Norway Excursion/Port Suggestions?

[smwg]

My family of 9 will be going to Norway next June.  Excursions get very expensive for 9 people.  Which of these ports would you recommend to DEFINITELY do an excursion at and which ones do you feel would be good for just walking around on our own?  Thanks for you help!

 

Land of the Midnight Sun & Summer Solstice

Day & Date          Destination                         Duration Sun, 06/16/24   Stavanger, Norway          8:00am to– 5:00pm Mon, 06/17/24 Olden, Norway                  10:00am to– 6:00pm Wed, 06/19/24 Tromso, Norway               9:00am to– 6:00pm Thu, 06/20/24  Alta, Norway                      7:00am to– 6:00pm Fri, 06/21/24     Honningsvag (for North Cape), Norway   9:00am to– 10:00pm Sun, 06/23/24   Svolvaer, Norway             7:00am to– 6:00pm Tue, 06/25/24   Trondheim, Norway        8:00am to– 6:00pm Wed, 06/26/24 Andalsnes, Norway         7:00am to– 5:00pm Thu, 06/27/24  Bergen, Norway                 8:00am to– 6:00pm Sat, 06/29/24    Brussels/Bruges (zeebrugge), Belgium     8:00am to– 6:00pm

[hallasm]

You can arrange excursions yourself in all ports - note that Åndalsnes, Svolvær and Alta are small towns with very limited options.
Tromsø, Stavanger, Trondheim and Bergen are larger cities with many possibilities.
Proposals:
Stavanger: Lysefjord and Pulpit Rock; Honningsvåg: North Cape and Olden: Loen Skylift
Search for the individual ports in this Forum. You can find more suggestions.

In general, the offer of excursions is limited and very expensive in Norway. Ask questions Here for the individual ports.

[CruiserBruce]

I would not go into this thinking all 9 of you have to go on the same excursions.

[PLee]

Renting a van and driving yourselves might be your best bet for some of these ports.

[smwg]

Thank you, all!  I'm going to keep researching.  Your are right Cruiser Bruce, we definitely don't, but I have a very dependent/needy family who tend to cling to whatever I choose. 4 of these are my kids (age 16 -30).  Since I've invited them to go with me, I feel it's my place to pay for their excursions.  My mom will gladly pay her way, but my sister and BIL are not able to afford much beyond the cruise fare.  So they may do a lot of ports on their own, thus I was wondering which ports that would be best.  🙂

[smwg]

55 minutes ago, PLee said:

Renting a van and driving yourselves might be your best bet for some of these ports.

I'm not opposed to this.  In Norway, do they drive on the "right" side of the road or left?

 

[CruiserBruce]

8 minutes ago, smwg said:

I'm not opposed to this.  In Norway, do they drive on the "right" side of the road or left?

 

All of Europe except Ireland and Britain drive on the same side as the US or Canada.

[PLee]

On the right side.  Excursions do add up for a large group.  We came across many groups that opted to rent vehicles and said that was the way to go.

[hallasm]

2 hours ago, smwg said:

I'm not opposed to this.

You might consider to rent a car in Svolvær and explore the Lofoten Islands.

Also check where the ship is docking - Some of the ports has multiple options.

[kitkat343]

This is tough because so much is weather dependent.  A trip to the Loen skylift could be amazing, but if the weather is terrible and you can't see much it's really expensive for what you get.  We were in Bergen on a day the crew described as "unusually bad" for Bergen and couldn't see anything on the funicular (still took it because we knew our kids would like it irregardless and it wasn't that expensive like the Loen Skylift.)

 

Here are options for Olden, but they are very weather dependent as to whether or not they justify the high prices you'll find in Norway:

 

We were extremely fortunate to learn that the Loen Skylift opened three days prior to our arrival in Olden. I was a bit anxious about the logistics of visiting a brand new attraction with small children, and the owner of Olden Adventures was very patient and reassuring about the logistics of reaching the skylift. As it turned out, the weather was a bit rainy on the day we arrived, so there were very few crowds. It was still a very beautiful location, with a gorgeous viewing platform. On nice days, paragliders take off from the mountain (that happened the day before we arrived) and that must be spectacular to see if you are lucky enough to get good weather. The food in the restaurant was excellent, especially the sample platter of local meat. It’s unsurprisingly expensive, but the view is outstanding and the food delicious.   You can see the view through the beautiful restaurant windows, plus there are beautiful platforms and places to walk around on top of the mountain.  IT was very accessible for a 2 year old.

The Loen Skylift is only a 6 km bus ride from Olden, so it isn’t very difficult to get there. Olden Adventures ( http://www.oldenadventure.com/ ) is running shuttles to the Loen Skylift, right next to their buses to the Biksdal Glacier so it would be very easy to travel to both attractions through Olden Adventures.

 

 

The Briksdal Glacier has been hit hard by global warming, but the 40 minute bus ride there is quite scenic and lovely, as is the hike itself to the glacier so overall this excursion is a very good choice as long as you realize ahead of time that the most beautiful pictures online of the glacier showing lots of ice are not recent and don’t represent what you will see at the glacier. 

