caffeperfavore wrote: ↑Mon Feb 11, 2019 10:48 am
StudentT wrote: ↑Mon Feb 11, 2019 7:25 am
My wife, daughter, and I spent three weeks in Scandinavia in 2014. It was a great trip. We really enjoyed Oslo, Flam, and Bergen in Norway. We spent three nights in Copenhagen and it was at least two too many. The city is nice but it just didn't compare with the others. We were frankly bored and ready to leave. Rick Steves was right on this one.
If you have only a week or so, I'd suggest a couple of nights in Oslo, two nights in Flam (on a fjord between Oslo and Bergen, the railway spur which takes you there is simply breathtaking), a couple nights in Bergen, and the remainder in Stockholm.
I've always heard that Scandinavia is wildly expensive. What are your impressions? Any tips for keeping costs in check?
Scandinavia is definitely very expensive!
This advice isn't specific to Scandinavia but we usually have one meal as a picnic every day when we're in Europe. Usually dinner. We've found that European museums and tourist places tend to have nice cafeterias which are lower cost than most other restaurants so we tend to do that for lunch. It is also more efficient use of time if we don't have to go hunting for a place to eat and they tend to be quick. And lunch is usually a cheaper meal in a restaurant than dinner. Breakfast is usually included with your lodging so we tend to have a larger breakfast than we do at home, a modest lunch, and then a picnic dinner with whatever strikes our fancy. All groceries have bread, meat, cheese, fruit, and some sort of dessert so it is easy to eat well and fun to try new foods.
There are often farmer's markets with wonderful produce at cheap prices. I remember we found one in Bergen. We bought a loaf of bread from one stall and a hunk of cheese from another. Then we sat on a bench and ate cheese sandwiches and watched the people go by. Neither the bread nor the cheese was sliced but ripped hunks of both made messy but tasty sandwiches.
Many of the grocery stores sell hot items and it is fun walking around looking for dinner. When we were in Stockholm we were at a grocery getting dinner one night. My daughter wanted roast chicken. There was a sign indicating a price for a whole and a half chicken but I didn't know how to pronounce the word and the clerk didn't know English. So I pointed to the chicken, made a chopping sign with one hand, and smiled. She grinned, got a meat cleaver, and packaged up half of a chicken. You can get a lot of mileage by being polite and smiling! Too many Americans just speak English at a higher volume which is rude and completely unproductive.
When we're outside of a major city, we tend to try to stay in smaller towns which are usually cheaper. If we have picnic fixings, we don't have to worry about going out again to find a restaurant when we're tired at the end of the day. We take along some reusable plastic plates, bowls, and cutlery to facilitate picnics. If we're staying in a major city, we tend to stay near the main train station, especially if we're arriving or departing by train. It just makes our lives easier and we spend less time traveling in and out of the city center.
And we always have our Nalgene water bottles along so we mostly drink water, refilling at water fountains, rather than buying soft drinks. That can easily save us $15 or more a day which adds up over 2-3 weeks.
