xyz99,
I did send you your request but the mail was rejected and returned to me. I'll try again.

Eri,
I got your email, and your attachment. Thanks a lot. I also wrote you back...hmmm, I guess you didn't get my email :(

Eri- Please send me a copy of your Norway drive tour. Does it have anything about the windy "troll road" around Andalsnes? I am driving with a Swedish friend from Sundsvall Sweden over to Trondheim then back to Stockholm. Thanks.
karen-bryan(at)sbcglobal.net

Hi Eri,

We are planning to be in Norway mid-July 2006 and would be grateful if you could email ([email protected]) us a copy of your route. We expect to drive to enjoy the sights at our own pace.

Thanks,
Pua

I will be in Copenhagen in June and want to travel to Oslo for a week and then Brønnøysund in southern Nordland for a few days and then back to Copenhagen. I am visiting the places where my grandparents were born. Any suggestions as to the best way to travel?

xyz99,
I received one mail from you. But did you recieve my Croatia suggestions? Let me know. If not I'll send them again.
hpk and cobbie, I'll mail you the Norway suggestions today.
To all the other future requests - I am off to Iceland tomorrow. Sorry, I will not be able to help you in the next month!

Thank you Eri for your response. Am I to understand that I can't do the Norway in a Nutshell tour between Oslo and Bergen and back within 5 days? Help!! I thought it took one full day to travel between Oslo and Bergen via nutshell. I was expecting 5 days for a round trip would give me a day or two to spend in Bergen. I better read the the travel route more closely. Any help from others will be appreciated.

Hey Bogger,
That's not what I said. I have no knowledge of the "nutshell" trip. What I meant was that the way I see this trip is with a rented car, self drive and that I would start the trip in Bergen to save long drives in less interesting places. You could of course do less, take the train. It all depends on what you like or prefer. Have a nice trip.

Hello eri,

We are going to Norway for the first time - we are a young couple, looking for scenery, wildlife, and culture - we wanted advice on an itinerary including Oslo, Bergen, Geiranger, other cities in the fjord region, and then up to the north - do you recommend Lofoten islands, Bodo, Tromso? We like to go-go-go and were given one itinerary that had us driving up 6 hours/day with no time to see anything and driving from Trondheim to Bodo which seems better to fly? I don't want to post my email on here for spam reasons, could you please post your 4 pages online somewhere? Yahoo has a free briefcase?

Our overall itinerary was 12 days Norway, 3 days Stockholm area and 2 days in nearby countryside (dalarna, etc), 2 days Helsinki, 4 days St Petersburg.

What do you think?

Yael

Yael: I wasn't asked, but I'll throw in my two cents. Your itinerary is ambitious. If you enjoy the outdoors, you'll find driving the Norwegian coast to be very time-consuming. Every dozen kilometers or so thre will be a point that you have to stop to wander off the road, take a closer look at a small village, and (most of all) take a photograph. We planned a coastal drive from Bodø to Bergen to Oslo a few years back. We were way behind schedule three days into the drive, and we never did get to Bergen in the time we had allotted (about eight days), going only as far south as Ålesund (a very nice art nouveau fishing town). The reason for driving from Trondheim to Bodø is the natural beauty. You can also drop in on Hell, a small suburb of Trondheim, if ever you want to back up any comment you might make about spending an afternoon in Hell. It's really a pleasant little place; the locals don't think as much of the name as a source of mirth, naturally, as do we English speakers. We drove mainly on the coast, but we did cut inland towards Mo I Rana and then headed north so we could visit the Arctic Circle Center. As you get closer to the Arctic Circle, you come to a high, rather barren plateau. Just north of the Arctic Circle, you'll be able to see the Svartisen Glacier. Then, surprisingly, you come off the plateau (north of the Arctic Circle) and there's more pleasant green farmland. We wound up doing Bergen on another trip, and we made a separate trip also to the Lofotens. Once again, we weren't too good about time planning. We spent four nights just outside of Reine in some great rorbuer, and we thought we could explore all of the Lofotens from that base. Wrong again, we only took in the southern half (up to the Borg Museum). We could easily have spent more time in the Lofotens, which have all the beauty of Norway crammed in to one small island chain: beautiful fishing villages, lovely fjords, craggy overlooks. There's not much town life, but if you appreciate the natural beauty, it's one of the prettiest places on Earth in a country that boasts many claims to that title. We may have been especially fortunate to be there on four bright sunny days at the start of July, but I expect it would l;ook pretty good in most conditions. It's also neat to watch the midnight sun (hence my screen name) from a sandy beach on the west side of the island chain. Yes, there are sandy beaches above the Arctic Circle, and some people do swim there, but the water temperature was such that I began to have a major cold alert when I got to thigh depth. Nonetheless, some children and (for some reason) German tourists seemed quite happy with full body immersion in the Norwegian Sea. I suppose thje point of my posting is to encourage your travel, whet your interest, and tell you to set aside a lot of time. Driving the Norwegian coast is great fun (and a good resource if you can find it is Frommer's (can I say that word here?) Driving Tours Scandinavia. You'll also be able to find much information in English at the tourist offices once you're in Norway. We have traveled quite a bit in Scandinavia over the last ten years, so e-mail me if you need more information about Norway and Sweden. In fact we'll be back this summer, although probably not to Norway but just Sweden this time. Unless the call of the Lofotens gets too loud

