PANDEMIC TRAVEL Jan Sortland and his team planned a fantastic trip for our family of four – us and our 18-year-old son and 22-year-old daughter — to Denmark and Norway. The experience met or exceeded our expectations in virtually every way, and we have made memories that will last a lifetime. The trip went way beyond a surface touristic visit to give us a real and deep sense of the places we saw. It didn’t just refresh and relax us; it educated us and broadened our horizons as well.
Specific Comments on Detailed Itinerary
Copenhagen. What a lovely city! We so enjoyed ourselves. It is charming, spotlessly clean, and a constant delight. Jan specializes in booking luxury trips in which travelers would expect car and driver for airport transfer, but our arrival coincided with festivities surrounding the start of the Tour de France, and the concierge at the Hotel D’Angleterre, whom I had consulted about restaurant advice, recommended taking the metro into town, which was easy and efficient. (That said, we very much enjoyed the convenience of car and driver for our return trip to the airport when outbound for Bergen, Norway).
The Hotel D’Angleterre is so beautiful and perfect in every way that it seems churlish to note any qualm, but it is worth saying that it is very old school and formal. The staff could not have been kinder or more helpful or less snooty, but it is easy to feel a bit under-dressed in those grand surroundings – though we eventually noticed that most guests did dress pretty informally at breakfast. The concierge helped us secure a dinner reservation at Barr on the former site of Noma in Christianshaven, and it was hands down the best meal of the trip! We were so busy that we didn’t have even to see the hotel’s impressive pool and spa, much less use them.
Britt Herrmann was a superb guide for our trip to the Zealand castles (Fredricksborg and Elsinore) and the Louisiana Museum of Art. We learned so much more with her than we would have on our own, and driver Johnny made the northern trip infinitely easier than it would have been by train. This seemed to us the perfect use of a guide, and on starting out, Britt also showed us a few hidden gems in town, like the Royal Library garden on the Christianslot, which we would have been unlikely to find ourselves.
At the same time, we were very grateful to have ample time to explore the city center by ourselves, on foot, by bike, and by private rented electric boat. After our arrival on Saturday, we just wandered a bit, and on Monday, we rented nice bikes from the hotel and made a wonderful tour, to the Little Mermaid and beyond, before stumbling on the charming and elegant Holmen Cemetery, the burial place of many Danish notables in a lovely garden setting. We stopped for lunch at the food stalls at Torvehallerne, then rented a boat to explore the inner harbor, before finally biking on paths through Freetown. This was a real highlight and conveyed a very exciting sense of personal discovery that no guide could have supplied. We spent our last evening at Tivoli, and like millions of others before us, were charmed and could easily see how it inspired Mr. Disney to build his Magic Kingdom here in our California backyard.
Norway
Solstrand. Our flight from Copenhagen to Bergen was easy, but there was some confusion at the Avis counter about pre-payment for the car, which had been arranged by Jan. This was no one’s fault but it caused an annoying delay of well over an hour. The wait mattered only in the sense that it delayed our arrival to, and enjoyment of, the wonderful facilities at Solstrand Spa and Hotel, where our stay was just one night to begin with. Solstrand was great – the dinner, the large breakfast buffet, the pools and saunas. We just hated to leave after such a short stay.
Ferry from Gudvangen to Kaupanger. There was serious construction on the road that delayed our progress (this is something that GPS would probably note) and we just made the ferry with less than 15 minutes to spare. Also, while this dramatic trip was the longest ferry ride of our stay — at 2.5 hours — the boat is the least well outfitted, with only a self-service snack bar offering crisps and candies. So it would have been helpful to know that we should have asked Solstrand to pack us a picnic lunch of some kind. I’d strongly suggest provisioning yourselves with food for lunch before getting on the boat.
