North Carolina, 2020

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Ladies & gentlemen, if you have not been to North Carolina with your children during the fall… PLEASE GO!  A few weeks 
(maybe months, I’m not sure when we went to be honest) ago, we had big plans of going out of the country with our family (inlaws, kids, the works).  Literally… LITERALLY… 4 days before we were supposed to leave I cancelled our side of the trip.  It was probably one of the hardest decisions for me as I HATE disappointing people and letting people down.  Now, I’m sure I took this decision way harder than anyone else in our group, but I know I made the right choice and will forever appreciate our time in North Carolina during 2020.  To be able to get away during this horrendous pandemic was such a breath of fresh mountain air!  And a very welcome break from the Florida heat :). We did ALL THE THINGS including apple picking and visiting the Biltmore Estate, we conquered the Pinball Museum and hiked to some waterfalls, we ate so much food and watched many sunsets… it was perfect.  Just what my mama heart needed.  

I hope you enjoy these (not perfectly aligned) pictures ;).  I still haven’t figured out the new layout and probably never will… sorry folks!

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Bergen, Norway

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Whoa whoa whoa!  Two posts in one week?!?  Who am I?!?

Bergen was our final stop on the cruise so we decided to hire a private driver and have them guide us through their town.  First stop: Mount Fløyen to ride the funicular named Fløibanen!

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The funicular system was able to take us to the top of the mountain, about 1300 ft, in about 8 minutes.  Once at the top there is a lookout area where you can see the entire peninsula of Bergen.  We were even able too see our Disney ship!  Can you see it in the picture above?

When we got back to the bottom, our driver dropped us in the city center also known as Bryggen where there are many shops and restaurants to enjoy.  It is such a picturesque area of town, I enjoyed all the Christmas shops and the boys enjoyed seeing all the boats! We also walked through the fish market!

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Our last visit in Bergen was the aquarium.  The sea lions really know how to entertain the children!  Highly recommend if you are in Bergen with your kiddos- my boys went crazy over these guys and it was entertainment for hours!

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Here is a picture I got of our ship… I didn’t write much about the actual Disney cruise experience this time because for those who have been following along, we did a Disney cruise through Alaska a year ago and I went into deep detail about how much we loved the Disney experience via the ship.  It was wonderful again this year and we have already got a placeholder for our next one!  It’s the only way we will cruise until these kids are a little bigger…

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That concludes the Norway trip!  I hope that we are able to visit again in the future- I feel we only barely scratched the surface of this great country, but feeling very fortunate to have been able to see and do all that we did with our family!  Thanks Disney!

Oslo, Norway

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Oslo is the capital of Norway, so my expectations for this city was pretty high.  We got off the boat in some rainy & cold weather, but we were not going to let that get in the way of a fun day.  The biggest attraction we wanted to see in Oslo was the Vigeland Sculpture Park.  This park has over 200 sculptures which essentially showcases Gustav Vigeland‘s life’s work.  There are so many sweet baby and children sculptures, some are a little creepy,  some show really raw human emotion, but at the heart of the park is the most well known- The Monolith – which was made from a single piece of granite and took three mason’s 14 years to make.  It’s a little strange looking at it up close, all the bodies intertwined together… add to that all the extremely provocative sculptures surrounding it… anyway… look it up, or click the links highlighted in this paragraph to fully grasp what I’m talking about.

The park itself was very picturesque and even on a rainy day the landscape design was stunning.  The flowers we blooming so bright!  I can only imagine how packed that place must be on a beautiful day, it was perfect for a picnic and a game of hide and seek.

The other spot we really wanted to enjoy was a quaint little fishing village named, Drøbak, which is a very traditional Norwegian fjord town.  Very cute, lots of art, and of course a Christmas store open year round!  The boys enjoyed exploring the marina, deciding what kind of boat we were going to get, and devoured some delicious ice cream in the sweetest little shop- no pun intended ;).

All-in-all… It was a really great day in Oslo!