Our trip to Norway!

Our trip route was Oslo > Bergen > Alesund > Trondheim > Bodo > Tromso > Back to Oslo

In early November, Tom and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary by taking a week long trip to Norway.  It was amazing for so many reasons. We were able to meet some of my extended family (Hallo!), visit some beautiful cities, go reindeer and dog sledding, and see the Aurora Borealis!

We got some pretty damn awesome pictures too.

Wandering in Bergen

Bergen at night

Oslo Opera House

Views from the NSB train

Church in Trondheim

A few of our friends, and actually quite a few Norwegians that we met asked us why we chose Norway.  It's my guess that they don't see a lot of American tourists (we were definitely the only Americans we met on our entire trip, which was the exact opposite of our trip to South Africa last year).  There were many reasons why this trip made sense to us now:  1) I have extended family that I always knew I would want to go to meet someday (and next time I would love to take/send my mother and aunt!!)  2) We knew we wanted to do a bit of an adventurous vacation as we are hoping to have kids in the future, and a lot of this trip would have been much harder with kiddos. 3) Once Tom saw some pics of the Aurora Borealis, it was all he could think about! 4) We thought that the idea of going to Norway, and doing a cold vacation in the arctic circle was a really nice bookend to our honeymoon spent in South Africa.

Views from the Hurtigruten cruise ship

Getting "christened" with ice water as we crossed the arctic circle by King Neptune!

The sami tent we slept in overnight

Playing with the dogs before we went dog sledding

Over the river and through the woods...

Our reindeer Gobo that pulled us sledding the night before

I'm no Anthony Bourdain, but we did get to eat some exotic dishes from an American perspective:

Reindeer soup in the sami tent

...and deep fried whale in Tromso!  Tasted just like beef. Delicious.

Last but not least, some of the blurry pictures I was able to take of the Aurora Borealis!

Getting better at focusing in the dark...

And the non-blurry pic that the professional photographer took.  Clearly he earns his money :-)

It truly was an amazing experience, and Norway is a beautiful country to visit. I"m keeping this post short on words, but if you have any questions about our trip feel free to shoot me an email or post in the comments!