-minutes. The cable car made it to the top in about 5 minutes overlooking all of Tromsø and the surrounding areas of mountains, sea, fjord, and outskirt towns! A cafe called the Fjellstua Café sits at the top where the cable car deposits you. The open-faced roast beef sandwich was great, especially sitting out on the open viewpoint tables. There are dozens of trails all on top of the mountain that you can traverse to go get different perspectives miles away from the cable car. I explored little bits of a few different directions of trails and got some fantastic views. The cable car ride down was just as easy, along with the Tromsø Taxi ride back to Tromsø Island!