Stunning Scandinavia

Day 1- Saturday, August 11

‘Goddag’- Hello, and welcome to Denmark! We arrived on a red eye to Copenhagen,  picked up our VW Golf, and hit the ground running. After checking into the campsite and setting up our tent, we bussed into the ‘sentrum’ aka downtown. Fighting jet leg, we decided to enjoy the afternoon at Tivoli Gardens, a busy and entertaining amusement park. We walked around and marvelled at the decorative castles, listened to live music, explored Hansel and Gretel type candy stores, and watched the rides spin above. A spill of rain encouraged us to eat dinner, and we found an ornate German beer house that served bratwursts and sauerkraut. After our final walk around, and a strawberry milkshake with two straws, we ran through the streets, laughing, in the pouring rain until we found Mikkeller-a craft brewery. Here we sipped on an incredible double raspberry sour beer (among others), and eventually found our way back ‘home’.

Day 2- Sunday, August 12

Copenhagen part two! Today was our day to meander the cobblestone and waterfronts of the city. This time we walked the 6.5k to and from our campsite as we now had our bearings. We walked along the canal to the infamous bronze little mermaid statue jutting out of the water. It was made by an artist who was inspired after watching the theatre production. It was a little underwhelming, but a ‘must see’ in the city as we understand. We weaved our way through Nyhavn quay and enjoyed a ‘vaffflecone’ while watching the hustle and bustle of the canal tours, and selfies in front of the multicoloured row of homes along the waterfront. Later we wandered the streets some more until we hit Reffen Island aka paper island, which is full of eclectic warehouses, and this incredible street food venue with a trendy/hipster vibe. From west African cuisine to Pilipino pork sandwiches, we took cover from the rain and ate, drank, and were merry with a card game. Later we cautiously walked through Christiana town, a ‘freetown’ which began with squatters in the ‘70s and has since remained as an ungoverned area full of graffiti, and ‘pusher street’ with a lot of options for greens. Homeward bound past palaces and parks and a bit waterlogged.

Day 3-Monday, August 12

Across the Oserund bridge from Denmark to Sweden we went; a massive bridge that opened in 2000. We drove through a couple of small cities which each had their own charm, and took a (cool) swim break at Lake Vattern. After 6-7 hours of driving towards Stockholm, we ended our day in Trosa-and enjoyed the ‘right to roam’ policy in Sweden and Norway that allows you to camp anywhere 150m away from any structure. We found a perfect place in the woods, close to Baltic Sea. We cooked our stir fry on our butane burner and called it a day! 

Day 4-Tuesday, August 13

We began our day with nature’s shower, the sea! To our surprise we swam with jellyfish, which were very small and harmless. Today we headed east to Stockholm and explored a few of the 14 islands that comprise the archipelago city. We walked aboard docked navy ships to explore below deck and the tiny cabins. We loved the various views of the different islands as we crossed bridges and gained elevation until we reached Herman’s, a scrumptious vegetarian buffet spot with awesome patio views and hammocks! Later we sipped on a flight at Omnipollo-a microbrewery. In and out of museums and getting lost in the Galma Stan (old town) cobblestone, and it was time to reunite with Jill, my friend and colleague from Korea. Jill and Johan made us a delicious dinner, and we got to meet their two lovely children, reminisce at length, and do laundry (bonus!). Later we parked it for the night at a nearby beach. 

Day 5-Wednesday, August 14

Our beach spot offered the opportunity for a morning swim, albeit a cool one. We swam for a few minutes and noticed a creature swimming about 10 metres from us, which to my surprise, was a seal! So cool! At first I thought it was a beaver, which didn’t make any sense, but he kept popping his head up to see if we were still having fun without him. Luckily Johan and Jill suggested we see Stockholm from the water! So we spent the morning kayaking around the various waterways and checking out the city islands from a different vantage point. One final dip into the city water and we headed west. We stopped on the way for fika (Swedish coffee break with a sweet treat!), and then through a cute town called Obero. Here we marvelled at an incredible castle surrounded by a moat in the center of town, and later saw a 360 view of the city atop a tower in the shape of a mushroom. We ended our day in Karlstad, a quaint city that sits on the northern tip of Lake Vatern. After a quick flight at Good Guys Brewery, we found a wicked spot to camp for free at a park on the lake. 

