2016 Europe Trip: Day 1 & 2

SLC - Boston- Oslo- Budapest

I booked our flight early Spring and May finally arrived!  We spent the night in SLC at Crystal Inn and began the first leg of our trip with a flight on Southwest from SLC to Boston.  We were excited to have "Harrison n Ford" traveling with us (our new carry on luggage).  In Boston, we only had a few hours before we boarded our international flight on Norwegian. 

Because we flew Norwegian, we had a stop and 6 hour layover in Oslo, Norway.  The landscape is beautiful - green with many lakes!

After going through Passport control, we purchased tickets ($80 for roundtrip to Oslo) and took the train to downtown Oslo about 30 minute ride.  We happen to be there on May 17th, which is their Constitution Day, so the city was FULL of people, many of them dressed in traditional Norwegian clothing.

It was fun to see the celebrations, but it made it very difficult to get around the city and see some of the sites.  So we took a ferry across the water to the Viking Museum.  After getting off the ferry, we had to walk up hill for about 5 minutes before we came to the Museum.  The old Viking Ships and artifacts were very cool.

We walked to the other museums, but unfortunately due to the holiday the others were all closed.  We waited for the boat to take us back across the harbor and then walked around the fortress grounds.  The grounds were large with pretty areas and a great view along the wall overlooking the city and over the harbor.  It too was full of people as they were setting up for a live concert.  

From the Fortress, we walked up to the Palace.  You can see how the streets are just full of people.

We had not exchanged any money, so we were unable to buy any food off the street and all the restaurants were crowded.  Luckily, we had our own food to satisfy us and jumped back on the train to the airport.  We returned to the airport with a few hours before our flight, so we did end up eating at the airport.  While the food was fine there, it was probably our least favorite food of the entire trip and quite expensive. 

We passed the time on our flight from Oslo to Budapest by reading and resting.  After landing and gathering our suitcases, we bought 24 hour tickets for the transportation and jumped on the bus.  It took almost an hour to ride the bus from the airport and then the underground to our Airbnb flat.  As we looked for our Airbnb flat, we found a Kebab shop still open and around the corner from our flat, and shared a Gyro.  Nothing like a Gryo in Europe!  We tried Airbnb for the first time, and the flat, Mickey's Apartment, we had for this stretch in Budapest was perfect and in a great location.

It made up for our not so great airport food we had earlier in Oslo.  Even though we were both exhausted, it took a while for us to fall asleep.