Bestebakken. Our stay here on the shores of beautiful Lake Hafslo was a classic example of how first impressions can be wrong. I think it is fair to say that upon arrival, we were all very disappointed. This property is in no sense what any American would consider a “hotel.” It is more like a bed and breakfast or a country house but it lacks the usual privacy one expects in a true hotel. At first it seemed to the kids, in particular, that we might have to share baths with strangers. These concerns ultimately evaporated upon the arrival of Lindis, our fantastic host. We ended up having the entire upstairs of the main house, including a newly built sort of master suite with a large ensuite bath, to ourselves, while the kids each had a separate room and bath down the hall. The kids were also initially upset and unnerved by the idea of dining at a communal table. But in the end, this proved a great aspect of the trip, allowing us to meet and converse with interesting and cosmopolitan European and Australian travelers, which expanded our understanding at a troubling time for our own country. The food is excellent and Lindis a completely charming, helpful host! By the third day, however, the nightly routine of the shared meal – and Lindis’s preference for a plated, multi-course breakfast rather than the more typical buffet, began to wear a bit. It might have been good to spend one night here not dining at Bestebakken, though I doubt the food anywhere else in the area would have been as good!
Glacier Hike on the Nigardsbreen Glacier. A wonderful experience in every way! By far the hardest part is the rocky hourlong walk leading to the ice. Our guide met us promptly with no fuss. One for the books. Lindis packed us a picnic lunch but Jan’s advice about the Glacier Museum and visitors’ center was very helpful and we stopped there for coffee and cake afterward.
Hovland Farm. Near Vik, Norway. I personally loved this experience and was fascinated by the life that the owners Kjersti and Geir have chosen to live here in a kind of “back to the land” experiment. This visit to a family farm that has been under cultivation since 600 A.D. was a chance to learn about a vanishing part of Norwegian life that has endured for centuries but is now at risk. Our hosts could not have been kinder. I think the kids and Dee Dee might have preferred a somewhat shorter visit that allowed time for another activity during this day, but that is a highly personal thing. For me, this was a very special journalistic opportunity that went well beyond any kind of typical tourist visit one could imagine. And, arguing against the idea of fitting in another activity on this day, it was nice to have a fairly late and easy start on this morning after a busy couple of days.
The Stave Church at Urnes, dating from 1,100 A.D. (as old as Notre Dame de Paris), and a lovely tour by a thoughtful young French guide, was simply astounding. The drive north, through clouds and mist, was gorgeous. Lindis had recommended we stop at Bakar Jon in Berkjelo to see the many Norwegian gourmet food products on offer, and we had a fine hot lunch in the little café there. This would be a good suggestion for any travelers taking this route.
The Hotel Union Oye is wonderful, and its setting breathtaking. We arrived in a late afternoon rain and found Torestova, a freestanding house with two bedrooms and two lofts, completely charming. The kitchen isn’t really set up for actual cooking; more for making coffee or a quick lunch for families or something, but I think Dee Dee might have still been tempted to try it if there had been a grocery store nearby, or if we had bought ingredients at Bakar Jon. That said, the food at dinner here both nights was excellent – light, interesting and reflective of both local products and the remoteness of the location. It would obviously be impossible to offer a large dinner menu here, so there is a set meal with no choice. The elaborate renovation of the hotel is very impressive – especially the new palm court dining room and bar. But this is the new iteration’s first full season up and running and it would be worth noting that while the staff is young and charming and attractive, it is also very green and the service was a bit rocky at times. Nothing that a few months of operating experience shouldn’t resolve, but it is not yet a finely tuned machine of the kind one expects at a Relais and Chateaux property.
Havard Karstad was a superb guide for our Sunday rowing/hiking experience on the fjords, going well beyond the basics of boatmanship to offer us many stories of local history and tradition. He took us to a secluded picnic spot at the junction of the Norangsfjord and the Hronundfjord, at a lighthouse. After days of mixed misty weather, this was a glorious sunny day and we had an uninterrupted view up the fjord toward Alesund. Superb experience!
Our ferry ride on the Geirangerfjord was all that this route promised, and once again easy and uneventful. This was the first and almost the only place on the trip where we encountered a lot of tourists from buses and the big cruise ships and it made us all the more appreciate the special places Jan sent us, where we did not encounter other Americans! The Eagle’s Road offered amazing views back down to the fjord, and while the drive is indeed challenging, it is not that scary for a Californian, since we have similar winding, steep roads in our mountains and coastline here. Once again, the sun came out as we approached the ferry from Linge to Vallidal – and once again, we would have appreciated some advice about provisioning ourselves for lunch. In the end, we stopped at a BunnPris grocery store in Vallidal to get picnic makings (itself a cultural experience!), and then proceeded to inadvertently annoy the café operator at the Gudbrandsjuvet gorge by setting up our picnic at one of his tables there. We did not realize that this was not allowed, but promptly moved to a bench where picnicking was OK. Again, suggesting a lunch stop here, at the rather nice-looking café, would be good advice for future travelers. There just aren’t that many good food options in rural Norway.
