American family visit as tourists in Norway

What to do when family comes to visit Norway for 14 days? It’s plenty of options; in Oslo and the aria around of course – and then you have; The South with the coastline full of beaches, The West with wild mountains and fjords, as well as The North with magical landscape and not to mention the Land of the Midnight Sun! In addition; we have a vacation home in Sweden, so why not visit two Scandinavian countries while your at it – out of US for a change, anyway!

Readers Guide for this post: Click photo to bigefy & enjoy – Click links to read my posts about it!

A taste of Oslo:
A real challenge since it’s so much to chose from and we only have a few days before the trip to Sweden. Our suggestion is to start with “Highlights of Oslo” (three hours bus trip to get to know the city and see the Vigeland Park, Holmenkollen Ski Jump and Bygdøy with the Viking Ship Museum).
We’ll also take the Mini Cruise on the Oslo Fjord (hop on/off from the harbour, the Oslo New Opera House and Bygdøy at the Maritime Museum.
Luckily enough, some friends have a boat and cottage on Oslo Fjord and we’ll have one day cruising around and dine at their summer paradise in the end of the day.

A trip to Sweden:
My regular readers know we have a vacation home in mid Sweden at lake Vänern (northern Europe’s largest) and we’ll go there for a couple of days. There are plenty of things to do in the local area around Mariestad, as my regular readers have seen over the years. Diane’s family hasn’t been to Sweden so this will be a fun experience for them. Some highlights we will visit are The Old Town, Göta Canal and Läckö Baroque Castle.
Of course we will meet some friends and enjoy an ice cream at the guest harbour. Plus no trip to Mariestad would be complete without a trip to enjoy the sunsets at Ekodden beach.

Over the wild mountains of Norway to Bergen:
To give a real taste of the variety of landscape in Norway; the long trip over the mountains and along the fjords to Bergen is a necessity. We will give them what we like to call the Postcard tour. The scenery along the way is breath taking with everything from open farm land, rolling hills climbing to high mountains, a snow capped high mountain plain, as well as breathtaking fjord views. There are many waterfalls along the way, and we will cross one of the lovely fjords in a ferry boat so we will have the view from the water as well. Bergen is of course a fun city to visit with its own special charm, so all and all the family will get a lot of holiday adventures in a compact period of time.

Practising for the OsloBG:
Some people might call me patriotic, but I do love to show off my country. It is always fun to have visitors who appreciate what we sometimes take for granted in our daily lives. We will now have an opportunity to warm up for the OsloBG where we will have lots of interested guests to guide around. It will be an advantage to go through the sites once more before our guests arrive and find the most efficient way to enjoy as much as possible.