Alex: My mom just got home from an unforgettable trip that included sunny, beachy Greece, immediately followed by chilly, rainy Norway, which basically meant she had to pack for two completely different vacations. Listen in as she shares her highlights from both of these destinations.

Welcome to Points Talk®. We are three moms who’ve discovered how to leverage credit card welcome offers to get hundreds of thousands of dollars of travel expenses for nearly free. We’ve used credit card points and miles to take vacations to places like Hawaii, Paris, Greece, Maldives, Japan, and so much more. And the best part? We each still have 800 plus credit scores. Imagine being able to take the vacation of your dreams for nearly free. It’s totally possible, and we’re here to show you how.

Alex: Hey, I’m Alex.

Pam: And I’m Pam, Alex’s mom. Let’s talk points.

Alex: All right, so you probably noticed Jess isn’t here. She is off traveling. So it’s just my mom and I today. And my mom is here to talk all about her recent trip to Greece and Norway. Talk about two different types of trips, different types of weather. She also traveled with family, so I know Mom, you didn’t use points and miles for everything, but you did use it for your flights and some of your hotel stays.

So let’s get to it. How did this almost month of travel, crazy, I feel like you were gone for forever.

Pam: Yeah, me too.

Alex: How did this come to be? 

Pam: Well, it kind of started out first of all that it was just going to be a trip with my daughter and granddaughter to Greece. So I had taken my daughters, your sisters, and one of their daughters on a three-generation trip, but I never had done it with Lindsay and Izzy. You need to have a girl, or I need to figure out how we do this with you, or you and I just go.

Alex: It’s fine. We do the 10-year-old trip, so we’re good.

Pam: Yes. Okay. So anyway, so it was just going to be that trip. And first of all, she says, well, what do you think about Greece? Now, these trips have primarily been, you know, four or five-day trips, but I’m not going over there and just going to Greece for four or five days. My idea of Greece is to go to at least two islands. 

Alex: Yeah.

Pam: And on this one, it ended up being three islands. So this trip just kept growing. So it was first going to be that. And then she said, we’ve gone on several trips. This is my daughter, Lindsay, that lives in London, or is, she’s moving. But she said, what do you think, would you like guys like to go to Norway with us? 

And I thought, yeah, that sounds great. Let’s go to Norway with you. So that happened. And then all of a sudden, so that was added on. So it was getting, you know, to about, you know, over two weeks. Now, then, Harry Styles was going to be in London. She said, hey Mom, I know what I can get you for Mother’s Day. I can get you tickets for Harry Styles if you’d like to come.

Now, I’m not even a Harry Styles fan, but I thought, what sounds fun to me. So let’s do that. So I had to be in London, probably about four days earlier than we were going to leave for Greece for that. So that added on to it. And then it grew with people too, because another daughter of mine, Kelly, who lives in Colorado Springs, and her daughter Riley were going to go on a trip. They were going to go to, going to be in London at the same time. And all of a sudden— 

Alex: And this was her senior trip, right? Like, because she just graduated. 

Pam: Her senior trip. Yeah. And all of a sudden Lindsay said, hey, wait a minute, Mom, what do you think if they came to Santorini with us? Because we were doing three islands. We were doing Santorini, Ios, and Milos. And the Airbnb in Santorini slept five people. And I said, oh yeah, they can come. You know, I’ve got that space. They did charge me a little bit more. They ended up when I increased it by the two people, but it wasn’t substantial. And so anyway, so this is the trip that started small and grew and grew. It grew exponentially by days and by people. 

So, like I said, it was one of those trips where I used points and miles, but not for everything. When you’re going with family, and particularly when you’ve got more than, you know, sometimes with us, when us girls go, we like to all be together. You want to be together, you know, talking and having breakfast together and just, you know, hanging out, playing games, watching TV or whatever. And so I knew that we were going to use Airbnbs for most of it. But I picked one island in Greece because I knew it had a Hyatt, and I thought about it for a while. We’ll get to that in a little bit. But I did want to stay, that we did use, we did stay at one hotel, a Hyatt.

So flights, I was flying to London primarily and then back out of London. Well, this kept changing, too. Everything about this trip kept changing. 

Alex: But that’s like the great thing about points and miles though is like you usually can roll with the changes because depending on what airline you book through, the, you know, the cancellation can be pretty easy.

Pam: Yeah. And for me, I originally booked it because I had found a really good deal going early morning from Denver to Chicago. And then from Chicago, I could fly AA miles, 57.5k miles and $700, which sounds, I know, crazy to a lot of you, but is in a business class seat. I am willing to do that to have a business class seat.

