A Frosty Scandinavian Spring

OK, time for the Smiths to go out of town again! We spent the winter at home playing "Fun with Joints." Jeannette had her right shoulder replaced in January, and spent winter and early spring doing the required physical therapy. That's all complete, and she's back at 100%.

To celebrate, we're headed to northern Europe for an exciting trip which includes Norway, Svalbard, Copenhagen, and Iceland. We tried plotting a regular Google Maps view of the trip, but the Mercator projection distorts everything (e.g., Greenland looks bigger than South America on a Mercator map). The more accurate view is the one below from Google Earth.

Since we'll be so far north the entire time, the daily temperatures will range from 15 - 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Leaving on April 19, we'll fly from DC to Oslo and explore the city for a few days. Then we will travel from Oslo to Bergen, Norway on the "Norway in a Nutshell" tour route, traveling via a combination of trains, bus, and ferry through beautiful Norwegian landscapes.

Once we arrive in Bergen, we will board the Hurtigruten Coastal Express, a 12-day ferry trip that goes all the way up the Norwegian coast and back. There are 34 stops along the way that last anywhere from 10 minutes to four hours. More than half of the ports are above the Arctic Circle! Kirkenes, the final port, is close to the Russian border.

Regular readers of our blog will remember that we took a Hurtigruten Expeditions (HX) cruise in 2023 to the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, and Antarctica. While on that cruise, we learned that Hurtigruten cut its sailing teeth 127 years ago when it began operating a freight and postal delivery service to the small towns and fjords along the Norwegian coast. It's been in service so long that Norwegians say "I'm taking the Hurtigruten" rather than "I'm taking the ferry." A number of our fellow Antarctica passengers had taken the Coastal Express ferry and highly recommended it, so we decided to include it in our 2025 trip. They have modest cabins and restaurants on the ship, so we'll be comfortable (if chilly).

Hurtigruten's MS Fram at South Georgia island during our 2023 Antarctica cruise

About five days into the ferry trip we will get off in the city of Tromsø and fly to the island of Svalbard, a semi-independent archipelago belonging to Norway. It's north. Really north. As you can see in this polar projection below, it's just 10 degrees and about 800 miles from the North Pole.

In addition to spectacular scenery (mountains, glaciers) there's a lot of wildlife. Factoid: there are more polar bears than permanent human residents on Svalbard.

After four days, we'll return to Tromsø, rejoin the ferry, travel north the rest of the way to Kirkenes, and then head back south to Bergen.

From Bergen we will fly to Copenhagen. We visited there in 1990 when our oldest son Tory was a year-and-a-half old, and have always wanted to go back. During our four days in Copenhagen we hope to spend some time with Tory's best friend Nony who lives and works there now.

Then it'll be back onto a plane for a flight to Reykjavik, Iceland. We spent five days in Iceland in October 2017, but only had time to explore a portion of the south coast. This time, we'll take 12 days and circle the entire island clockwise on the 800-mile-long Ring Road. We found a great company that will rent us a car and book our hotel rooms, but otherwise leave us complete freedom to decide what we want to do and see each day.

Don't worry, we can't pronounce any of those town names either!

We'll return to DC at the end of May. The whole trip will take about 40 days.

Then it'll be time for more "Fun with Joints" as Doug has his right knee replaced in early June, followed by a summer of physical therapy. We hope to get out in the RV in September for a two-month-plus trip.

We hope you'll follow along our Scandinavian/Icelandic travels. Stay tuned for upcoming blog posts.