Scandinavia in a week

We’re planning to move back to Iowa in mid-August, so our days in Europe are numbered. Although we’ve seen a lot of Europe, we still hadn’t gotten to Scandinavia yet, so we took last week to see as much of it as we could. Although it rained every day we were there, it was beautiful. There is more natural beauty there than in most of the rest of Europe that we’ve seen.

We started by flying to Sandefjord and renting a car to drive through fjords in the western part of Norway. We spent our first two days seeing fjord after fjord. Behind the fjords, the terrain was mountainous and rocky. There was snow even in July.
We took ferries to get across the fjords where there were no bridges.
And we took a sightseeing boat that sailed through some of the most beautiful fjords.
This area of Norway has several stave churches that date from the middle ages.
On one day, we took a hike on a huge glacier in the mountains. The glacier had blue ice, caves and crevices, and a beautiful view of the lake and mountains. We went with a group of four other people and a guide, all of us hooked together on a rope so no one would fall off. This was probably the most fun day of our trip, even though we hiked in the rain.
Then we saw more fjords…
After we were all fjorded out, we visited Bergen, Norway. A funicular takes tourists up to a good view of the town.
Then we dropped off our car and took an overnight train to Oslo, the capital of Norway.

There is a neat park with a bridge full of interesting sculptures.

And we visited the city hall. After a day in Oslo, we took an overnight boat to Copenhagen, Denmark.

Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, and so there is a royal palace (actually, there are a couple palaces). This is one of them, used as a museum about Danish royalty; the other palace is where the current royalty actually lives.
Hans Christian Andersen was from Copenhagen, so there are several statues of him. One part of Copenhagen is an old military base that was taken over by squatters in the 1970s and turned into an “alternative lifestyle community” called Christiania. There was more pot there than in Amsterdam. It was impressive.
We climbed up a spiral-shaped spire on a church for a good view of the city.
After two days in Copenhagen, it was time to head back for home. We took an overnight train to Dusseldorf, Germany. We had expected to have two seats next to each other, like in an airplane. Instead, we had two seats facing each other in a little six-seat “box” that we shared with four Norwegian teenage boys. That was an experience…

We returned home Saturday morning, and Josh is back at work this week. We have plans for one final fling before we head back to Iowa next month…