But I was going to get there really early because I wanted to make sure I made that award flight, and I was going to have to spend the day in Chicago at, I was going to actually stay. I think I was going to be a Hilton, and I was, found a day rate for it and was going to do that. So that added cost, plus I had the cost of a positioning flight. And then I was going so early in the morning, I need to stay at the airport. So I used a free night certificate to stay at the Westin in Denver, which I didn’t mind. I love that hotel for early morning stays. So, I did use a free night certificate for that. And but I was just dreading it. Do you ever have a flight, Alex, where you’re like, this itinerary sucks.

Alex: Yeah. 

Pam: I hate this itinerary. And that’s how I felt about this. I thought, I don’t want to get up at 5:30 and get on a flight and then go to Chicago and have to go to a hotel for the whole afternoon, take my luggage back, and I just didn’t love it.

Alex: It’s just a really, really long travel day. Really long. 

Pam: Really long travel day. And so I was dreading it. So the last week before, I thought, I’m going to look and see what I can find because the beauty of finding good rates, especially for business class seats, is either way ahead or last minute. And last minute worked out great.

I found a flight that went out of Denver to London, had a connection in LA. It was on American again. Now, I paid more in points, 112.5k, but I only paid $5.60. And so it just made so much more sense. I was excited about it again. I was excited about the trip. I wasn’t dreading it. And the one of the best things for me is the flight of the ocean was longer. That meant that I got to have a good dinner. I got to watch a movie and still have plenty of time for sleep. And I have had really good luck with AA flights going over to London. I’ve had newer airplanes. They’ve been great.

So from our all of our flights from London to Greece, then Greece to London, London to Oslo, Oslo to Evenson, all of those kind of flights, all those inter-country, European things were done with either BA or Scandinavian and SAS, and I just paid cash for those. I could have used points and miles for some of them, but I didn’t. I just, you know, just say I tried to look for SAS, and it’s just not a partner of anything. There was nothing I could do about that. So I just didn’t.

Then things changed again for my flights coming back. My flights coming back originally were on Virgin Atlantic to Boston, and then we had a separate flight from Boston to Denver, and we were going to have to spend the night in a hotel before that second flight. And I just started thinking, oh my goodness, this is, you know, I mean it wasn’t horrible, but I thought, is there anything else out there? And I think being able to find something better on my flights going over there made me more willing to, well, let’s at least check this out.

Alex: Yeah, yeah.

Pam: And so I again changed, like we’re talking both of these. I changed four or five days before I was going to go. But I was always dealing with American Airlines. So the points came right back to me.

Alex: Yeah, that’s so nice.

Pam: The cash came immediately back to me. This particular flight was, oh, so I was going to fly on VA. It was 48k, which is a great price on business, plus about $900, which was quite a bit. But then I looked on, I think I looked on points.yeah and they showed me a flight, either that or seats.aero. Those are the two that I usually use, and I found a flight on um booking on Atmos, which is Alaska’s reward program for 70k and that was going to be on AA airplane, though. So it was going to be pretty, you know, so it was. I knew I liked AA, the taxes and fees were just going to be $400.

So I ended up paying more in points, less in taxes and fees. I didn’t have to get that positioning flight. I didn’t have to spend the night in Boston. So much better. So I think the moral to this story is, you know, if you’ve got a flight and you’re thinking, I’m just not really happy with that. You know, don’t feel like you’re stuck. Keep looking. The beauty of points and miles is that you can rebook and both ended up so much better. 

Alex: Yeah, that’s so nice.

Pam: So where I use points versus cash is where on my flights, I use miles, points and miles for that, obviously. I also, when we were in London, there was a heat wave. So my daughter and Kelly and Riley and I were dying. And we decided we’d like to go into London and be in an air-conditioned hotel. So we booked the night before we were going to stay, we booked the Park Hyatt for 35k. I had a suite upgrade award, and we were able to stay there. I was so excited to stay there because my daughter is moving, and I was like, is this the last time I’m going to be here or not? I did have to pay for a rollaway. We had to pay for one breakfast.

I also use hotels near airports near London Heathrow. We, my daughter and granddaughter Riley and I, before we left to go to Greece, we stayed at a Marriott. I used a free night certificate there. When I got back, my husband had come over to London. And rather than go all the way over to my daughter’s house where there still was no going to be no air conditioning, the heat wave was still going on. We opted to stay at a Hyatt Place near the airport, and then, coming back from Norway, we stayed at one. 

