My family and I recently returned from a wonderful trip to Denmark and Norway.
We started in Denmark, spending four days in Copenhagen. Of course, the kids loved Tivoli. We had a great time there. The park was charming, more charming than the average amuseument park. Even though it was July and lots of people were there, we never waited more than 10 minutes for a ride.
I'm glad we got the Copenhagen cards, which cover some museums and the public transportation in and near the city. The Glyptotek was a wonderful museum with a surprisingly varied and large collection of artwork. My family also enjoyed the Viking Ship museum out in Roskilde (short train ride away). We especially liked taking the boat ride.
One of my biggest recommendations is to take the overnight ferry from Copenhagen to Oslo. We got on the ferry at 4:00 in the afternoon and it arrived in Oslo the next morning, around 9:30 or so. The ride was smooth and scenic. It's a nice ship, very clean. We were impressed because we didn't know what to expect ahead of time. Rick's book mentions this, but I would HIGHLY recommend it to anyone traveling between these two cities. I bought my tickets a few months ahead of time and I think it ended up costing around $350 for the night for the four of us. We had a room with 4 beds (bunk beds), a decent sized window and a private shower. There were two pools on board...one indoors and one outdoors. The boat never seemed crowded, except when I was in the "duty free" shop. It was lovely to wake up and sit on the seats on the upper deck as the boat sailed up the Oslo fjord. (People who do cruises might not think much of this boat, but we've never been on a cruise and it was a treat being on a large boat like this.)
Next was Norway. I fell in love with this country on this trip...my first time there. I really enjoyed Oslo. We spent two days here and I found the city to be clean and pleasant. We enjoyed Vigeland Park. We went on a warm, sunny day and it was crowded but then returned later that evening around 8:00 and it was very quiet. We enjoyed walking around the park and we felt like the only ones there. The statues are beautiful and the park is clean with a really nice layout. I'm glad we went to the Vigeland Museum, as it really helped me to appreciate the artwork in the park. Another highlight for us was our visit to the Nobel Peace Center. The exhibits have stayed with me since our visit.
We did the "Norway in a Nutshell" route. We took two days to do it instead of all in one day. I'm so glad I didn't try to cram it all into one day. We took the train from Oslo to Myrdal and then the Flamsbana train into Flam and spent the night in Flam. The train rides were very enjoyable. Flam was really beautiful. The mountains just make me feel so small. I don't live near mountains, so I just loved gazing up at them. Flam was nice and quiet after the day's cruise ship left. The next day we took the boat on the fjords to Gudvangen...another amazing experience that I can't capture in words. From Gudvangen, we took the bus to Voss and that was an experience I'll never forget. Part of it was on this winding and STEEP road. Then we headed to beautiful Bergen.
We spent two glorious days in Bergen and it never rained. I couldn't believe it! I had heard that this is a rainy city. The highlights of our time there were the fjord safari rib boat ride and a hike from Mount Ulriken to Mount Floyen. My husband likes to hike and he's been wanting to do this hike. Our kids are 10 and 8 and we hike some, but this was by far our longest and most challening hike as a family. We took the Gondola up Mount Ulriken (got the bus from downtown to the gondola) and then hiked on the Vidden trail, which was over 13 kilometers. It took us over 5 hours, but the views along this hike were breathtaking. We saw many sheep along the way too. It was definitely challenging, but so worth it.