I'm planning a Scandinavian tour with my sister from May 12 to June 1. We're in our spry 60's and its, blissfully, just us. As this is our third summer of travel, I have a sense of what works and doesn't. I try to book what I can in advance, transportation and accommodations with thoughts to activities, to make it less stressful. We don't like tight connections and love the pace of train travel. We stay in nice hotels with bigger rooms and seldom squabble. We enjoy a few refreshing days in the middle of a trip to just chill out.
On New Year's Day, I bought a package that covers most of our travel. I was able to get the flights we wanted and bundling hotels made it even more reasonable. I've been watching this since September and feel it's a decent deal. Our current itinerary is 4 nights in Stockholm, 5 night in Gothenburg and, at the end, 3 nights in Copenhagen. (I know, I know about Copenhagen but my sister wanted extra time in Sweden and isn't too interested in Oslo.) The unbooked days are penciled in for Norway before a ferry ride to Copenhagen. There's some wiggle room there.
I'm interested in the Norway in a Nutshell because we need some low-key time out of cities. My initial research suggests that the pricing differential between getting a package or planning each leg separately might not be that great but it's hard to tell. We're respectively living in Colorado and Alaska and are no strangers to natural beauty. As the NiN tour seems grueling, I want to break it up into manageable segments of the great "hits". Do people get fjord-overload?
Among the things I'm considering are:
-Book the train RT Oslo-Bergen and/or
-Renting an Airbnb in Bergen so we can spread out for a few days, do laundry, cook a few meals and make day trips. We usually need some R&R by this point. or
-Taking the NiN tour from Oslo to Bergen with an overnight stay in Flam before staying in Bergen. or
-Base in another town.
-Do NiN quickly and then base in Oslo.
Any advice? No Airbnb listed in Bergen says, "This is the place." Is there a better area for tourists? It looks like a lot of attics have been made into Airbnbs. Any out-of-the-box thoughts?
Thanks!