Central Norway in a Nutshell🥜

Norway | Aug 8 - Aug 19, 2025

We made it home from an amazing adventure. Thank you so much for all the work you did in planning our trip! It truly was exceptional. I'll leave a review too, but quickly, we had many highlights.

First was for sure the stay in Aurland at the Wangen Apartments. The view was spectacular (we had a full double rainbow end-to-end just outside our window the first morning!!), the sauna and swim was incredible, and the zipline/bike ride through Flam was so adventurous and fun!! I highly suggest you put the Kest Tasting at the Hotel Aurlandfjords on your radar. It was by far and beyond one of the best tasting experiences we've ever had - Norway and beyond (including the seafood one at the end of our trip, which was also delightful).

We really enjoyed the cider tasting at the apple farm in Balestrand. Definitely keep that on your to-do list for folks. If I had known earlier that they also were a restaurant I would have definitely gone back again. The food-pairing with the ciders was so good!! And it was one of the 2 sunny days we had while we were in Norway, so it was nice to hike around the orchard with the fjord views in the blue sky background. The glacier trip was worth it, but unfortunately the guide was the absolute worst one we have ever experienced in our years of travel! haha, he was an American and seemed basically annoyed the whole time that he even had to be hanging out with tourists. But that didn't stop our good time. The Hotel was nice in the lobby areas and dining room. Our bedroom was clean, but definitely not the feel of the older part of the hotel.

We loved Bergen! We aren't city folk, but did enjoy the quaintness of it. Hotel was a good location for getting around. We went up the funicular twice to hike around up there. Kayaking in the north sea was dreamy, the guide lovely. It did say in the notes that we'd have lunch on an island, but that wasn't the case. It was after we returned at the base camp. But that was just fine with us. The trip to Rosendal was nice except for that it was Sunday and all the shops were closed. But that didn't matter because we took the waterfall hike and it was the 2nd sunny day of the trip so we savored the outdoor time in the sunshine! It was lovely!

You are correct, we did have a snafu on the departure day. The driver wasn't there as stated at 8:30am, and we were there 10-min early. There was no contact information for me to reach out, and I hadn't heard anything from them, so we just grabbed a cab. Thanks for the refund!

Overall it was a lovely trip! This is the first time we've not rented a car or a campervan, so that took some adjusting to. I know that Norway lends itself to transport without a car, but we often times felt like we were a little stuck in the tourist spots and couldn't enjoy all the hikes you gave us recommendation for because we would have needed a car to get to them.

Thanks again! We will keep KimKim in mind for future travel.