And then I stayed in a hotel in Ios. It was a Mr. and Mrs. Smith hotel. It’s called the Liostasi. It cost 48k and that covered breakfast for all of us.

Alex: So all five of you?

Pam: No, three of us. By now

Alex: Oh, three. Okay.

Pan: Kelly and Riley left after Santorini.

Alex: Okay.

Pam: So it had a suite with a loft. They had a big bed and a bathroom up there. I they I just made a bed on the couch, but I had my own bathroom. We loved the hotel. It was really nice. They were so nice there. They welcomed you with this frozen, it was like a frozen mojito, virgin frozen mojito. It was amazing. And they just couldn’t be nicer. So I highly recommend if you’re thinking of Greece and you want to stay on points somewhere, this is a really good option. It is only a 30-minute ferry ride from Santorini. 

Alex: And it was on Ios?

Pam: Ios.

Alex: And it’s Ios. Okay.

Pam: It’s I O S.

Alex: Did you book the suite or did you get an upgrade?

Pam: No, I booked directly into it for 48k.

Alex: Oh, okay. That’s great. Yeah, and it had two bathrooms.

Pam: Yes.

Alex: That’s so nice.

Pam: It was really nice. So I’m going to tell just kind of go through our itinerary a little bit on this and give you a little bit more idea of what happened. So like I said, it was so hot in London. We were dying. We went to the Park Hyatt, and we decided to I ended up, I hadn’t taken the tube from there to go into Central London before. And so I wasn’t crazy about the location, but it was so easy.

When it we went into see Mamma Mia that night, super, super easy to do that. If you’re going to London, the theater is a must to me because it’s so much cheaper than going to Broadway. Just, you know, we loved it. My daughter and granddaughter got up the next morning, they did some more touring. They had done some touring of London. I’ve been to London a million times. Me getting out there in 93-degree weather in London was just not going to work for me. I stayed in the hotel and had a fabulous afternoon in the air conditioning. 

So we left, so like I said, so then that night we went and stayed at the Marriott, got up the next morning, went into London, and we flew to Santorini. That’s where we started. Every time I go to Greece, I’ve been to Santorini. And every time I keep saying, okay, well, this is the last time I’m going to Santorini. And I keep going with new people, and how do you not go to Santorini? And then after I go to Santorini, I go, I can’t believe that I thought that I would, you know, not go there again. Because Santorini is just really special. I mean, for some people, they think it’s too crowded. They think it’s overhyped. In the middle of the day, I’m not walking through the streets.

Alex: Yes. I think that’s such an important thing is like, we’re not on, because it’s the cruises. That’s why it’s so crazy is you have the cruise stops. But once the cruises leave, it’s magical.

Pam: Yes, it is. And I had this great Airbnb. I’ll link it in the show notes that fit five people. It was a lot of stairs. We were down pretty far. We were down farther than we were on that Airbnb we stayed at the first time.

Alex: Yeah.

Pam: Alex, but it had this incredible view, had a separate kitchen, I mean, actually a different room for the kitchen, a plunge pool, two seating areas. And I got to tell you, the heat continued in Greece. It was hot. And so I was, you know, so we weren’t doing a lot during the days in Central Santorini. We did go to the beach in Fira. Same place that we went before, where we rented loungers, had lunch. We went on a catamaran trip. That always is good to get, you know, away and get into the to the sea and have some good food. I booked it on Viator. Every single time I’ve done this, I have loved it. I have loved the food. 

This time, I wasn’t as impressed. The food on the one we went to

Alex: Was it a different company this time, maybe?

Pam: No, it looked like the same one I taken one of that I’d taken one of the other times. 

Alex: Yeah.

Pam: So that was the only thing. We did go back to Skiza Cafe. I’ll put a link in the show notes to that. That’s one of our favorite places to eat. They have really good bennafi pie. Their pizza is really good. Their pastas are really good. The Greek salad is really good. But we found a new place that we are in love with. Now, it wasn’t the cheapest restaurant there ever was, but it was one of the best restaurants I’ve ever been to. It’s called Ia Gefsis, G E F S I S. We went there the first night, and I’d say for five of us, we spent about

Alex: Is this a place you just stumbled upon or did you guys like…? 

Pam: Yeah. No, we just kind of stumbled upon it. Went to it and it was probably about $300 for five of us. So really, I mean, we just kind of did family style. We just ordered tons of different things, and all ate this, ate off the stuff. We could not stop talking about it. We loved it so much that we went back the next night. 

