Travel on a Budget: How to Save Money In Norway

Photo credit to our friends Lakshi & Andrew with their awesome wide angle lens here

So here it is … the last (and belated) of my posts on our recent trip to Norway! This makes me sad…. because now I feel like the trip is really over (haha!). Norway is a truly incredible country  – I mean, I’ve been able to squeeze SEVEN blog posts out of a two-and-a-half day trip. I have a lot to say about this place!! Now I’ve had a taste of #FjordLyf (is that a thing? It should be…. I’m going with it) I’m desperate to go back. The landscape is like nothing I’ve ever experienced. I’d love to go back and explore the Sognefjord, which is on the opposite side of Bergen to the Hardangerfjord. It looks MAGICAL. I’d also like to head further north to Tromso to see the Northern Lights and maybe some whales! BUT the one less lovely thing about this beautiful beautiful part of the world? THE PRICES. To give you an idea, we stopped at a little unassuming diner in a random small town on our roadtrip (i.e. not big city tourist trap prices), and it cost us £30 for two burgers, and only one had chips! Bear in mind these were fast-food burgers. Not posh burgers *starts thinking about the new Honest Burger that’s just opened in Cambridge*…. Now, I think (correct me if I’m wrong) that the Norweigans generally get paid a higher wage? So maybe it’s not quite so expensive to them. Although, I think (again… don’t quote me) they also pay much higher taxes – which definitely shows – their infrastructure is AMAZING. Anyway …. let me get back to the point of this blog post after my little economic detour. Norway is expensive, but there are ways to save money, meaning it IS accessible as a travel destination. Yay! So here are my top 5 tips for cheap travel in Norway:

 

1. Stay in an Airbnb 

Sometimes an Airbnb doesn’t work out much cheaper than a hotel, but for us, it DEFINITELY did in Odda. I’ve actually written a whole post on my first Airbnb experience, so I won’t go into too much detail here!

 

2. Avoid eating out

As I mentioned in my really long rambley prelude to this post, even fast food joints in Norway are expensive. We saved so much money by cooking our own food for 60% of the time while we stayed in our Airbnb. For our dinners we made a massive pot of mince and had spaghetti bolognese on our first night, and then added some beans and voila! Second night was Chilli night. (Also, after hiking trolltunga, we were NOT in the mood to cook properly, or make ourselves look presentable enough for a restaurant! So the chilli sitch was ideal). For lunch, we had crisps and made cheese and pesto sandwiches. Overall we spent £30 on groceries which fed four people for 2 days. We brought some snack bars and porridge sachets for breakfast from home, which helped us save even more money!

I mean…. I didn’t take a photo of our Bolognese… I didn’t make this cinnamon bun ….it was worth EVERY PENNY.

 

 

3. Rent a car

Renting a car turned out to be pretty reasonable in Norway (unlike Iceland…. to keep a long rant short, I started planning a trip to Iceland until I saw the price of car rental…. uch). Fuel also didn’t cost us very much at all. I’ve written more about our car rental in this post, so again will spare you the details here!

 

4. Be smart with your souvenir choices

This is maybe a little bit of a weird point. But I’m a sucker for a souvenir. Especially since my nephew was born – I always want to buy him something. But with a toy troll costing £30. YES THIRTY GREAT BRITISH POUNDS FOR AN UGLY STUFFED TROLL. Even I didn’t want to spend THAT much money. Instead I bought small gifts that would last forever – Christmas decorations! They were pretty expensive at £4 each, but at least I knew they would be used every year, not just played with or put on a fridge once, only to eventually be forgotten.

 

5. Travel with friends

We travelled to Norway with two of our friends, Lakshi and Andrew. Although the reason for this wasn’t financial – we all wanted to hike Trolltunga and thought it would be more fun to go together – this is probably what saved us the MOST money. Because accommodation / car / parking fees? DIVIDE THEM BY FOUR INSTEAD OF TWO.

My three trolltunga hiking buddies….. aweeeeee ❤

 

So those are my top five tips for cutting the costs when travelling in Norway! (Or anywhere really….) If anyone else has any other handy money-saving advice, lemme know 🙂

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You can watch my Norway video diary (including our hike to Trolltunga) here:

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Other posts from my Norway Blog Series:

• Hiking Trolltunga
• What to pack for hiking Trolltunga
• (Starting) the hike to the Buerbreen Glacier
• Roadtripping through the Hardangerfjord
• 8 hours in Bergen
• My first Airbnb experience