The title is just from a Mastercard commercial where the son takes his father on a trip to Norway because his father always wanted to see the land of their ancestors. While visiting Norway, they discover that their ancestors were really from Sweden, so they then book a trip to Sweden.
Anyway, it seemed like visiting the Nordics something we were both interested in. I thought that Norway would be good because of the scenery. We had no idea how spectacular it would really be until we got there. Our overall trip was approximately 7 days in Norway, a couple of days in Copenhagen, Denmark, and a full day in Zurich, Switzerland. While in Norway, we rented a car and made quite a trip, driving to Bergen, and then up to Geiranger, and finally passing through Lillehammer before returning to Oslo.
This was an extremely expensive trip as the weak dollar makes almost any overseas trip expensive. In fact, based on an article from CNN earlier this year, of the top 10 most expensive cities in the world, Oslo was #1, Copehagen was #3, and Zurich was #8. In fact, 8 of the top 10 were European cities with Tokyo and Osaka completing the top 10 (in positions #5 and #6 respectively).
Unfortunately, while we were in Norway, we saw rain the first 5 of 7 days we were there... but it could have been worse. It could have rained 7 out of 7 days... And the days it did rain, it did not necessarily rain all the time. In fact, when the sun finally broke through, we had heard comments like it has been about a month since the sun was seen, so it seems like the weather was even more rainy earlier in the summer.
Besides the spectacular scenery, the thing which surprised me the most was the food. I did not necessarily have high expectations but the food, in particular seafood, was fantastic.
Kyoko does a much better job of organizing pictures and she even documented what each picture is. Here is a link to her Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kyokorin
I may update this entry later as I have not said nearly enough about our trip.