Day 6-Thursday, August 15

Morning swim (obvi) - and I should note, no swim has lasted more than 5 minutes, it’s hella cold in this part of the world, even in August. On average the air temperature was around 15C, but later in the Norwegian mountains it was about 5C. We made our way to (rainy) Oslo and set up shop at a campsite 3km outside of the city centre. A 40 min walk took us to the downtown, where we felt a little underwhelmed with the things to do and see compared to the other 2 major cities. However, we checked out the famous sculpture park, which was pretty impressive and had a lot of unique statues-the most famous and photographed being an angry boy with a bronze fist and private area...don’t ask me why! Later we walked by the opera house which has a cool roof you can walk on and a view of the city across the water; we saw the government buildings, a palace, and other green spaces. In the evening we met with Alex (a friend from my high school) who lives there with his wife, Jenn and two kids. He treated us to a nice night out in the harbour area for pizza and laughed about the good ‘ole days and parties in my parents’ backyard! 

Day 7-Friday, August 16

Today we drove (well, James drove) the windy, hairpin roads in central Norway to Jotunheimen National Park, a playground for hikers! The temperature quickly changed to sub 10C, and we started layering and making use of our toques and gloves. We were in the land of mountains and glaciers. We spent the late afternoon hiking 13k to see the 275m of plummeting water over Vettisfossen, one of Norway’s highest waterfalls. It was incredible to see how much water pours over the ridge at one time, and we even got to take the drone up to see it from a great angle. Later we drove north around Jotunheimen Park. The temps dropped to just above 0C, which we felt as we jumped out quickly to take pictures of glaciers. Luckily we found a safe spot to pop up our tent in the woods, and wore tonnes of layers to bed. 

Day 8-Saturday, August 17

Jotunheimen has so many hiking opportunities, but we chose the popular Besseggen Ridge. Total distance, 15k, 6 hours up, and a few steep climbs to overlook aqua blue Lake Rondavatnet. We had to take a boat the the trailhead, to which we had bought in advance, and sadly we chanced upon a very rainy day. But, as they say, a little rain never hurt anyone...or so I like to believe. We hiked for 7.5k when we embarked on the tough climb to the top of the ridge. To our dismay all of the hikers ahead of us were coming back down as a wicked wind and rain storm had brewed up and made it highly unsafe to hike. We didn’t take our chances, especially because the wind on the lower level had almost blown me down a few times. We had two options, retrace our steps across the tough terrain and chance not getting a boat back to our car in time, or walk the 11K around a lake to the car park. Neither were great given the pelting rain and wild wind. But we chose the flat ground, which made for a very, very long 19k total jaunt.  I have to admit, I cried - a couple of times. The rain pelted at us, and we were waking through boggy ground and across tributaries and slippery rocks. We couldn’t feel our fingers, as our mitts had become soaked. It was definitely a tough day, and all of the layers we had worn were now soaked through, but, there is a silver lining. By the end, we spotted a big, beautiful rainbow, which lifted our spirits enough to carry us back to our car. After getting warm with blasting heat, we drove south to Flåm; a very cute town which lies on a fjord, and the reward for all of our wet/windy walking? AEgir brewery! It’s such a cool bar with wooden high top tables around a center space that has furs on benches, and a very lumberjack looking chandelier. However, Mother Nature wasn’t done with us just yet. After dinner at the campsite we settled into our tent and not long after that we endured an INSANE windstorm blowing off the fjord. The tent bent down flat on several occasions. We each took a side to lay on so it wouldn’t fly away. The storm lasted about an hour. Luckily we didn’t lose the tent fly, but one of our poles snapped from the impact. Duct tape will hopefully fix this later! 

Day 9-Sunday, August 19

Today there was a lot of driving (hip hip hooray, James). We drove out of our way, westward through a lot of tunnels (one was 25k long!) and a tonne of thin, switch back roads to the popular coastal city called, Bergen. Bergen is very cute, a little too busy for our liking as we’d just spent days in the woods; but a lot of people end up there on fjord boat tours. We walked by the well known harbour front with colourful buildings, smelled the aromas while walking through the fish market, weaved through a fortress, sat and people watched at a big fountain, and watched the boats on the quay. Later we made our way southeast to the trailhead of Trolltunga!! This hike was one of the main reasons we chose to go to Scandinavia. Being that it’s a 10 hour hike, we wanted to stay close by. We thought we could pop a tent in the parking lot, but no such luck, so we used the car as a home that night, quite comfy actually! We were so excited to go to bed, and slightly nervous to start our ascent bright and early.

