Norway with Loki

I remember speaking on a Travel Panel at BritMums a few years ago where I was asked whether you should bother writing about a destination if it had been written about many times before.   “Absolutely” I replied, your personal experience of a place is never going to be the same as someone else’s is it?   But what about if it your trip hadn’t quite lived up to the dream, should you still write about it?   Definitely, if not to serve as a potential warning to others as to what they might do differently, but as an effective form of self therapy…

I managed to coerce my good friend Laura into writing an account of her recent family trip to Norway in the hope that they could perhaps look back and laugh about it one day, if nothing else.    It also proves that  family travel definitely isn’t for the faint hearted a lot of the time…  

Thanks to the Thor Movies, we all know the Norse God of Mischief, Loki.   When he visited us on our trip to Norway – unfortunately he didn’t look like Tom Hiddleston, he looked a lot like dirty hotel rooms, and an empty wallet. Norway was full of contradictions for our family – you cannot take a bad photo, but you also cannot survive with a budget intact.  You cannot seem to have a bad meal, but you also cannot find an affordable night’s stay in a place bigger than a matchbox.  We were surrounded by beauty, but spent a lot of time talking ourselves and our children into enjoying it…

There are strange pressures when you’re an expat, and we have fallen prey to is the “see everything before you leave” one time and again.  Norway was on our list of “must-sees”,  but with very little time left here in Europe before we repatriate back to The States, we had to make it work in four days.   This was our first mistake (amongst many).  There’s no denying that Norway is beautiful and deserves to be enjoyed slowly…

On our first day in Oslo, we woke up in our lovely airbnb just outside the centre of town.  The fifth floor walk up was not so lovely to get our suitcases up the night before, but it paid off big in the views of the city whilst enjoying a coffee on the tiny deck.   We spent the day wandering around Oslo, hitting museums and playing in parks.  Little did we know that this would turn out to be the pinnacle of our time in Norway, Loki didn’t let us go too far before messing with us.

We had a lovely breakfast at a cafe called Carina’s before hitting the Munch Museum.  Carina’s is located next to a playground – perfect for parents and kids to enjoy slow entry into the day.   Whilst it was lovely, we failed to properly fill up our middle son, and had to deal with some nasty attitudes in the next few hours.  I would suggest having your little ones eat before they play, so that blood sugar demons are kept at bay…  Nevertheless, we pushed on as my three were keen to see Munch’s The Scream… Sadly for us, Loki struck again, and because of the Munch Museum’s update, and move to a different part of the city right next to the water, the old museum only has a small number of works on display – The Scream most definitely is not one of them.    I still highly recommend the Museum, the current display of  “Towards the Forest” is gorgeous and can be seen on 30-45 minutes kids depending…

As we also managed to visit on a national holiday, nearly everything was closed.  But, we did hit a bit of luck when the National Museum was open and free to the public as it was a Thursday.  I was pleasantly surprised at this smaller (compared to other European Capitals) Museum as it was very child friendly, and contained some Nordic works and masters that I hadn’t heard of.  It also contains another copy of Munch’s The Scream, so my children were satisfied at last!   Don’t skip the very fun family sketching room where all ages are encouraged to use clipboards and paper to create their own work of art to pin to the walls.  The special collection was also fun for my kids as it concentrated on American Pop Art featuring Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein just to name a few.

After an hour in the Museum, my three were a bit worn down from quiet rooms and soft stepping, so we headed to a place with more action – Tilt is a great place to re-group.  Yes, it’s a bar, but at 4pm in the afternoon we were the only ones in it.   pinball machines and old school table top arcade games line every wall, and shuffle boards take up all the room in the centre.  We gave the kids tokens and found a nice booth where we could relax and have a nice quiet drink without even noticing the ping ping beep of the machines.   Afterwards dinner at Tommi’s Burger Joint filled up our little ones, but they had run out of chicken and veggie burgers so I had to settle for sweet potato fries alone.      We also enjoyed the ice cream in Oslo, the kids opting for the funky flavours of Ice Crime (they skipped the jalapeno and avocado and went for blueberry) while I enjoyed the gin and tonic, and cashew and and coconut vegan offerings at a delightful outdoor stand (that I cannot for the life of me find the name for) located at Youngstorget & Aker Brygge..

