By Paul Dhadda, CEO, Exquisite Travel Group
Most first Norway itineraries I am asked to review try to drive the fjords. It can be done and it is beautiful, but the geography fights you the whole way: the road goes around the water, not across it, so a fifteen-mile gap becomes a ninety-minute drive plus a ferry queue.
Norway also happens to have one of the best rail networks in Europe, running through exactly the scenery you came for. Use it.
The 10-day route
Days 1–3: Oslo.
Land, sleep, then give the city two proper days. The Munch museum, Vigeland sculpture park, and the Fram Museum — the polar exploration ship, preserved whole, which is far more affecting than it sounds. Oslo is compact, walkable and expensive; eat lunch well and dinner modestly.
Day 4: The Bergen Railway to Myrdal.
The Oslo–Bergen line is one of the great rail journeys in Europe — about seven hours end to end, climbing over the Hardangervidda plateau through genuinely arctic terrain. Sit on the left leaving Oslo.
Days 4–5: Flåm and the fjords.
Change at Myrdal for the Flåm Railway, one of the steepest standard-gauge railways in the world, dropping into the valley in about an hour. Overnight in Flåm or Aurland.
The next morning, the fjord cruise from Flåm through the Nærøyfjord to Gudvangen — a UNESCO World Heritage fjord, and the narrowest of the famous ones. This stretch is the single best two hours in Norwegian tourism and it does not require a car.
Days 6–7: Bergen.
Continue by bus and train, or the direct boat. Bergen is the fjord capital: the Bryggen wharf, the fish market, the funicular up Fløyen for the view. It rains most days — plan around it rather than hoping.
From here, day trips to Hardangerfjord, or the hike up Preikestolen if you have shifted south to Stavanger.
Days 8–10: choose your ending.
Three genuinely different options, and this is the decision worth thinking about:
Lofoten, by air to Bodø or Evenes. Sharp granite peaks straight out of the sea, red fishing cabins, and in summer the midnight sun. The most photogenic place in the country and the furthest.
Geiranger and the Atlantic Road, which does want a car — Trollstigen's hairpins, the Geirangerfjord viewpoints, and Ålesund's art nouveau waterfront. Note that the high passes are seasonal and generally open only from late May or June.
Fly home from Bergen and keep it to eight days. There is no shame in this; a compressed Norway is still a very good trip.
Adding Stockholm or Copenhagen
Norway is expensive enough that many travellers want a second country in the same trip, and both neighbours are easy.
Copenhagen connects to Oslo in about an hour by air, or overnight by ferry. Cheaper, warmer, flatter, and a genuinely great food city — a good soft landing at the end of a Norwegian trip.
Stockholm is about an hour's flight from Oslo, or roughly six hours by train through pleasant but unremarkable country. Fly it. Two nights covers Gamla Stan, the Vasa Museum — a seventeenth-century warship raised almost intact, and the best single museum in Scandinavia — and a boat out into the archipelago.
If you want all three capitals plus fjords, you need fourteen days, not ten. Three cities and a fjord in ten days is four one-night stands and a lot of airports.
Practical things that cost people money
Book train tickets the moment they release. Norwegian rail sells discounted advance fares that are a fraction of the walk-up price, and they go on sale roughly ninety days out. Oslo–Bergen can be a quarter of the on-the-day fare.
If you do rent a car, expect ferries as part of ordinary routes and tolls billed automatically to the rental through the electronic system. Budget for both; neither appears in the quoted daily rate.
Norway is close to cashless. Cards work everywhere including on buses and in mountain huts. Do not change money.
Alcohol is sold through state stores. Anything above supermarket-strength beer comes from Vinmonopolet, which keeps limited hours and is closed on Sundays. Plan ahead if you want wine at your cabin.
The one thing I would not skip
The Nærøyfjord cruise. Not the longer, more expensive fjord tours, not the helicopter — the ordinary scheduled boat from Flåm to Gudvangen, standing outside on the deck in the cold with a cup of coffee, watching the walls close in. It costs very little and it is what people remember twenty years later.
Planning it from Placer County
There is no nonstop from Sacramento; you will connect through San Francisco or an East Coast hub into Oslo, arriving the following morning.
If the aurora is what you are really after rather than the fjords, read when to see the northern lights first — it is the same decision in a different country. Otherwise, Norway rewards being sequenced properly — the trains, the fjord boat and the good fjord-side hotels all have limited capacity and they sell in a particular order. If you are adding the Swedish capital on the way home, three days in Stockholm covers what to do with them.
Call Roseville Travel at (916) 782-6363 and we will build it against your dates before the advance fares go.