SCANDINAVIA TOUR JULY 2014

This tour was very good even though the weather turned out to be EXTREMELY hot!! It was occasionally gruelling tramping about in the blazing sun all day and then going back to a hot hotel room for the night BUT at least it didn't rain!! Every day was sunny - terrific.
Our guide, "Pal (the 'a' should have a circle over it) The Punctual" a Norwegian with Viking ancestors, was excellent. My only complaint was that it was hard for me, a not so fit 67 year old, to keep up with the pace but I tried and Pal did try to slow down a bit for me. His assistant (?) Laurel was also very helpful.
Highlights of the tour - there are too numerous to mention here. I was impressed by how fit and healthy most Scandinavians appear - no surprise as they eat very good food and love to be active in the outdoors. Speaking of the food I am quite certain that the food there is of much higher quality than we have here. After spending almost a month in Scandinavia, eating mostly Scandinavian food my whole digestive system felt better. The Scandinavian languages are very interesting. Pal and Laurel tried to teach us how to pronounce some words and especially the vowels, of which there are several more than we have in English. That was challenging. The history is also very interesting. We were fortunate enough to be able to visit a special 'Viking' exhibit at our museum in Victoria just before leaving for our Rick Steves Tour. That exhibit and the IMAX film about 'Vikings' was a great intro. I was quite astonished to learn that the Vikings ranged quite far throughout Europe and even into Russia - the ones who invaded Russia were called the Rus so I guess that's where Russia got it's name. It's obvious that the way the Scandinavians lived in ancient times as a strong and independent people has caused their countries to be strong and independent nations and the forms of government in Sweden, Denmark and Norway are enviably democratic. Upon learning how their governments function I couldn't help wishing our government was structured similarly. They have pretty high taxes in Scandinavia but the money seems to go towards making everyone's life better. I would say one of the things that most impressed me was the quality of life.
What things could have been different or better? Well the quality of accommodation was somewhat sporadic. Our first night's hotel room was small but quite nice. This set the expectation level. So it was unfortunate that the next two nights' rooms were not as nice. In fact they were a bit shabby. We had a nice accommodation on Aero (near Copenhagen) but the group was split up and half the group got to stay in a very, very nice B&B. It would have been nicer if names had been chosen randomly for this place instead of allowing tour members to put in their 'dibs' for this accommodation. The accommodation at Elvesaeter was quite disappointing - almost like a youth hostel with paint chipping off furniture and linoleum floors! The hotel itself was nice and the setting was beautiful.
The only other complaint I can think of right now is that I wish this tour could cover much more of each of the three countries. Or perhaps Rick could consider setting up a separate tour for each of the three countries.