Scandinavia, 2008

I have to admit, I started thinking about our next summer vacation on our plane ride home from England. I wanted to go back to Europe, but naturally I had doubts we could afford to do that again so soon. So within the next two months, I started trolling for airfares online. I quickly learned that destinations in Scandinavia, particularly on IcelandAir were cheapest. Scandinavia is not high on many people's lists of interesting places to go, but it has a number of things going for it, including;

• Almost everyone speaks english.
• There is a natural cultural connection for Minnesotans.
• It is a very friendly place for families with younger children.
• Being less commonly visited that other places in Europe, it feels more adventuresome to see.

So Scandinavia became our choice. Between August and November we saved as much as we could and, taking advantage of IcelandAir's better airfare ($840/pp) we were able to buy the plane tickets in December. Our hope was to continue saving as much as possible through the winter and spring to be able to pay for the balance of the trip and come home without any debt.

Initially, the plan was to stay within the triangle formed by the three capital cities of Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo, and to use one or two 1-week cottage rentals over the course of the 3-week trip since we enjoyed that so much in England. Quickly, however, we ran into kinks in that plan.

The first problem was that Scandinavia's premier attraction is the Norwegian fjords along the western coast, and it lies well outside of the capital city triangle. So we needed to abandon the notion of staying within a small geographical area. The second problem was that Scandinavia does not have a tourism tradition of week-long cottage rentals (very few choices were available). While reading guide books on the area, it became clear that (aside from the fjords) rural areas had few must-see sights. Rural Scandinavia is very much like rural Minnesota. That's not bad, but it's not what we travel 4000 miles for.

So gradually, our trip began taking on an entirely new shape than we had originally planned. Because IcelandAir does stopovers in Iceland, we decided to stay a day in Reykjavik and see a part of the world few people see. Then driving over such long distances in Sweden and Norway seemed arduous, so we decided to use rail passes instead. One particularly interesting rail journey was north, past the arctic circle and back, so we did that over two nights. We learned of an inexpensive ship excursion across the Baltic Sea between Stockholm and Helsinki, so Finland was added to our trip. It's neighbor across the Bay of Finland is Estonia and it's historic capital of Tallinn, so we stopped there, too. Flying "open-jaw" into Copenhagen and out of Helsinki made it possible to cover large distances without circling back. Now, our 3-week itinerary looked like this;

• 3 nights in Copenhagen including Fredericksborg castle and Tivoli Garden amusement park.
• 2 nights in Stockholm, seeing Kalmar castle en route.
• Night train to Narvik, Norway, 50 miles above the arctic circle.
• Night train back south to Trondheim & the next evening train to Åndalsnes for the night.
• Geirangerfjord cruise and evening bus to Ålesund for the night.
• Short flight to Bergen for 2 nights.
• "Norway-In-A-Nutshell" route to Oslo for 2 nights.
• Night bus back to Stockholm for the day & catch the overnight ship for Helsinki.
• Helsinki for 3 nights with side trips to Tallinn and Sovanlinna castle, Finland.

Clearly, we overdid it a little on the total miles traveled and number of transitions from place to place. But we had a fantastic time. The children took each new day's adventure in stride - hoisting their backpacks like travel pros and taking in each new museum with genuine interest. Scandinavia is a beautiful place full of unique history and offered a welcome change of pace and sense of adventure.

In the end, Scandinavia's reputation for being expensive proved justified. What we might have saved on airfare was more that made up for by higher costs for food and ground transportation. But we kept things as low-cost as we reasonably could and managed (just barely) to come home without debt....