With the first full day done, and with little Norse God of Mischief interference, we thought we might be in love with Norway.  Little did we know…

The next day didn’t start off too badly, we made the train from Oslo to Bergen with no problem, and settled in for our six hour ride.   There is no doubt that this train ride lives up to its reputation of “Most Beautiful Train Ride in the World”, but clocking in at six hours, it was a bit much for my travellers.   Even with tablets, and endless beauty out of the windows, my boys were restless and argumentative (there is a car with a children’s play area, but it was a bit small for my six and ten year olds).   We did our best to keep them happy with hotdogs from the cafe car, and relaxed screen time.  Upon arriving in Bergen, the group split up with the boys heading to the “apartment” and the girls shopping for shoes since a miscommunication meant that my daughter only brought crocs to wear!!   The guys did little more than drop the bags before heading back to the city centre to meet us for some exploring and a bite to eat.   Unfortunately this is where Loki hit us hard – when our guard was down, and we were happy to be in a new location. In little to no time at all, my son started suffering from either food poisoning or a stomach virus, and we realised that our new “apartment” was disgusting, broken, and smelly, AND by now it was too late to change hotels that night.   My son spent a few hours worshipping at the porcelain alter, and we hunkered down until morning.   Unfortunately, this also meant that we missed our Norway in a Nutshell Tour (the entire reason we had ventured to Bergen!), and since there were no refunds, we were down on a LOT of money.   The good thing was, my son was by now feeling a little better so we were able to move on to a much nicer hotel, The Oleana.  We had to get two rooms to accommodate our family, but we could rest and shower and not worry about what sticky thing was on the floor, or the broken furniture held together by hangers.

With our fjord dreams dashed, and a sickly kid in tow, we headed to what we thought would be a relaxing trip up the mountain by cable car.  What we didn’t know is that when it’s the nicest day of the year so far, everyone in Bergen, both local and tourist alike, will head up Mount Ulriken for a bit of fresh air and a hike.  What we were told would be a half an hour’s wait, turned into two hours to get up, and another hour to make it back down.  The views were great, but as you can imagine, our kids were not so impressed, and this little adventure had burned up most of our day…

Sometimes, especially when travelling, you have to know when to fold ’em – we went back to the hotel, took showers, and the husband went out and got the kids McDonalds.   We put our eldest child in charge of her younger brothers, and gave them free rein to watch TV and play games whilst the adults went across the street for dinner.  Although it cost an arm and a leg, the sushi at Nama was gorgeous, and quite a treat after a few days of just grabbing what we could here and there…

The next morning we had a couple of hours to eat a leisurely breakfast at the hotel and then do a bit of wandering before heading back to Oslo on the train.  The chain of bakery and sandwich shops called Godt Brod was a perfect place to grab sandwiches before piling on to the train, and you are never far from a convenience store to top up on snacks (seriously, how do they ALL stay in business?   They are EVERYWHERE in Norway!)…

The train was a bit slower back to Oslo, close to seven and a half hours in fact – and the kids were well and truly over the views by then.   We finally arrived in Oslo at 7pm, but as the sun doesn’t set at this time of year until around 8.30, we had a late dinner at Peloton – a bike themed cafe with pizzas and a good beer (I had a vegan pizza which was delicious).    The family room at Hotel Anker turned out to be not much more than five single beds packed into one room and we made it through the night there, but it wasn’t the most comfortable stay.   Then Loki made sure that the six year old also started being sick, and ensured another night of not a lot of sleep for any of us.    Luckily, he recovered quite quickly, and the following morning we had enough time for one last wander.    We found a beautiful old diner called Nighthawk, and had pancakes and omelettes that kept us filled for the journey home.

Norway IS beautiful, and I can fully understand why it is the perfect destination for the older, retired set coming in on cruise ships, taking in the fjords from deck chairs.   It is not a place I recommend trying to see on a family budget, and might be best to save for when kids are older, or even when you can travel without them…  If you have the money to spend, my advice is not to tempt that great God of Mischief – don’t look too hard at the prices, and spend what you have to spend to be comfortable.  Skimping in Norway will only leave you open to his meddling.

We will go back someday I am sure, but probably when we can sail through the fjords on an over 55 cruise without whining children, and when the time distance from this last trip is so great that we can wax lyrical about the long weekend we spent there when the kids were little.  Hopefully by then our minds will be so addled that we forget the vomit, the prices, and the sticky hotel floors.

Until then, we have lots of pretty pictures, and travel adventures to look back at, and with time, learn to laugh about.

Has Loki ever been an unwelcome travel companion on one of your trips (something usually goes wrong at some point whenever we travel, but not quite to this extent – yet!)?   Would you go back or has it put you off a destination for good??