Alex: Well, what did you guys get? Like what kind of, what were the standouts? 

Pam: We had sea bass or sea bream. We had some delicious flatbread. We had, just we had some pizza. We had just had so many different things. And it we had just fries. We just had, you know, it was delicious. We had a watermelon feta salad that was amazing. The next night we went and instead of the fish, which was pretty expensive, we got a citrus lemony chicken, which was every bit as good, and our the price went way down without. And we got all the other same things that we had before because we all love them so much. So highly recommend it.

So basically, you know, we were there for three nights and every night after dinner, we just walk around. We’d go get some gelato, we’d look at all the beautiful sights of Santorini. I, you know, if you have not ever been there, you got, you know, you’ve got points and miles, guys, you got to make a plan to go there. 

Alex: Well, it was pretty funny because just it was just like a week ago, my, so Cruz, my 12-year-old, he loves Greek food. There’s this Greek restaurant that he is obsessed with. Like, and it’s like fast casual. This is not authentic Greek food. It’s just fast casual, but it’s really good. And so we went there the other night and then Mitch all of a sudden was like, oh man, Greece was so amazing. That was just like and he just goes on and on about Greece. Mind you, it’s been two years since we went there.

He’s like, we don’t talk about that trip enough. Like that was just incredible. Like just the location and you just look outside, and you just see the sea and the white and the cliffs and the white houses. Like it’s just the blue doors. He was just like back there in his mind, reliving it all and just blown away by it all. And I was like, where is this coming from? Like, we never, you never talk about, he’s like, I know, we I can’t believe we don’t talk about this trip more. That was incredible. So like and that is Cruz’s dream destination is Greece. And so we’re like, okay, we got to find a way to take the kids to Greece and do all this. And now I’m like, oh, I need to go to that restaurant because I will say I think Greece is one of the countries that I visited where I enjoyed the food the most. 

Pam: 100%. I think, you know, and you’re talking about this restaurant that Cruz likes. I don’t even like that restaurant. I don’t like all the Mediterranean food here, but I love the food.

Alex: Let me just say, like, he’s a 12-year-old too. You know what I mean? Like, don’t take a 12-year-old’s food advice.

Pam: I love the food in Greece. I just love it. So much fresh fish. I just love it. So one of the things that’s nice about staying in Airbnb in Greece, too, is that the host will usually arrange so much of it. They will arrange a porter to take your bags down those all those steps and back up those steps. You just have to tip them. They will arrange for your transportation. 

Alex: And they will get you to and from the airport, right?

Pam: Exactly. And we actually had to have the day that we left, Kelly and Riley were going on to France for a night, and we were heading on to Ios. So we were going on a ferry and they were going on an airplane two totally different times. All that was arranged seamless. Transportation from Ios to the airport to and from both for all of us was about 60 euros, which wasn’t that bad. And so 

Alex: No, that’s good. Like we, if you’re staying at the hotel, like we stayed at Canavass Ios Suites when we went, transportation is much, much more expensive.

Pam: Oh, through there. I bet.

Alex: Through the hotel. Yeah. Like we just took an Uber when we got there, but getting back to the hotel, we’d heard that we weren’t sure how reliable it was going to be. So we just, or getting back to the airport from the hotel. And so we relied on the hotel to get us back.

Alex: That’s a nice perk of booking through the Airbnb, is the hosts are more like a concierge service. 

Pam: They’re so nice. And that this the guy that was over our Airbnb here was just superb. So then we went the next day when we all left, we split, Kelly and Riley went their separate ways. We went to the ferry in Ios, and I we all decided, Lindsay and Izzy and I decided, we just love the ferries. It’s just so much, I mean, it’s kind of crazy. You got a bunch of people. You all got your suitcases. You’re bringing them on, you’re putting them on some little shelves. You’re hoping they’re going to be there when you come back.

Alex: Well, and when you get on, it’s not like orderly fashion, right? You just like…

Pam: Not at all.

Alex: They open and you just walk on the ferry.

Pam: Everybody is walking.

Alex: It’s not like an airport security. 

Pam: No. It is, it is kind of crazy. But the ferry to Ios is 30 minutes, 40 minutes, super fast.

Alex: So nice, yeah. 

