My gf (ex) and I went to Scandinavia. We stayed at AirBnbs most the trip, a few hostels/campgrounds. It's hard to minimize costs while trying to adventure & still feel like you've experienced the city.
The most interesting local cuisine was eating Mexican food in Norway. Norwegian's opinion of burritos is awful lol.
We fell into the same thing lmao - we thought it was such a short distance on a map but was actually a few miles haha. we had to get an Uber.