Day 10-Monday, August 20

Little did I know that I was going to have the BEST surprise of my life today...but the day was perfect, even from the beginning! Trolltunga is a gruelling 28k hike, but offers incredible views of aqua blue Lake Ringedalsvatnet, with the ultimate summit being a view of what Norwegians have dubbed as the ‘troll’s tongue’. It is a large, thin rock that jets out of the mountain overlooking the lake, with rolling mountains on either side. The weather was perfect, which was lucky because it had rained a lot in previous days. We had plans to take photos of the summit and make a canvas print for our home, basically we were stoked to see what we’d been tagging each other in Instagram posts for months. It was steady climb with tough terrain, but I swear that we ran the final 2km to see and be in awe of the troll’s tongue with our very own eyes. Rounding the bend, we held hands and saw the lookout together and smiled, big! Our next job was to figure out how to get someone to take a photo for us on the tongue together. There was a queue of about 15 people ready to take pose, and a group of people on the other side marvelling or snapping shots. James got in line while I used my charm to politely ask someone to snap our pics when James got close to the front. It was a little chilly up there, but we were numb to the pain because of the excitement we felt. What I didn’t know is that James had passed his phone to a woman coming off the tongue (whom we later befriended, her name is Kati from Russia), and asked her to take our video, while I had someone on the other side taking our photos. Finally, it was our time to explore Trolltunga, and I shimmied down the metal ladder to the front of the line with James. He suggested I go first out onto the tongue, no biggie at the time, but I see now that he had a plan up his sleeve :) We had planned the few poses we wanted - looking off the end, sitting and facing out to the world, jump shot etc. But when we got out there we posed for a side by side picture and he hugged me, telling me some sweet things about our awesome life and future together-and then he unexpectedly faced me and got down on one knee. I’ve never experienced shock like this, the good kind of shock! I remember the white box coming from his pocket and him saying my whole name, then asking me to marry him! I stepped backwards and covered my mouth in surprise. The video later told me that I did in fact nod, ‘yes’, but I don’t believe that I actually said a word. A kiss and a ring on it sealed the deal!!! After our photos, we were welcomed off the tongue with clapping and hooting from fellow hikers. Later we sat onto the side, and I got all of the details of where he hid the ring all trip (a sneaky mini glovebox beside the steering wheel), when he called my dad, and how he saw me leaving our townhouse complex with Cooper dog the day he bought the ring, and then had to stealthily enter the mall. I was on top of the world (well literally and figuratively)! We basically ‘floated’ the 14km down the mountain, and discovered how fun it was to say the word, fiancé! True James/Rexy style, we celebrated with cold pizza from the day before and a chilled beer and cider from the local grocery store in lovely Odda-town on the waterfront after we left that magical mountain. We had to keep trucking, because we planned for 2 more big hikes the next day, and had a 4.5 hour drive ahead of us. Honestly, this was the best day, ever!!!  Tonight was another car sleeping night in Lysebotn so we could catch dawn! 

Day 11-Tuesday, August 21

Okay, I didn’t know I could love sheep as much as I did on this trip. They are all over the roads and in the mountains in rural Norway. I made pals with one that let me let pet him in the car park of Kjerag, that is after he enjoyed a piece of our bread! It’s funny because they nonchalantly saunter onto the switchback roads with their entire posse. We enjoyed the serenity of hiking 9.8km (steep!!) Kjerag, and smiled when hearing the ‘ting’ of the mountain sheeps’ bells. This climb was a love-hate one. We scaled a lot of rock with chain ropes to assist, and felt the lactic acid build quickly in the quads. However, the views were superlative. We saw beautiful mountain plateaus as far as the eye could see among blue skies, and shimmied our way up a barren, treeless expanse of rock until we reached the famously photographed boulder. Kjeragbolten is a big boulder wedged between two cliff faces high above the ground/river. Naturally, it was our goal to capture that shot of us standing on the boulder, which was slightly less scary to hop onto than my nightmares in previous days had predicted. After getting our photos, we parked our butts on an adjacent clifftop to watch CRAZY base jumpers plummet 1100m with wing suits along the cliff and over the river before deploying their parachutes and seamlessly navigating themselves onto the shoreside. One word-insane. Well, you’d think after a 6 hour hike we’d be done for the day, but, we wanted to maximize the sunny day and time in Norway! We drove 2.5 hours west to summit the well known Preikestolen aka Pulpit Rock. A steep 2 hour climb to the top offered us the breathtaking views of the seemingly carved out rock from the cliff, which has a large surface for standing on (with quite a few tourists), and a view of a windy river and stunning rolling mountains. We queued to take our photo, but not nearly as long as most people that day as it was nearing nightfall, and sat for a bit to take in the views. Later, James found us a wicked spot to rest our head and pitch a tent near a pond just before the ferry crossing. Our butane and cooking ware came in handy again, and we filled our bellies and slept like babies thanks to the fresh air and toil over the last two days. 