Thanks MidnightSun! Here is our proposed itinerary, please let me know if you think it's doable... we like to prebook things so then we have to stay on schedule... we are go-go-go travelers and like to cram as much in as possible, although I think adding Tromso is too much at the end of this and we should do another night somewhere else?

Thanks!

May 8 fly from DC, get in around 2pm?
May 9 Oslo
May 10 train to Bergen via Myrdal, Flam train, ferry to Gudavenger, bus to Voss, train to Bergen (overnight Bergen)
May 11 Bergen
May 12 ferry to Balestrand, overnight
May 13 Drive to Geiranger via Hellesylt & ferry (overnight Geiranger)
May 14 Drive to Alesund via Andaslnes on the famous Trollstigen road (is this open at this time of year?) (overnight Alesund)
May 15 Alesund (leaving a day here for exploration of Runde Island birds)
May 16 drive to Trondheim
May 17 Fly to Bodo (9am flight), get to Lofotens (either fly to Svolvaer (10:25am flight) or car ferry to Moskenes or Svolvaer – I heard the passage is rough? better to fly and can you rent a car there?) (overnight Kabelvåg)
May 18 Kabelvåg overnight
May 19 fly to Tromso via Bodo (is this worth the trip? I think was thinking of dogsledding & sami tent day tour in Tromso)
May 20 Tromso to Stockholm (late in the day to allow for day tour in Tromso)

Trollstigen did not open till June 1 in 2005. Go to www.trollstigen.net for great info. There is lots of Norway travel info on the net. Google Norway travel. I don't think you are allowing enough time for driving. From my research and from what MidnightSun says you need to alot more time. Trondheim sounds beautiful. In Bergen be sure to take the ride up the mountain side for the amazing overlook.

Thanks cobbie!

I did look up the routes on viamichelin.com and the only really long one is Bergen-Oslo which is 7.5 hours, although many bus tours do it in one day. Balestrand to Geiranger is 4.5 hours, Geiranger to Alesund is 2 hours (without Trollstigen), Alesund to Trondheim is 5 hours. Perhaps the problem is that the driving times don't take into account the ferry schedules. We drove around New Zealand on a schedule like this one, also with nice scenery, and that worked out great but they don't have any ferries.

If anyone has suggestions on a better way to do this itinerary in 12 days (will remove Tromso and Trollstigen) please let me know.

Thanks for all your help and advice!

Gday !

Like a lot of other readers 4 of us are planning a trip to Denmark, Norway and Sweden in July 06. We only have about 10 -12 days and are looking at the option of self driving. Would appreciate the 'Advise Sheet' emailed if possible please.

Thanks for your time

Whoops - my email is [email protected] for the Advise Sheet. Sorry

Hi Eri,

My family and I are planning on driving through Norway next year for a couple of weeks and I was wondering if you would be able to e-mail a copy of the advice sheets. I would really appreciate. My email is [email protected]

Thanks very much
Sue

Yael,
Sorry for the delay. I have just returned from Iceland. By your name I guess that Hebrew is your language. If this is so, I could give you more advice in IVRIT and personally on the phone. Let me know if this is so.

Welcome back, Eri ! How was Iceland? We want to know all the details – and see pictures, too :)

Eri,
I am planning to see fjords in Norway by driving Bergen-Alesund-Bergen. I am very appriciate if you can send me your "advise sheet".
My address is: [email protected]

Regards,
Zeev

Eri:
After years of planning all our trips, I forced my easy-going husband to tell me where HE wanted to travel. Turned out it's Scandinavia. Since we prefer self-drive trips, too, can you send your advice sheet with self-driving directions for Norway?
Marta