Pam: So if you’re already going to Santorini, why not go over to Ios, stay in that beautiful Liostasi hotel. To tell you the truth, we were so happy to just be able to, I mean, I love an Airbnb and to be able to have more room, usually, to be with people, but I love a hotel too. And my favorite thing is to lay around the hotel, the pool, and order food. Well, that doesn’t happen in an Airbnb. You got to go out and get it. And so that was really, really nice. We really liked that. We were only there for two nights. So we got there kind of late the first night and just ate at the hotel, really didn’t do much. And the next day we spent most of our time at a cooking class. 

We went to a place called Diaseli Estate. It’s a cheese, it’s a cheese factory and museum. They have wine tasting. It was one of the best cooking classes I’ve been to, and I love cooking classes.

Alex: Even better than our paella class in Barcelona?

Pam: I don’t know. It was pretty interesting. The girl that owns this, her name is Helen, and I’ll put a link to this in the show notes. You, I think we paid about 100 euros each for this, but we were, it was like a, it was, it was three hours or so. We went and, she showed us the place that the cheese factory is on. We went and got our own eggs for what we were making among all these chickens. It was kind of hairy at some times. We picked some herbs. She told us a lot of history. And then we made spanakopita, which is made with filo crust, homemade that we that we made and, rolled out. And then we, it has spinach, tons of feta in it, and it was delicious. 

Alex: Oh, Jess would love that with the spinach.

Pam: It was so good. We made falafel balls. I’d never thought I would like those.

Alex: Falafel?

Pam: Yeah. Falafel balls. I never thought I’d like this because they’re made with chickpeas. I didn’t think I like chickpeas. They were amazing. So we made those things. We had a cheese tasting. If you drink wine, that was included. And then, so you have this cheese tasting and some bread and stuff, and she packs up all this food. All the food you’ve made, the spanakopita, the falafel balls, oh, and tzazeki, we made. And she packs that all up into to-go containers for you. I mean, we couldn’t even, we didn’t go to dinner that night. We just ate our leftovers, and we couldn’t even finish them. It was really, really, enjoyable

Alex: Was it how many people were in the class with you guys?

Pam: The three of us.

Alex: Oh, wow.

Pam: Yeah, and I don’t think she does really huge groups. I think they’re very small groups. I think it’s very small groups.

Alex: Is this something that is kid-friendly? Like, I could bring my kids, or is it like, oh, maybe just older people?

Pam: No, I think she has her own kids. She has had two kids that came home from school, and they came out and talked to us, and so I think she, you know, she…

Alex: So it’s probably, if it’s just a small group, she probably, I’m imagining, would be able to cater to the group. 

Pam: Oh, totally.

Alex: That’s awesome. Where did you guys find this? Just online?

Pam: Well, I found it on Viator. So we paid probably more than booking directly with her. That’s why I am going to link to direct. So you can do it directly with her. It’ll be it cheaper.

Alex: And probably better for her too if you book direct.

Pam: Probably better for her, too. She’s going to get more. Yeah. So the next morning we got up and…

Alex: Wait, hold on, really quickly. How many nights were you in Santorini again?

Pam: We were three nights in Santorini.

Alex: Three nights, and then two nights in Ios.

Pam: Three nights, two nights in Ios, and three nights in Milos.

Alex: Okay.

Pam: So we then took the ferry to Milos. Really, all we saw of Ios, and I hear there are wonderful beaches there. The ferry area, the area of the ferry was really cute. We did a little bit of shopping before we got on the ferry. The ferry to Milos was about three hours, and we it had a couple stops. But like I said, we loved it. We just kind of relaxed and enjoyed it. 

Alex: Do you remember about like the pricing for the ferries?

Pam: I think for the one to Ios, it was, you know, probably $40 or so. I did book us business for this because it was going to be such a long one, but I don’t think it was more, it was about $100 each. And it was really worth it because it was just, we had so much space and, you know, we get some work done, we could eat some food. Yeah, it was, we really enjoyed it.

So we got to Milos. Milos is a place that I’ve thought about going for a while. Let me just say, I love Greece so much, I could go to Greece every year. And I have been to several islands, but there’s several more I want to go. So Milos, I had, your aunt Rana’s stepson, Nick, had been to Milos, and he had told me how much he liked it. So it was kind of in the back of my brain.

So I found an Airbnb there. It was two bedrooms, so it would have easily slept four people, plus it had a couch. It could probably have slept maybe five people. It had a washer, just one bathroom, a really nice terrace that looked over, um, into the ocean. We were in the town of Polonia, which was super cute, super easy to walk all of Polonia. We could eat there. We wandered through the town. Again, just love all the white and the blue doors and seeing the sea.

