Norway ~ Day 2

We woke around 6am and it was super quiet - Brad slept great, Suzanne just okay. We cleaned up, got dressed, and hit the road – all without leaving the comfort of the camper van! 😜

We noticed the clouds forming on our drive the day before, and today looked to be rainy and overcast. When we looked at the weather forecast - everywhere in Norway – was predicted 100% chance of rain for the next 7 - 10 days – everyday & all day. So we spent first hour of driving talking about where to go….Tromso? Alta? Lofoten Islands? We decided to continue north and drive along the Kystriksveien Coastal Route – one of the 18 Norwegian Scenic Routes.  We originally thought that we would drive this on way back from the far north, but with the weather and not even sure we want to go to Tromso or Alta, we decided to do it now.

Views along the drive.......

After a while, we stopped for breakfast (our food). This would eventually be how we started most mornings – wake up, make tea/coffee, drive for an hour or so, then pull-over someplace and make breakfast in the rig. (By “making breakfast,” we mean bread and peanut butter or yoghurt and granola.)  We also got gas (gas means diesel) this morning - looks like $200 to fill the tank. Yowza!

More driving views.......

Around 9am, we stopped at another gas station to fill our five liter water bottle - even though we have a freshwater tank, we can’t be sure that it was filled with potable water from a drinking hose, so we bought a five liter bottle of water yesterday and will fill along the way. Basically, all we pretty much would do (along with lots of other people), is bring our water bottle into a place – gas station, for example – which are different there – they have small grocery stores and even restaurants – and ask the person behind the counter to fill it with fresh water. They would, we’d say, “tusen takk” (literally: a thousand thanks) and be on our merry way.

By 10am we were both exhausted - probably due to jet lag. We decided to pull over in parking lot, crawl into our bed, and crash. We woke about an hour later and felt much better. We grabbed some lunch and kept driving.

There are waterfalls all over Norway......

We drove all afternoon and took our first ferry. As it goes, the first ferry (and the couple after) were super fun….by ferry #10, we were old hands and the excitement waned a bit, though it was still quite a unique way to travel most days.  

Brad turning off the propane - have to do that at every ferry crossing. 

Master Renault!

We were hungry again and tried to find dinner. We drove to one restaurant which was a bust and in the middle of nowhere on multi-potholed road. Well, while trying to avoid a pothole, Brad drove too far to the right and we went off the side of the road into a small ditch….. just a wee bit. We thought we were stuck for a while and were getting close to calling for an emergency service, but Brad was able to get us out of the ditch and off we went……Nope - no pictures! 😏

 

Eventually we found a place and had a pizza dinner – we thought we were ordering a Margherita pizza and Caesar salad, but nope….it was a Caesar salad pizza. Huh.

We took one more ferry ride......

....and just a few kilometers down the road, we pulled over to a little pull-out around 7pm for the night.  This is the view/experience that we knew we would enjoy by wild camping.

 

Today's route......

Norway ~ Day 1

We slept for about five hours with the window open and woke to being cold - 50 degrees - which felt great after leaving Florida’s low 90’s and seemingly 1000% humidity!

We enjoyed a great breakfast at the hotel and received a call at 8:45am that the driver would pick us up at 9am to go to the camper van rental place (Arctic Camper). We spent over an hour going over everything about the camper van and everyone was very nice. 

We were finally ready to go and since all the food stores are closed Sundays, we first stopped to get a few groceries. This is when we realized that the USB port in the dash wasn't working, so back to Arctic Camper to see if they could fix it. Nope. So our next stop was a store to get a five meter cord to use a different (working) USB port. We had some lunch, which was just okay. The guy at Arctic Camper said that Norway is NOT where one comes for good food – and after being there for nearly a month, we can say that he was right - and then finally started heading north (our plan was to go as far north as we wanted, then slowly work our way back south again) around 2:30pm.

We continued for a few hours....

....and decided to stop for the night at a church parking lot. 

We took a walk into the small town and worked on organizing stuff and figuring out the heater. To find places to camp (as well as places to get water, dump the toilet cartridge, take showers, etc….) we used an awesome app: https://park4night.com/en. Within the hour, two other campers arrived. It was still light at 10pm when we finally got under our individual duvets and went to sleep.

Today's route......

 

Meet Master Renault ~ Our Norway Home on Wheels!

 We had only two requirements for our camper van in Norway:

1. It had to have a bathroom.
2. Brad had to be able to stand without hitting his head (well, too many times😉). 

Meet Master Renault!

Suzanne had to climb-up a bit to get into the bed. We each had separate heavy down comforters which we loved. We also brought our camping bag liners, which we slept in under the down comforters - and on especially cold nights, wearing our base layer (think: long johns). Yes, the camper van had heat (when it worked - more on that much later), but we did not feel safe leaving it on at night (there was no carbon monoxide detector). Even when cold at night (30's & 40's), we were very comfortable and warm. 

The bathroom. We used the toilet ( even while one of us was driving), but never the shower.....

...because, seriously...there was just not enough room!

Dining and driving area......Hi Brad! ✋

Perspective of the interior height....Brad is a skosh more than 6 feet. 

(However, we were in Norway so let's rephrase: Brad is a skosh more than 19.8 meters.😏)

Even a lounging area! 

We LOVED driving and vacationing in the camper van. In part, because of Norway's (all of Scandinavia, actually) principle of Allemannsretten - the Right to Roam. Basically, everyone has the right to enjoy the land. In terms of camping, that means that as long as one stays more than150 meters away from private property, then they can stay overnight. The entire country is outfitted for this  - we could get fresh drinking water for free in many places, dump the toilet cartridge (more on that later), dump gray water, take showers and do laundry,  etc...

