This August, we spent two weeks in Norway, exploring the beautiful mountains and fjords in the country’s southwest corner. It was a magical two weeks, and Norway is definitely on our “want to return” list!
For this trip, we flew in and out of Bergen, and rented a car for the journey in between (making a loop first driving East):
Our itinerary was as follows:
Day 1-3: Stayed in Bergen (3 nights)
Day 4-5: Tyssedal/Trolltunga Hike (1 night in hotel, 1 night guided camping)
Day 6: Overnight in Aurland (1 night)
Day 7-8: Gjendesheim (2 nights)
Day 9-11: Åndalsnes (3 nights)
Day 12: Norangsfjorden (1 night)
Day 13: Loen (1 night)
Day 14: Bergen (1 night)
We felt like this itinerary was almost perfect, the only change I’d make would have been to stay one more day at our amazing hotel in Norangsfjorden. Click on the above for full blog posts on each area, with some general tips/good-to-knows below if you are ever planning your own trip:
General tips & thoughts
All hotels in Norway have breakfast included (at least according to my Norwegian friend, and consistent with our experience), most are very good with a wide variety of food!
Book your activities/tours in advance; I thought we could play it by ear and book things day-of, but when I tried doing so, things were full.
Hotels are mostly small/local/independent and are not available on major credit card points sites, so Norway is not a great place to go if you’re hoping to pay with points for hotels.
Some hotels have dinner available/as part of the room rate. When booking, you may want to see if you have to include board in your room rate; one hotel required that you pay for dinner with the room (and I had only booked for one person which led to some confusion in check-in when we actually had two people). Another had it as optional, but I thought it was required.
Many hotels’ included dinner is a set menu; if you have any dietary restrictions of preferences, tell them ahead of time (and if you don’t want to eat reindeer, definitely tell them as this is guaranteed to be on the menu)
For the most part we loved our hotel dinners- they’re usually tastier (and a better value) than what you’d get at a restaurant. We paid about $65-75 per person for a 3-course meal which felt reasonable to us as San Franciscans.
Hotels in Norway do not have AC, it’s not usually very warm there so not a huge deal, but some nights we were a bit hot!
Renting a car is a great way to get around, but be advised that many of the roads (at least on our itinerary) are narrow and winding. The “M” signs along the way are designated places where you can pull over to let other cars pass.
Gas is as expensive as you’ve heard! It cost us over $100 to fill up our tank (by our calculations, gas was about $9/gallon while we were there)