I’ve been to a few expensive places in which to travel over the past couple of years (Zurich, I’m looking at you), but nothing really prepared me for the cost of eating in Norway.  In other costly cities – Paris, New York, Milan, I’ve had no trouble finding great economical places to eat where I felt I got a taste of the location.  Not so in Norway.  Seth Kugel, the New York Times “Frugal Traveler” put it best when he recently wrote:

Norway is the extreme Scandinavian case, though — the only country I’ve ever been in where I suffered from constant, low-grade budget anxiety. On the opposite end is Sweden, which, if you come directly from Norway, feels like you’ve entered a 173,300-square-mile Costco.

Traveling is about the memories – being a couple of accountants, we budget for trips so we’re not thinking about money while away.  With that planning we saved our travel dollars for the cuisine of Iceland laying ahead in our travels and quickly labeled Norway as a place where we’d live off of grocery store food for a few days.  This was our first supper in Bergen, and still clocked in at around $20:

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