I have the book with a suggested 3 week trip by car. I only have 2 weeks. What would be a good driving tour? What can I cut out?
Posted by
Rick Steves' Europe
16893 posts
How dedicated are you to driving the whole trip?
Flying an "open jaws" or multi-city itinerary (such as into Copenhagen and out of Oslo or Bergen) would cut driving time, but dropping a car in a different country adds a lot to the cost.
You could eliminate Vaxjo and Kalmar and take the Express train from Copenhagen to Stockholm in 5.5 hours, as described on this train/boat itinerary, and train Stockholm to Oslo in 6 hours, or you could check www.skyscanner.com for "cheap" flights on both routes.
If driving the loop, you can eliminate Helsinki, which requires a detour by roundtrip ferry.
Posted by
Portland
3594 posts
I will just caution you that the drive between Copenhagen and Stockholm is very long and very boring. Perhaps there's been some improvement, but there weren't even good places to stop for food or refreshments. We had a free car and free gas, so there was great incentive to drive; but without those, I wouldn't dream of doing so. In 2005, when we were there, gas was running about $9/gal.