Alesund. Our stay here was very pleasant. While I think we all regretted not being able to stay at the Storfjord resort hotel (the original hope, but it was full) and have one more chance for some outdoor activities on a brilliant sunny day, we were also grateful for the urban experience of the Hotel Brosundet and Alesund itself, especially since we had not seen central Bergen or any other city of size. We made the most of our visit – hiking the big Aksla hill and visiting the Art Nouveau and fishing museums. One other note: Our (first!!) stay here was on a Monday night, when most restaurants in town – including Bro, which came highly recommended – are closed, and at first it seemed that not even the Brosundet restaurant could accommodate us. They eventually did, but once again, it would have been helpful to have had specific advice about this reality of the weekly calendar.
Finally, I would raise one last point: Scheduling our return to Amsterdam on the last flight of the day from Alesund was always a somewhat risky choice, and one I confess I was worried about from the moment I first saw the itinerary, though we could not, of course, have imagined the bizarre problem that eventually occurred when a mistakenly deployed airplane slide cancelled our flight. This schedule was an admirable reflection of a desire to keep us in Norway as long as possible, and was also the logical result of the south-to-north trajectory that our trip through the western fjords took. So I am not sure there was really any way to have avoided it without re-thinking the whole itinerary. But – at a time of peak summer travel and global airline disruptions – it really left us no margin for error. We wound up being able to book the last seats on a flight the next morning that, by some miracle, allowed us to make our originally scheduled flight home to the states. But building in more wiggle room is worth considering when planning future trips in the current disastrous air travel environment.
A Couple of General Comments:
Driving. Jan initially proposed having a car and driver for our trip around the fjords. But unless a traveler is elderly, infirm, or somehow afraid or unfamiliar with driving in mountainous terrain, I cannot imagine why anyone would want a driver on this trip. Half the fun for our family was finding our own way (with Jan’s excellent step-by-step directions, and a good paper map, supplemented occasionally by GPS). We would definitely not have wanted to share our car for a week with a driver; it would have seemed a violation of our privacy and would have changed the character of the trip for us for the worse. Our Volvo station wagon was very roomy and performed beautifully.
The Norwegian infrastructure – from telecommunication and internet to the ferries, which depart punctually with no fuss as a direct extension of the highways – is simply superb. We should have such good roads and bridges here at home, but do not! The only oddity is that sometimes, when a roadway is effectively a dual-designated highway (combining a major long-distance route and a more local one) the roadside signage on the ground displays only the local route number. This can be confusing, but we made no more than a couple of wrong turns, costing no more than a few minutes in each case.
Guides. Jan is a strong advocate for expert guides, and he suggested that we have them at virtually every point of the trip. His guides were uniformly excellent, knowledgeable, personable and kind. We found our guides to be wonderful shepherds who not only explained their countries’ heritage and history at the sites we visited but conversed meaningfully in general about how life works in Scandinavia compared to the U.S. Yet we also strongly appreciated having ample unstructured time to explore on our own – especially in Copenhagen. Travelers should feel free to advocate for their own preferences and push back if they feel Jan is proposing too many guided experiences. He is more than willing to work with you. In the end, we felt we had about the right mix, and would not have wanted any additional guided activities.
Porters/bellmen. Norwegians don’t use them. We are used to carrying our own bags, and tried to pack sensibly, but at no time, in any hotel, did anyone ever offer to help us get bags up and down steps or elevators to the rooms – and sometimes there were twisted paths. This is not so much a complaint as an expression of confusion. Is this just the way things work?
Coffee. Uniformly watery and bad in Norway, especially after Amsterdam and Copenhagen. This is apparently just the way Norwegians like to drink their brew, but be forewarned!
None of the foregoing small notes should be heard in the nature of a serious complaint, but rather in the spirit of constructive feedback that might aid in planning for future travelers. We had a fantastic time, remain incredibly grateful for Jan and his team’s kindness, thoroughness, patience and wise counsel, and would recommend them in the most enthusiastic way.