Day 12-Wednesday, August 22

Today was a long day of driving (and resting our bodies) eastbound as we needed to make our way back down to Sweden, then Denmark before our flight home on Sunday. We took a lunch break in quiet, Dalen town, and had our first lunch out in a very quaint diner. Then we checked out the Dalen Hotel, which was created and restored from 1890. It looked like a royal palace inside, and was very ornate. We also felt as though we didn’t belong, as our 5 day stretch without a shower was probably obvious lol. On our drive we stopped to ogle at a couple of unique Stave Churches, which are uniquely constructed with interlocking wood, and some with multiple towers. They are a bit of a mystery to the Norwegians as they were built in the 13th century and thought to have began as a Pagan place of worship, but later converted to Christian churches. There are only 30 left standing in the entire country so we felt lucky to have viewed two in one day! Later we felt like we needed a driving break, so we double dared each other to jump off a dock at a park. Sounds easy, right? Well, in 11.5C weather and seeing every other person in winter coats and toques around us, we nodded and took the challenge. It was a Nordic dip at its finest and made our brains freeze, but it woke us up for the rest of our drive! Hours later we maxed and relaxed at ‘Max’s Camping’, somewhere in the middle of nowhere and throughly enjoyed ourselves here. Max informed us of an incredibly fun adult-style slide 100m from the site, to which we promptly tossed on our suits back on and slid down a small waterfall on a smooth rock to a whirlpool of water. We felt like Tarzan getting back to the top via a rope dangling from the top. A warm rice and Thai chicken dinner, a hot shower, wifi to check in with family, and a game of cards in the tent and we were happier than pigs ... well, sheep on roads :)

Day 13-Thursday, August 23

Day four of being ENGAGED! And no, the excitement had not worn off! I reviewed the video and smiled ear to ear at least 5x a day! Max gave us a map to a local hike, Bletoppen, lasting 6 hours with panoramic views of Telemark countryside (rolling mountains and lakes galore). For me, it was tough on the knees when descending on big rocks, and I had decided I’d reached my threshold for mountain trekking this trip. Regardless, we enjoyed an incredibly quiet and peaceful ascent, and used the drone to take cool pano videos. One more warm shower and eastbound to Sweden we went. It was a little sad to say goodbye to Norway, as we adored the charm of the mountains and created lifelong memories in the Norwegian countryside. We made it as far south as Gothenburg on the West Coast of Sweden, and decided to make it another ‘car sleep’ near a green space/lake to avoid the rain.

Day 14-Friday, August 24

We loved the way our day began today, which was of course a swim in Lake Deslejon. This cozy, tree surrounded lake was a perfect way to get ‘showered up’ for the day. A few front and back dives off of the dock into the crisp lake, and we were set to explore Gothenburg, Sweden’s 2nd largest and very vibrant city. I’d have to say, this was my favourite city visited this trip. It was full of people, but never seemed busy. It is on the waterfront, and has plenty of old and new boats to eyeball, it has plenty of large green spaces, and very old neighbourhoods with character. My favourite area was Haga, a neighbourhood that’s been around since the 1600’s. It’s famous for ‘fika’-the Swedish coffee break, and most notable, it’s pizza sized cinnamon buns (yes, we did this!). We hit up the central-parklike green space and slid down massive slides like kids, as well as visited Sweden’s very own reindeer and elk (in a zoo in the center of the park). They are so large, docile, and incredibly cute! Next we hit up the downtown and watched the hustle and bustle of pedestrians, cyclists, and cars flowing seamlessly this way and that around canals and one way streets. We ended our Gothenburg tour with delicious sourdough ‘za and craft beer at Brewer’s Beer Bar, and headed south on the West Coast of Sweden. The rain-sun combo created a breathtaking full rainbow across the sky, and made the drive feel a little quicker as we kept it in our sight line for several kilometres. We parked it for the night in sand dune area near Halmstad.

Day 15-Saturday, August 25

We lucked out with sunny weather for our final full day in Scandinavia. The sand dunes led out to the wavy Scandinavian Sea, and we found a calm inlet to swim in, and we were happy that it was much warmer than Norwegian waters. Onward to Denmark we went on the 20 min ferry across the straight and immersed ourselves in mariner lifestyle by checking out the underground Helsingor Maritime Museum, and walked the perimeter of the Krongburg Palace’s moat. Our final tourist stop was at the massive Fredricksborg castle, which had stunning gardens and grounds. At last we found a great campsite along the coast, with man-size chess and hot showers-what more could you ask for? And just like that, our journey has come to an end. We have already planned to return to Scandinavia and do a repeat trip for our 25 year anniversary :) :) We are grateful for the moments we’ve shared here and can’t wait to go home and share our happy secret with family and friends!! 

Takk (Thanks) for the memories, Scandinavia.