Thanks to the amazing Wideroe mistake fares back in November we’ll be starting off our travels earlier than usual this year.

Tonight we leave on our first international trip of 2014.

We’ll be visiting Norway for the first time. This will be a short trip so we’ll only be visiting Oslo. If we have time and the weather permits, we might try to do a short day-trip outside the city.

Trip Planning:

The Flight: Kim and I weren’t looking to book a trip for this week but I’m always on the lookout for a good deal. After coming back from an early morning run I was skimming over Twitter when I saw chatter about a huge airfare sale (mistake?) with Wideroe, a small Norwegian airline. Wideroe went from WiderWHO to my favorite site of the year in a matter of a day!

I immediately looked for dates that would work for a long weekend. The next thing was deciding where we wanted to go. Since Kim and I have been to all of the Scandinavian countries besides Norway we figured flying to Oslo would be a good option. (Yes we know it is cold there this time of year.)

We will be flying in Economy Class from:

• Newark (EWR) to Oslo (OSL)
• Oslo (OSL) to Newark (EWR)

The cost of this itinerary for Kim, Lucas and I was 5706 Danish Krone (DKK) which comes to $1031.22 ($343.74 per person). We paid with my American Express Platinum card since they do not charge a foreign transaction fees.

This will be Lucas’ first flight with his own seat and should be an interesting experience. We are glad that this is an overnight flight since Lucas will most likely sleep (just about) the whole time. Lucas has sat between us for a few minutes here and there on flights in the past so hopefully he will like getting his own space.

We won’t be lugging around a car seat for Lucas to use during the flight. The nice people over at Kids Fly Safe were kind enough to send us a CARES Safety Harness to test out.

CARES is the first and only harness type Aviation Child Safety Device to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as an alternative to a car seat.

Lodging/ Hotel: After booking our flight, I was a little worried to find out what a hotel might cost us for our short visit. I first checked to see if I could use some of my hotel points but I couldn’t come up with anything worthwhile. I then looked into hostels but they were either way too pricey or only had dorm rooms.

I then came across Comfort Hotel Xpress which had very good reviews and seems to also be in a good location. The price was also pretty reasonable at just under $100 per night.

We always check a variety of booking sites and found Priceline to have the best price. I went ahead and booked our 4 nights stay for $390.88 ($97.22 per night).

This puts our total trip expenses for air and hotel at $1422.10. If not for the Wideroe airfare deal, one ticket alone to Oslo would’ve been in the $800+ range per person.

I’m looking forward to checking out a new country and seeing how Lucas’ first flight in his own seat goes. Keep checking back for posts about our visit.

If anyone has been to Oslo and has any recommendations of things to do, please feel free to share. We have lots of ideas already but it’s also nice to get recommendations!