 

Traveling to Norway!

For some unknown reason, Suzanne always thought it would be fun to travel Scandinavia in a small camper. After some research, we realized that Norway was the place for us, so the day after we came back from our Croatia/Slovenia/Dolomites trip last year, we booked our departure flights to Oslo, Norway….and finally, 11 months later, it was the day of departure. Yay! 

Original Flight Plan (Yep, one can read these words and realize that this was not what happened…….)

• Thursday, 8/14 Miami to Madrid on Iberia (international business class with lie flat seats - yay!): 5pm departure, 7am arrival.
• Friday, 8/15 Madrid to Oslo, also on Iberia: 10am departure with arrival to Oslo at 2pm.

This gave us time to get through Passport Control and Customs, get a decent night’s sleep, and all without any hurry…..the perfect plan!

 

What Really Happened

Our Miami to Madrid flight was delayed three hours. Did they tell us when we checked in? Nope, even though they had that information. We went to the Admiral's Lounge in Miami (lovely with good food), ate, wandered around, etc… and eventually checked the departure board for our gate. What? The flight is delayed by three hours?  Ugh - this meant that we would miss our connecting flight. 

We had to go back to the ticket counter to see about changing our connecting flight to discover that Iberia had automatically rebooked our connecting flight for two days later - Saturday 8/16 with an arrival time of 7:30pm. Huh? What? Why? There were other flights earlier than Saturday…….We chatted with the Iberia people at the check-in counter, but they could not help us as they don't do ticketing, so they had us call Iberia Customer Service who wouldn't (not couldn't) make any changes to our flights. Even the supervisor at the Iberia counter spoke to customer service on our behalf and it was still a “No flights until Saturday,” response.

At this point, we figured we'd have a day in Madrid and started looking at things to do. While standing in line to check our bags a few hours prior, we chatted with a couple who shared that they have spent tons of time in Madrid, so we found them in the Admiral's Lounge and chatted with them some to get some idea on what to do in Madrid for a day. Okay, so we had Plan B!

Finally, we were on board our flight to Madrid and again enjoyed Iberia’s international business class. The flight was easy, and we must have slept a lot as it did not feel like a nine hour flight. We pretty much alternated between eating and sleeping. 

Apparently, we like to fly in the same clothes each year! 😅

8/16/2024:

8/14/2025

By the time we got to Madrid, we had a new plan! (Plan C!) First, as we had checked in two pieces of luggage that were already booked to arrive in Oslo on the Saturday flight, we went to the Iberia luggage counter and had them pull our luggage so we could take it with us. We then went to the Iberia ticketing booth outside security and asked again if they could get us to Oslo today (by now it was Friday), and, of course, in business class.  Magically the man behind the counter was able to help us and he was able to reroute us through Heathrow in London with an 11pm arrival in Oslo – and all in business class!  (Which of course made us wonder again why the first person couldn’t take care of this originally….) Great! So we checked in our luggage again, went through security again (forgot we had filled water bottles - confiscated!), and went to the lounge in Madrid for just about 20 minutes to grab a bite to eat and use their (cleaner) bathrooms. 

Since we had canceled our hotel in Oslo when in Miami when we were told that there was “no way” we would get to Oslo Friday night, while boarding Suzanne rebooked it - at a lower rate! 

The flight to London was easy (fed again!) and we passed through passport control swiftly.

We now needed to change to Scandinavian Airlines, so we ended up having to leave the secured area again to go to a different terminal. Through security again (vitamins and ibuprofen were questioned - same ones that made it through three previous screenings….) and off to the Lufthansa Lounge for an hour and half. Yep - more food. We did end up chatting with a nice family from Switzerland and finally boarded our SAS flight to Oslo. 

The flight to Oslo was easy – and we were fed again, but it was sort of disgusting – even Brad wouldn’t eat it! 😲

We finally landed in Oslo around 11pm on Friday!

• Three lounges
• Three flights
• Four security screenings
• Three passport controls
• Dozens of airport and airline employees we spoke with – to ask for directions in the airports, to change our flights, cancel/rebook hotels rooms, luggage getting, etc…

Once we went thought Passport Control and picked up our luggage, we went to the VyBuss stop to grab a bus to the hotel for the night. We chatted with a friendly Norwegian man who gave us tons of ideas of places to go (which is why we never plan our travels if we can help it - unlike what everyone seems to think - and you know who you are!) and got to our airport hotel and bit past midnight. Check-in was a breeze and when we got to our room, Brad said, “Wow, this is tiny.” Bet it'll look a lot bigger when we get our camper van tomorrow!

So sort of a crazy and unexpected day - lots of maneuvering in different airports. We (let’s be honest - Suzanne) really had to be tenacious and insist on getting to Oslo on the same day.  Would Madrid for a day been terrible? No, but we wanted to get to Oslo because we had a camper van reserved and were ready to hit the Norwegian roads. The best decision was to grab our luggage off the flight from the Madrid-to-Oslo flight so we had more travel options. This is why we hate checking luggage (but have to when we want to bring our hiking gear and the weather will be cold). 

Gotta say  - flying business class was super beneficial as we barely waited in any lines with all this – getting the luggage in Madrid (there was a special line for business class flyers), Miami check in (another dedicated line – and we had to go back twice), Madrid check in (ditto), security lines (FastPass – yay!), and London check in (ditto on dedicated line).