We’re getting ready to begin a new adventure—metaphorically setting sail. This will be a fairly long trip, and one with a real mix of sights and cultures. We’ll be visiting 12 countries, with 12 languages and 6 currencies.
After spending a few days in Barcelona, we’ll literally set sail on a 3-week repositioning cruise—our third cruise on the Viking Sea. Our cruise will take us along the coastline of Spain, west to the Atlantic then north to Amsterdam, stopping in Portugal, Guernsey, and France. After transiting the Kiel Canal, we’ll circumnavigate the Baltic, visiting Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Russia, and Finland, ending the cruising portion of our trip in Sweden.
Here is a map of the cruise.
We’ll be in Stockholm for a few days, getting our land legs back before embarking on the next part of our journey. We’ll spend not quite 2 weeks driving through southern Sweden. We’ll start with a stay on a lake, then follow the southeastern coastline, seeing the Gota Canal, some castles, Kalmar, and Ystad. Next, we’ll head to Lake Vanern, then out to western Sweden’s Bohuslan coast, famed for its pink granite islands and its shellfish.
From there, we plan to hop a ferry to Norway, where we’ll spend a couple more weeks exploring by car. We start by following a portion of the Telemark Canal and seeing some of the lakes of the Telemark region. After that, we will head to the coast again, by way of the Setesdal Valley. I am eager to see Lindesnes and its lighthouse at the southern tip of Norway. It will be a “bookend” to our 2016 visit to Nordkapp, the farthest north point of the European continent.
From the southern end, we will go north, visiting several of the “white” fishing villages of southeastern Norway. We will spend some time on a peninsula in the Oslofjord, then aim our car north to Lillehammer and Trondheim. Roros and Hamar will be stops on our way south to Oslo, where the journey ends.
We’re looking forward to being on the sea and on the road—and sharing our travel discoveries along the way.
Leave a Reply