We finally did a budget trip to Tromsø!!!
I really really wanted to see the Northern Lights. I mean I’m living in Norway for 2 years and hadn’t gotten the opportunity to see the Aurora Borealis. It’s inexcusable.
One of the best places in Norway to see it is Tromsø. I know there are smaller places more into the wild that also have great conditions to catch the lights, but Tromsø has an airport with a lot of daily flights, museums and it’s pretty used to tourists so there’s plenty food and supermarket options. All of these are helpful to keep a low budget.
We planned it, but like everything in Norway…it’s expensive.
What to do???
Well then let’s just go Budget trip to Tromsø 🙂
More than any other trip you need to plan. So here are the best suggestions for planning a budget trip to Tromsø
Planning
- Sleeping
- Travelling
- Food
- Seeing the Northern Lights
- To tour or not to tour
- Wildlife and Scenery
- Total Budget
Sleeping
So you have your normal options: hotel, airbnb, hostel. I doubt there are cheap hotels in Tromsø. You can find hostels and airbnb cheap. They are a good option if you like the comfort of a bed and bathroom.
But we wanted to see the lights and not pay half a salary on a tour, so we also needed to rent a car.
So I found this preciousness on Airbnb – a CAMPERVAN
Check it out here
What could be more suitable? A car and a hotel.
Best choice ever!!!! It made our trip sooo special. Romantic and cozy. Just the 2 of us under the sky watching the northern lights.
Travelling
So as you understood we rented a van. This allowed us to stay far from Tromsø city center, so you don’t need to worry about travelling 1 or 2 hours to see the lights and then going back. We traveled to the best places to get an awesome view, and then just slept in the car. It was great.
We went almost all the way to Finland.
Renting a car is obviously a good option but it means you need to plan the round trip. And let me tell you, the roads are icy, curvy and dark.
Besides sleeping in the car means you can enjoy some warm Gløgg (norwegian mulled wine) while watching the lights. Which we sure did <3
Or you can make yourself a nice pot of coffee or tea since the van has a stove. And even have dinner under the lights.
Still you probably need to go from the airport to the city center. Don’t be fooled by the special airport bus. These are more expensive and without any advantage.
Trick – When you are about to leave the airport go down to -1 level, the parking lot. Go across the parking lot and when you get to the street you will see a normal bus stop. There you can buy a ticket for the bus nº 40 or 42 for 3,6 € instead of 11€ for the airport bus (Flybussen)
Atention – if you opt by using the buses daily don’t forget you need money to buy the ticket on the bus. There are some ticket machines on the city center that allow cards.
Food
Like you probably know Norway is very expensive. Just so you have an idea a meal on Burguer king will cost you around 12€, a big pizza for 2 at Pepe’s pizza is around 30€.
Budget food = Van food.
We ended up cooking in the van. Noodles, pasta, eggs, oatmeal. Easy stuff but still it’s very good to have warm food in the cold weather. So to keep your trip low cost you need to cook your food. Going out is not an option in Norway.
Also some supermarkets have cheap warm food for take away like Sparskjøp or Meny (you have burguers for 4€, whole roasted chickens 7€, and other dishes)
But don’t bother bringing noodles from home, those are actually cheap in Norway.
We even got to eat frozen iogurt in the van. But that’s more to do with the fact that our iogurts froze overnight ahahah
Seeing the Northern Lights
This was our main objective. We wanted to make sure we saw them but didn’t wanna spent a lot on a tour with other people.
So we used the internet and local friends advises to get to the best places to see the lights by ourselves. Don’t know if you got this yet but I’m a huge fan of DIY – do it yourself!
If you are interested in this check my post – The Northern Lights
We are not experts but we managed to plan and see the lights both nights we where in Tromsø, so I think we aren’t that bad at it 😉
To tour or not to tour
Ohh the Hell of the Tours..
If your start searching about Tromsø online most of what you will find are tour. You almost feel like you really need to do a tour otherwise you won’t experience anything. You got tours for everything but the main ones are:
- Northern lights
- Husky farm and sledge
- Reindeer feeding
- Reindeer sledge and Sami lunch
- Whale watching
Northern lights
Well we already decided we didn’t wanted a tour for the Northern Lights. I was confident I booked a good sky weekend so it should be fairly easy to see them. Almost all norwegians I know mention they had seem the Aurora so we should be able to.
Husky farm and sledge
I saw some photos of the Husky sledges and to be honest we aren’t big fans of these group activities. So even if the sledges are individual, you are still on a train with the other people and other sledges.
Bah didn’t seem that interesting, specially for the price. And definitely not nice to put the animals through that just so you can take some photos and sit on a sledge. So definitely a No No for us
Reindeer feeding, sledge and Sami lunch
Reindeer. I just love them. Every time I think of Christmas and snow animals I think of them. They are so cute. Much smaller than I thought for some reason. So I really wanted to see them wild. But again…the prices on this. And obviously it’s not certain you will see them. So again we decided to go on our own, with some local advises, to look for the reindeer.
Unfortunately we didn’t find them 🙁
On the other hand we managed to see way cooler animals. We saw eagles, one fox and 7 wild mooses
Yes, mooses!! OMG they are giant horses with antlers. So amazing.
I was sad I couldn’t feed some reindeers, but on the other hand I never expected to see the mooses.
Whale watching
Finally my biggest indecision was the whale watching. So I asked around the norwegians that had seen it and they didn’t seem that excited about it.
But I would have gone if we where there for longer. But 2 and half days, when the daylight ends at 15h30 doesn’t give you a lot of daytime. And I was more interested in seeing the lights, nature and animals.
The whale watching tours cost around 150€ minimum, and can go for up to 8h. This meant seeing the lights and travelling back to Tromsø to be there at 8h or 9h in the morning. We wanted to enjoy the lights without all the stress.
I do think it must be an amazing thing to see these ocean giants in the cold water with the amazing scenery of the fjords and icy mountains. Maybe some other time.
Wildlife and Scenery
Like I mentioned having a car or a van will allow you to find the wildlife…in the wild.
I know it’s easier on a trip to go to places where you are certain to see the things you want, instead of just wandering around looking for it. In the end you’re just visiting a bigger zoo.
But not only is that cheaper its more natural and fun! We just drove for hours enjoying the scenery looking at the mountains and looking for animals. And we found them!!
Maybe you’ll be sad you didn’t end up seeing all you could, and maybe that’s all your friends will ask you about, but on the other hand you had enough money to go there and you enjoyed the ride
Total Budget
In the end this is how much we spent on our budget trip to Tromsø
- Van – 72€ per night + 52€ of services (cleaning and such) – Total 195€
- Diesel – Well this obviously depends on how far you wanna go. We traveled a lot on these 2 days – 80€
- Bus – to and from airport – 3,6€ per trip per person – 14,4€
- Tours – 0€
- Food – Supermarket – 22€, Vinmonopolet (for the Gløgg) – 36€, Restaurant to try whale and seal meat – 50€ – Total 108€
TOTAL (without flights) – 397,4€ for 2 people
Cause the experience is far more important than the budget! Risk more! You can go anywhere with little money
Take the risk and go on a budget trip to Tromsø! You won’t regret it 😉
P.S – We did went to one “museum” – Polaria. But that’s for another post 😉