Highlights of Scandinavia

Bicycle bells ring along Copenhagen’s streets as the scent of sweet pastries wafts from neighbourhood bakeries. With free time to explore, you might move through 17th-century Nyhavn or hear music and laughter among the gardens and rides of Tivoli, Europe’s second-oldest amusement park. Pause over coffee and watch cyclists glide between fairy-tale spires and clean-lined Danish design. Later, meet your Travel Director and fellow travellers and share dinner at your hotel.

With your Local Specialist, you’ll follow Copenhagen’s streets past Christiansborg Palace, across open squares and beside canals lined with slender façades. At Langelinie, you pause beside the Little Mermaid, her bronze figure poised on a granite rock. The rest of the day is free, or you can join today’s Optional Experience along the Danish Riviera, passing old fishing villages before entering the ornate rooms of 17th-century Frederiksborg Castle. On this evening’s Optional Experience, you walk Dragør’s narrow lanes between tiny thatched cottages and painted doors, noticing the grain of old timber and low roofs beyond garden fences.

Ferry engines hum beneath you as Denmark slips away across the Øresund and Sweden waits ahead. The road follows the coast past sheltered bays, through dense pine and spruce forests, with a stop in Gothenburg before you continue towards Norway. As you enter Oslo, you may see locals walking, cycling or pausing in broad parks and along flower-lined boulevards, everyday expressions of friluftsliv.

With your Local Specialist, you’ll pass Akershus Fortress’s medieval walls and red-brick City Hall, then follow Karl Johans gate to Palace Square, where the Royal Palace waits at the avenue’s end, stretching out behind the deep green of Palace Park. In Frogner Park, you wander among Gustav Vigeland’s bronze, granite and cast-iron figures, from children at play to couples locked in an embrace beneath the trees. After time exploring Oslo independently, you'll travel to Telemark, a region of rocky shores, steep valleys, centuries-old stave churches and the skiing tradition that bears its name. At your hotel, you sit down to dinner with your fellow travellers, passing warm dishes around the table and sharing the Oslo moments you’ll remember most.

As you travel west, the road follows Hardangerfjord to Bergen past fruit orchards and roaring waterfalls crashing from mountain ledges. At the Fish Market, a trading place since the 1200s, you may catch the scent of smoked fish as seafood rests on beds of ice. With free time to explore, perhaps you’ll step inside 13th-century Håkon’s Hall, moving beneath a soaring timber roof as daylight falls across the thick stone walls. On one Optional Experience, you visit Troldhaugen and stand beside Edvard Grieg’s small composing hut above Lake Nordås, where wooded shores curve around the water. On another Optional Experience, you explore Sandviken and Gamle Bergen with a Local Specialist, passing painted timber houses and old workshops before the Fløibanen hums up Mount Fløyen, where red roofs cluster around the harbour and islands dot the water.

At Bergen’s old wharf, you’ll move between Bryggen’s close-set wooden warehouses, brushing past rough timber as daylight slips through the passages. Once used to store dried cod for the Hanseatic trade, the UNESCO-listed buildings line the harbour in deep reds, ochres and cream. On the Telavåg’s Heroic Past Optional Experience, you visit the rebuilt coastal village and listen to accounts of the resistance links that led German forces to destroy it during the Second World War. Or choose An Evening in Paradis, walking through Gamlehaugen’s English-style gardens before tasting warm Norwegian svele.

Beyond Bergen, you’ll cross Norway’s fjord country towards Sognefjord, the ‘King of the Fjords’ and Norway’s longest and deepest fjord, where dark water reaches far inland between steep mountainsides. On an Optional Experience aboard the Flåm Railway, you pass through rock tunnels and look down into the steep valley, where the Flåm River winds along the valley floor, slipping past isolated farms beneath green slopes. On another Optional Experience, you cruise the UNESCO-listed Nærøyfjord, hearing the soft rush of water against the hull as sheer cliffs press around a channel just 250 metres wide.

As you travel through Norway’s mountain country towards Lillehammer, the road threads between high slopes and open valleys before you reach the town beside Lake Mjøsa. At Lysgårdsbakkene, you look up at the ski jumps built for the 1994 Winter Olympics, their steep tracks cutting down the hillside as the wind skims the open slopes. From here, you gaze across Lillehammer to Norway’s largest lake, its broad water and wooded shores stretching beyond the plunge of the Olympic slopes.

Crossing into Sweden, you’ll follow country roads between birch woods and open fields, with red-painted cottages scattered along the route to Karlstad. Beside Lake Vänern, you pause to hear small waves fold onto the shore as Sweden’s largest lake stretches towards the horizon. In the university town of Örebro, you trace the Svartån River to its medieval castle, its stone towers doubled in the water curling around the island.

Approaching Stockholm, you watch ochre townhouses, copper roofs and tree-lined islands appear between the bridges of a capital spread across 14 islands. From Solna, you choose your own route, perhaps exploring Haga Park’s curving paths and blue-and-yellow Copper Tents beside Brunnsviken. In central Stockholm, ferries slide between the quays, breaking the colours of the waterfront into ripples.

With your Local Specialist, you weave through Gamla Stan, from the weathered stone of medieval Storkyrkan to the Swedish Parliament and Royal Palace. On one Optional Experience, gold mosaics glow inside Stockholm City Hall before you circle the Vasa’s towering timber hull, studying carved figures that survived 333 years beneath the sea. For your next Optional Experience, you might roam Drottningholm Palace’s Baroque Garden among rows of lime trees and bronze figures, with the sound of bubbling fountains in the air, or descend below Stockholm as bold colour sweeps across the metro’s raw rock walls. A later Optional Experience begins in Södermalm and continues to the world’s first permanent ice bar, where blue light glows through sculpted walls as you say skål with a drink served in a glass carved from frozen Torne River water.

Before you head home, you say a warm farväl to your Travel Director and fellow travellers. Twelve days across Scandinavia end here, but the friendships, laughter and memories travel home with you.