Been Busy planning my scandinavia trip. Well at least the rough outline is out!
1. Arriving on Copenhagen on 5th
2. Drive to 4hours Gothenburg on 8th, arrive afternoon and stay overnight.
3. Drive to 4hours Oslo on 9th and stay overnight.
4. Take Bergen train 7hours from Oslo to Bergen on 10th
5. Buy Norway in a nutshell from bergen to sighsee Sonefjord
6. Buy Hardanger in a nutshell to see 2nd fjord
7. Stay another day in Bergen and sightsee
8. Fly out of Begen back to Oslo. No idea what airline to take yet...need to book. sigh.
9. Stay 2 nights in Oslo and Viola back to Hongkong on 16th
Everything seemed pretty ok now except to try to buy the train tickets and getting the norway in a nutshell, plus booking flight back. Actually the only thing that is troubling me is trying to rent a car from copenhagen to Oslo.
I have NO IDEA which car rental is good. An travel agency tried to quote me 600euro a day! Just because I am driving across 3 states from denmark thru sweden to Norway. Seriously dude, 600euro?! Excluding toll and gas, that is like killing me!
I tried to call Avis rental in copenhagen and NO one picks up the phone like after 5mins. I have to hang up since its an international call and i am paying $$ to listen to music. Budget doesnt do drop off in another state. Havent tried Hertz... I am getting desperate. Why is renting a car so tough if the route is so common?
Sigh... I wish someone can drop me an answer in my lap now.
Still need to book places to eat. Havent done any research,. Getting desperate since I am leaving for Sydney next day and by the time I come back, its a week away from my Scandinavia trip. Will be too late to secure anything. Can u see my deep furrow frowns by now? And to top it up, I will miss Hotaru this week! Ahhhhhh!!! Shoot me already!
3 comments:
Hi Olive,
Decided to write my reply to u here rather than chat as it allows me to put everything in a post. Its been 2 months now so I may not have all the details in my head now.
My personal advice is that 2 days each is not going to give you a good feel of the place nor cover enough places. I didnt go finland so cannot advice u but u are right, scandi is pretty expensive ESP NORWAY, so it is not a good region to do budget travelling honestly.
Initailly I had only plan to stay 2days in copenhagen but when I reached there, changed my mind as I liked it there alot and alot more to see. plus the places open at about 10 and closed about 4 or 5pm.On monday, alot of places are not open as well.
1. City Tpt cost:~$0
Virtually Walkable Within city to most sights. Or u can pick up the free city bikes offered at various bike stations. I walked everywhere myself.
Highlights
1. Nyhavn canal cafes (free)
2. Marble church (free)
3. The canal tour (cannot rem the price but its worth it)
4. Old stock exchange (see from outside to see the dragon spiral. Free)
5. Glyptoteket Museum (free on one day. Google their website to see which day is free. I walked past it on the free day. I highly rem it!! pls check my other pix website for what is inside.)
6. National Museum (free)
The rest of castles and palaces are ok to see from outside and free. Please skip Round tower, bloody waste of time and money for me. Tivoli nothing spectacular can skip. Christainborg can skip.
2. Train to outskirt sights :DKK125/pax for day pass.
Day pass is recommended as it end up cheaper than single trip as I was told. So u need to plan your route in advance to max the day (based on the opening hours and travel route)
Daytrip Hightlights.
1. U cannot miss frederiksborg at hillerod. This will take about 3/4day. 2 hr travel to/fro and about 3hour castle to soak in the sights and garden.
Some say u can hop over to Kronborg castle at Helsingor in the same day, and then detour down to lousiana art museum. I think its impossible to do 3 but 2/3 is possible. I break it up so that I did kronsborg and Lousianna art museum in the next day as they are in the same train line.
PS: Kronsborg is quite boring and honestly u can skip it unless u dont want to miss the "renown" sight.
So for sights alone, I think 3 days in denmark will do it more justice coz its a beautiful country and cheaper than norway!
Food in denmark. The cheapest eat is denmark hotdog which is really nice and filling! Sorry I cannot rem how much it was becoz its cheap but yummy! Breakfast I had in hotel so normally i will skip lunch. Dinner again I cannot advice as I went to try some more ex restaurants. However, avoid eating at Nyhan area becoz that is a tourist trap zone and prices are marked up terribly.
Accomodation:
Sorry u have to google this as we had a good corporate rate for this.
However overall, Denmark can work out to be rather affordable if u dun mind eating hotdogs and sandwiches"as most sights are free.
Else u can buy the copenhagen card that cover alot of sights but I didnt as when I calculate the card amount vs the entrance fee for places I wanted to go, it didnt balance out for me.
Now Norway.
I hope I wont offend any Norwegian but the city itself is like a typical not well kept european city with little sights to offer, except for the Edward Munch art collection exhibition for me.
In Norway, the local subways are pretty expensive so I mainly walk to the walkable places like the harbour front etc, if your legs are not killing u by then even with good walking shoes. Just DONT
take the cab as it is even more expensive than Jap cabs in my opinion!
The only main thing to do in Norway for me is to do the Norway in a nutshell and head straight down to Bergen to see the sognefjord fjords.
Norway in a nutshell covers the bergen train from norway city to Bergen via Voss. (there are other various options but I did the round trip starting from bergen via Voss).
U have an option to do a round trip from and back to norway which is i think 12hr thing.
I did the overnite trip stay in bergen as I wanted to explore the city. The Norway in a nutshell is about 975Nok/PAX (starting from bergen, i think its over 1kNok for the norway round trip. check their website). Train typically depart 8.40am from bergen and est return is 6pm.
I also did the Hardanger in a nutshell (starting with bus) on 2nd day, cost about Nok790 (US$130)
I stayed in Augustine hotel in bergen, got a very cheap rate because I reserved earlier and its towards the non peak.
I had full breakfast in hotel and skip lunch, saved for some chips I brought along the fjord day trips. Dinner I had mine mostly at spisekroken, a small family run restuarant which served really good food. http://www.spisekroken.no/eng_menu.htm
There is a supermart round the corner and an italian pizza place behind the hotel which is cheaper.
The average cost of meal in norway for me was about US$30-$50 depending on what I felt like for the day and since I didnt spend on breakfast and lunch i figured it was ok..
Bergen tpt is free as its so small u can walk around.
I flew back from bergen to norway via the scandi air since it was soo cheap and to save time since there is only so much train rides and scenery I can stomach.
Let me know what else I can help me. Sorry if I do not have alot of information.
I had planned to drive but realise that flying from denmark to norway was soooo much cheaper esp if u buy advance, which I did.
I am annoyed as the stupid blog overwritten my pprevious write up on denmark with this norway one!! ahhh! Have to get back to u later as I have to go out now.
For denmark train schedule, check this site.
http://www.rejseplanen.dk/bin/query.exe/en
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