We did, this is more spread out. Milos is larger, so we did rent a car. And that was kind of nice because we were able to then stop at a store. We got breakfast stuff, we got some stuff for snacks. We I think we got some stuff for lunch if we wanted to. It was kind of nice having that. And we just walked all over Polonia, and then the first night we ate at a place called Yalos, which was really, really good, followed by gelato. You know, I’m having fish, I’m having gelato. You know, what can I say? I was a happy girl. 

Milos’s port is Adamantas. That’s where you come in to. So we drove back to Adamantas the second day, and we rented loungers near the beach and, you know, just got some food and relaxed there. We went the next day, we kind of was our main day of going around to different places. We went to a really cute fishing village called Klima. It was super, super cute. Small, but it was super cute. Climbed to the top of the castle in Plaka for the most amazing sunset views that there probably are in Greece, ate in Plaka, went to some catacombs near there. They were kind of a waste. Don’t do it. Waste of money. Went to a stunning beach called Saracanico Beach and rented some loungers there. And then went to Fera Plaka Beach and rented loungers there.

We would try to get to the beaches as early as possible. I take it back. We did not rent loungers at Saracanico Beach. That is one of the most popular beaches. It’s almost like big rock formations, white rocks that then, you know, people jump off the cliffs into the water. Very, very popular. You need to get there very early or you’re just, you know, we tried one day, um, our second day and it was just way too packed and so we came really early. We said, we’re getting up at 7 o’clock, we’re getting there, we’re going to do all of our sightseeing. 

Alex: Did you jump off the rocks, Mom?

Pam: I didn’t. I didn’t even walk all the way down because I had bad shoes on, and it was a little bit slippery. But I, you know, everybody, I don’t think Lindsay and them they did it either. We were actually doing it before we went on, before we went on to some other places.

There are hotels in Milos. And so there are various brands that you can find, especially through the portal. I don’t know if there’s, I think there was a Marriott Dome something there that some people talked about that would be a good option. But other than that, then, you know, to me it’s, you know, was an Airbnb just because there were three of us, and there just isn’t a lot of options for hotels in Greece in some of the places.

Alex: You’ve been to a lot of islands in Greece now. You’ve been to Mykonos, I know, because I’ve been there with you. What was the other one? Paros? Have you been to Paros? 

Pam: Paros, I’ve been to Paros. 

Alex: And is there any other, am I missing any others besides these ones now?

Pam: I don’t think so.

Alex: Do you, did you get a feeling? Oh, you’ve been to Crete.

Pam: Oh, Crete. Yeah, Crete. Yeah.

Alex: Do you there anything that jump out to you was like, hey, if we were going to go like if families were going, these ones seem the most family-friendly or these were my or even just your favorite ones that you liked the most?

Pam: You’re talking to someone who just loves Greece. So I love them all. I have it’s like picking your favorite child. I will say that in Ios, if it hadn’t been for staying in that hotel, I didn’t see enough of that island to even make a… decide. But if you just want to go to a different island. And I also heard that Ios was a little bit of a party place, which I didn’t realize. And Mykonos is certainly known it. We certainly didn’t, you know, didn’t change our, you know, vacation there at all.

So I just, I love all of them. I would have a hard time. So I’m thinking for my next two, I’d like to go to Naxos, and I’d like to go to Corfu. So those are, those, you know, I’m thinking maybe trying to do next year. So, yeah. Okay, so that was our trip. That was just half of my trip.

So from here, we went on to Norway. Now let me tell you, it was hot always in Greece. And we kept, I kept saying, oh, it’s going to be so nice. We’re going to get into Norway. It’s going to feel so good. I had my husband was not on the Greece part, but he was coming over for Norway. So I had pre-packed another suitcase with clothes that were a little bit warmer. And we figured if we added an extra layer to our clothes, we’d be fine in Norway. We weren’t. 

Oslo, perfectly fine. Oslo was great. We went up to the Lofoten Islands. That’s way up more Arctic. I had no clue. So Alex, you know me.

Alex: Yeah. 

Pam: Rain? No, Pam doesn’t like rain. Cold? No. We had a lot of rain and cold in the Lofoten Islands. It was probably one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. The fishing villages were to die for, but like we didn’t even get to two of the ones I wanted to see the most. We did get to them, but I watched them through in the van through the rain. I got out for the first one. I said, I’m not getting out again.

Alex: You it’s it’s so real. Like, I don’t think people can understand how much you dislike rain and cold. And that being said, you did grow up in Arizona.

