Heading to Scandinavia for 3 weeks with Bill’s sisters Bonnie and Barb and Barb’s husband Les. This is a family trip that we’ve talked about taking for years and would have loved to do this with Bill’s parents. But now we are doing it for them, if not with them. Both Phyllis and Lee were half Norwegian and they were enthralled by cousin Rolf Erickson’s family stories and his research into their Nordic roots. We will spend the summer Solstice together in Norway on June 21st – celebrating Grammy’s 91st birthday and Father’s Day.
This is another one of Maria’s custom independent trips. 75% of the trip follows Rick Steve’s Scandinavian tour (another Norwegian American) plus we added the Hurtigruten boat trip from Bergen through the Norwegian Fjords to the Lofoten Islands, north of the Artic Circle.
Here is our basic itinerary. Barb, Les and Bonnie left June 2nd and we will overlap with them one night in Stockholm. Then they will rent a car and drive to Southern Sweden to visit Les’s Grandpa Benson’s farm. Bill and I spend 3 nights in Stockholm and then we take a train to Copenhagen. Hopefully we will meet up with those three at the train station in Copenhagen.
We spend 3 nights in Copenhagen in a airbnb apartment/house. From there we take an overnight ferry boat to Oslo. 2 nights in Olso followed by the Norway in a Nutshell scenic tour to the West coast of Norway to Fjord country. We aren’t taking a tour but rather a series of trains and boats with a stopover in a small town of Vatnahalsen. Not really a town as it has no roads, just a hotel near the train station.
We will spend 2 nights in Bergen Norway before boarding a Hurtigruten boat – a cross between a ferry and a cruise – for 3 nights through the Fjords on the West coast of Norway. We end up in the Lofoten Islands for a few days before heading back to Oslo and then home.