Planning a 7-9 day trip in August. We'd like to spend our time seeing the sights, vistas, small/medium sized towns and only 1 day in a very large city (Copenhagen??). Without renting a car and no mega cruise ships. Coming away with a feel for the country and people. Given the limited time, select Denmark and southern Sweden? Our first time there.
Thanks very much
I highly recommend the Hurtigruten coastal voyage from Bergen to Kirkenes.
There are many options. Denmark and southern Sweden is not a bad choice but there are many other options as well. Can you tell us a bit more about what you are looking for? Where do you draw the line between small/medium sized towns and very large cities?
Thank you both. Replies follow:
Hurtigruten cruise: I'm confused with all their choices. How long are the stops at each port? Can you get off at each stop? Are some of the stops interesting enough to stay overnight and pick up the next ship? Is that possible? Who takes these cruises- hopefully not mostly Americans as with Viking on European rivers.
Our interests: if a cruise, we want to see the coastal vistas, not cruise mainly at night. Spend time in charming towns. Not foodies but want to eat local food and interact a bit with locals. Some scenic walks.
Small/medium town: we enjoyed on the Rhine where we could walk from one end of a town tot he other in 20 minutes.
Very large city: Copenhagen
We spent six weeks in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in August/September 2022. We travelled by train and bus. Norway was especially easy to get around by bus and train.
Some attractions in smaller places with rail:
Sweden:
Lund - Kulturen open air museum
Karlskrona - Naval museum with local traditional food at the lunch buffet
Kalmar - Kalmar castle
Älmhult - IKEA museum
Varberg - Varberg fortress
Växjö - The House of Emigrants
Mölle hasn't rail any longer but you can go by bus from Helsingborg. Add a hike around the peninsula, for example from Mölle to Arild or vice versa. Along the route there is a lighthouse, Nimis art peice and Håkull viewpoint.
Osby - Lekoseum - literally something like play-and-(toy-mu)seum - more play than museum but if you're interested in the origin of the BRIO wooden train this is the place
Denmark:
Helsingør/Elsinore - Kronborg castle
Hillerød - Frederiksborg Castle
Louisiana art museum
I'll describe part of what I did in Norway last year:
I took the Norway-in-a-Nutshell trip from Oslo to Bergen (train, narrow-gauge train, fjord ferry, bus, train) with two nights in the very touristy but magnificently situation town of Flam. NiN can be completed in one (long) day with no overnight stop. There's a lot of great scenery on this trip, but it cuts across southern Norway; it's not coastal scenery. Honestly, I wouldn't make a first trip to Norway and skip the NiN route unless for financial reasons.
After a few days in the city of Bergen (pop 272,000; beautiful, but the area around the harbor is touristy), I took an overnight trip to Alesund (pop. 46,000) on Hurtigruten. The ship stops in Alesund (Art Nouveau town) about 10 AM and then makes a detour into the beautiful Geirangerfjord, returning to Alesund about 8 PM. I stayed on the ship until the return to Alesund; some would opt to hop off in the morning and take some sort of land-based bus/boat tour. I don't know whether that would be cheaper. Then I spent the night in Alesund so I'd have time to enjoy the architecture and see the Art Nouveau Museum the next day. I didn't run into many other tourists in Alesund.
Twenty-four hours later, I hopped on another Hurtigruten ship for the overnight run up to Trondheim. We docked around 10 AM. I spent several nights in Trondheim (pop. 182,000), partly to take a side trip inland to Roros. Trondheim is a stop on large cruise ships, I assume, but I didn't encounter throngs of other foreign tourists there. I may have been lucky in my timing, but Norway is very expensive. Perhaps for that reason, the tourist load is nothing like what you'll find in places like Rome, London, Paris and Venice.
Here's Hurtigruten's webpage for short excursions: https://www.hurtigruten.com/port-to-port/#/. You are not limited to the options shown there; single overnights are possible as long as space is available. At one time, point-to-point prices were lower on the Norwegian website. Right-click for the Translate to English option.
The Hurtigruten schedule can be seen at: https://www.hurtigruten.com/coastal-practical-information/sailing-plan. Use the pull-down box to select the summer schedule. As you can see, the stops are very short. If you stay on the same ship, you really don't have time to get off and walk around the southern ports except in Trondheim (rather briefly) and Alesund--and the time in Alesund is available only if you don't stay on the ship for the trip into the Geirangerfjord.
As of last year Hurtigruten ships ran five days a week. There's now a second company running the coastal route, Havila. Perhaps between the two of them there's a departure every day. I believe someone reported here that the Havila ships are newer. I was completely happy with the two Hurtigruten ships I used for my brief trips, but they do vary.