Pam: Right. And I lived 40, I lived 40 years in Northern California and hated that weather the whole time. So, yeah. So, it’s a little tough. So we started our trip off to Norway by flying to Oslo. I think that’s a great, if you if you’re thinking of going further north, I would definitely go to Oslo for a couple days. I you don’t need any more than two nights there. We had a really nice Airbnb there, really good weather. That was a place we just needed one layer. There were some times we were out in the sun, we took that extra layer out.

It was a really cute city, really enjoyed the opera house there. My favorite thing we did is we went to the Nobel Peace Center. And it’s where they give out the Nobel Peace Prize. And so it was fascinating. It was really interesting to learn more about that, more about the people who have received it. We all really enjoyed that. There is a lot of waterfront area called Aker Brygge, I believe it’s called. We went there to eat, we walked around there. Very walkable area. We found some Norwegian chocolate in Oslo that not I’m not kidding. We bought every single day. I’ll have to put the name of it in the show notes because I can’t remember.

Alex: Did you bring any home that I can have when I come?

Pam: I did. Yeah. I’m actually going to see my mom in a few days here.

Pam: Yes. So it was a chocolate, but then it would have kind of this wafer with a little bit of salty taste, so good. Well, I came home, my husband lost 7 pounds, he said, and I gained 4 pounds. And I guarantee you, it was on all the chocolate that I ate because, yeah, I loved it. It was really good.

So after two nights in Oslo, we flew to Lofoten. Now flying to Lofoten, you it was about an hour and a half. We flew to, I think it’s called Harstad Evenson Airport. We flew there on a small plane, and once we got there, we rented a large van that fit eight people because there were eight of us. And we drove to Lindavar, which was about two hours away from where we had landed

 Lindavar, we stayed in a luxury cabin for four nights. Online, this place, I mean, it was really nice. It was luxury. It was really nice. It supposedly sleeps 12 people. I don’t know how they do that because it’s a kind of a queen bed and then there’s four bedrooms, queen bed, and above that is a single bunk bed. So I don’t know. I think that would have been way too crowded. It was gorgeous, just beautiful water, looking over the water with these huge jutting mountains, and it was some of the prettiest scenery.

But again, I’d say that we had two decent days out of that. I even spent one day. I was like, okay, yeah, they were going to go fishing. It was pouring rain. I like, I’m not going fishing. And they didn’t even get a bite. So I didn’t miss out on a on a thing. 

From there, we went, after four nights there, I’ll tell you what we did a lot on this trip up in Lofton, we watched a lot of soccer games.

Alex: Because of the World Cup?

Pam: That started at 11 o’clock, started, yeah, because of the World Cup, started at 11 o’clock at night. Now, I didn’t watch a lot of them, but everybody else watched a lot of them. And we watched a lot of Wimbledon that was going on during the daytime, too. So that was nice to have such a nice place to do that.

So we drove about two hours north to a different Airbnb that was in the village of Ramberg. There we went to Henningsvar fishing village, completely stunning. We actually had good weather. Tiny red fishing houses, red and white, and then other colors. It is so picturesque. Little tiny stores that you could go in and out of. You could we found great fish and chips. We got some traditional Norwegian pastries. I honestly thought that little village was worth the whole trip. I would have, you know, it was so adorable. I loved it so much. We went to a place called Haukland Beach. And there, a few of the people we were with, namely my husband and Jasper and Margo, who’s 10, did the cold plunge, and it was freezing.

Alex: I can’t believe you didn’t do it. Can’t believe it.

Pam: Well, I sent you a picture of how I was dressed most of my trip. And that’s how I was, that’s how I was dressed at Haukland Beach. And so there’s no way I was going to put get a bathing suit on and do that. They had a little sea cafe that had the best sandwiches, waffles, cookies and muffins. I would have we all talked about the food at that little sea cafe being one of the best places we had in Lofton.

We could walk from the Haukland Beach to the rugged boulder-strewn shores of Uclub Beach. These are all, I don’t know, I’m butchering these, I’m sure. This is really an easy hike for any type of family members. You don’t have to go the whole way. Then it’s about two and a half miles one way. So you probably wouldn’t want to walk that much if you had real little kids, but we had from 10-year-olds to 20-year-olds, everybody, we all enjoyed it.

One thing that we did, we stopped at this place, this little village that looked adorable, called New Fjord. Looked adorable. We got there. It looked like the cutest fishing village. They wanted to charge $15 a person to go into the village. This is how they make money. Well, we had eight people. That would have been $120 for all eight of us to go. And we’d seen some really cute villages. I just it’s like just on principle, I’m not paying to go into your fishing village. And so we didn’t do it.

Alex: Oh, Mom, maybe that’s how the tours make money. It’s how they survive.

Pam: Well, I do. I get it. I get it. It just, it was just, you know, we had

Alex: Well, you probably spend a ton of money already, so.

Pam: Yeah. We went to Lofter Viking Museum. There is a really, really good Viking museum in Oslo. That is the best Viking museum, but that was closed.

Alex: And did you go to that one, oh, you didn’t go to that one in Oslo?

Pam: No.

Alex: Because if you didn’t know, my mom here is a big Vikings fan. She’s watched, you’ve watched all the Viking, like the Viking shows and then what’s the other one that you love?

Pam: I’ve watched Last Kingdom, Vikings, Vikings of Valhalla. I’ve watched them all twice. I get into that.

Alex: Which is so funny because they’re kind of gruesome. They can be a little violent, but…

Pam: I know. 

Alex: So funny.

Pam: There’s some things I fast forward to, but you know, it’s usually not the violence. So, this museum, honestly, was pretty underwhelming. I wouldn’t go to it. I’d hold out on that one in Oslo. They had a long house there that was really interesting. People dressed in the in the native costumes, you could put it on and get pictures. So it was that was the best part of it was just going into the to the long house.

And then the last day, well, the second to last day, we thought, let’s just have a chill day. And we just kind of stayed in the Airbnb. Our Airbnb had a little shed across the street from it that also had a sauna. In fact, both of our Airbnbs had saunas. So saunas and then getting in cold water was kind of the thing to do. You can guess how many times I did that. But they really enjoyed it. So, we decided to just kind of hang out that second-to-last day, bad, bad decision. It was good weather.

The next day we went to go to the town of Rain, R E I N E, and A, it’s an A with a little symbol above it, the world’s shortest named city. They looked stunning through the drizzle. I was so disappointed. I’d say that is one of the things that I was most disappointed is that we weren’t able to see them with, you know, in better weather.

So, you know, it’s kind of interesting. So I had absolutely two extremes. I had hot, hot weather in Greece, where I’m complaining about the hot weather. And then the cold and wet in Norway, completely different wardrobes for me to wear. And yet, you know, there’s I can’t say that I’m not happy I went to Norway. I, you know, there are places that you go to that are absolutely gorgeous, that are special to visit, that you don’t need to go back to again. I don’t need to go back to another, I’m not even sure I want to go to Finland because I know that weather is going to be similar.

Alex: But you know who will love these places? You know who will love them? 

Pam: Jess

Alex: Jess will love them.

Pam: Jess will love them.

Alex: Because she loves that colder weather, all of that. So.

Pam: Yeah. So I’m 100% glad that I went to Norway. I totally think it is magical for many, many people. I think if I was more of a cold and rain lover, I would have enjoyed it more, but I definitely don’t regret having done it. 

Alex: How was the… did the sun not set? Like, what time was sunset?

Pam: Oh no, yeah. I didn’t even mention that. Interesting. Yeah, the sun doesn’t set. So you get up to use the toilet at 3 o’clock in the morning. I mean, you have blackout curtains, thank heavens, in your in your bedroom because you walk out and the first morning I kind of walked out, stumbled out, and I was like, what? How long did I sleep? Because it was like 3 in the morning. It was so bright.

Alex: Does it get dark at all or no?

Pam: I never saw it dark at all. I saw it the whole time it’s like dusk.

Alex: Yeah.

Pam: You know, that’s the darkest that it got. Very light.

Alex: Yeah. That’s really cool.

Pam: But it’s kind of interesting to see and experience.

Alex: Yeah, super interesting. Yeah. Well, knowing how much you don’t like the cold and the rain and all the drizzle, the fact that you still enjoyed Norway as much as you did is very impressive. I would love to go and see all of those cute places and experience it for myself. And you know, maybe some people get lucky, and they just have sunshine their whole time. You know?

Pam: I don’t think they do a lot.

Alex: Maybe because where you were so far north too.

Pam: Yes, it is.

Alex: Maybe not everybody goes as far north.

Pam: You can go to, you can go to Oslo and then do some of the southern cities in Norway.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. But I know you love Greece. You’re always wanting to go back there. I volunteer to go back with you. I know my family, whole family wants to go, but it was a long trip. I’m glad you made it back. And that you survived it all. And yeah, it sounded amazing.

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