 

For travelers with young children or mobility issues, there are troll cars available for rent to reduce the length of your hike. These golf carts travel most of the way to the glacier, leaving you with a very pleasant and relatively flat 700 m walk. Since we didn’t expect my 2 year old to make it all the way to the glacier, my husband and 6 year old went ahead of us. To my surprise, my 2 year old slowly but steadily made the entire hike in the allocated time (they tell you what time to return to the platform to catch your return troll car.  You might want to be smarter than me and ask them if it is possible to schedule more time for the short hike so you aren't racing back to the troll car.  Or you can see if you can use a stroller or babywear- my stroller was hard for me to push but if you are stronger that might be an option for you.  It's over unpaved ground so I personally had a hard time pushing the stroller but more fit families might have absolutely no problem with this). Reservations are required for troll cars in May and October, and recommended during the summer months (the troll car season runs from May-October). The only challenging thing is that they do request that you tell them what time you’d like to ride on the troll car, which is hard if you want to chose a time to do this excursion based upon the weather forecast (although it is completely understandable they ask you to pick a time, since otherwise there might be a lot of people trying to get on a troll car at one time and this would cause really long delays). I don’t know if the troll car operators are always flexible about the time of your reservation, but we changed our minds about what time to visit the glacier on the day we traveled since we wanted to visit the Loen skylift in the afternoon when the weather was scheduled to be better. I emailed the troll car operators at 9 am as soon as we got on the bus towards the glacier, and they had already switched my reservation by the time we arrived at the troll car office. We traveled in May, when things are less crowded so I don’t know if they will be able to accommodate a change in reservation time during the busy summer months. The troll car website where you can make your advance reservation is available at: http://www.oldedalenskysslag.com . or I believe Olden Adventures may now be able to make troll car reservations for you directly.

 

Near where you pick up the troll car is a small café off the souvenir shop; they have excellent waffles. They are best freshly made, so if you have time keep an eye on the plate where they store the waffles and order them when everyone else bought up the older waffles. My family started off by ordering 4, and ended up eating 12 (the kids really loved them and since they’d just finished hiking to a glacier without a single complaint I wasn’t going to say no), so we were able to get a lot of fresh waffles. 

 

[smwg]

1 hour ago, kitkat343 said:

This is tough because so much is weather dependent.  A trip to the Loen skylift could be amazing, but if the weather is terrible and you can't see much it's really expensive for what you get.  We were in Bergen on a day the crew described as "unusually bad" for Bergen and couldn't see anything on the funicular (still took it because we knew our kids would like it irregardless and it wasn't that expensive like the Loen Skylift.)

 

Here are options for Olden, but they are very weather dependent as to whether or not they justify the high prices you'll find in Norway:

 

 

We were extremely fortunate to learn that the Loen Skylift opened three days prior to our arrival in Olden. I was a bit anxious about the logistics of visiting a brand new attraction with small children, and the owner of Olden Adventures was very patient and reassuring about the logistics of reaching the skylift. As it turned out, the weather was a bit rainy on the day we arrived, so there were very few crowds. It was still a very beautiful location, with a gorgeous viewing platform. On nice days, paragliders take off from the mountain (that happened the day before we arrived) and that must be spectacular to see if you are lucky enough to get good weather. The food in the restaurant was excellent, especially the sample platter of local meat. It’s unsurprisingly expensive, but the view is outstanding and the food delicious.   You can see the view through the beautiful restaurant windows, plus there are beautiful platforms and places to walk around on top of the mountain.  IT was very accessible for a 2 year old.

The Loen Skylift is only a 6 km bus ride from Olden, so it isn’t very difficult to get there. Olden Adventures ( http://www.oldenadventure.com/ ) is running shuttles to the Loen Skylift, right next to their buses to the Biksdal Glacier so it would be very easy to travel to both attractions through Olden Adventures.

 

 

The Briksdal Glacier has been hit hard by global warming, but the 40 minute bus ride there is quite scenic and lovely, as is the hike itself to the glacier so overall this excursion is a very good choice as long as you realize ahead of time that the most beautiful pictures online of the glacier showing lots of ice are not recent and don’t represent what you will see at the glacier. 

 

For travelers with young children or mobility issues, there are troll cars available for rent to reduce the length of your hike. These golf carts travel most of the way to the glacier, leaving you with a very pleasant and relatively flat 700 m walk. Since we didn’t expect my 2 year old to make it all the way to the glacier, my husband and 6 year old went ahead of us. To my surprise, my 2 year old slowly but steadily made the entire hike in the allocated time (they tell you what time to return to the platform to catch your return troll car.  You might want to be smarter than me and ask them if it is possible to schedule more time for the short hike so you aren't racing back to the troll car.  Or you can see if you can use a stroller or babywear- my stroller was hard for me to push but if you are stronger that might be an option for you.  It's over unpaved ground so I personally had a hard time pushing the stroller but more fit families might have absolutely no problem with this). Reservations are required for troll cars in May and October, and recommended during the summer months (the troll car season runs from May-October). The only challenging thing is that they do request that you tell them what time you’d like to ride on the troll car, which is hard if you want to chose a time to do this excursion based upon the weather forecast (although it is completely understandable they ask you to pick a time, since otherwise there might be a lot of people trying to get on a troll car at one time and this would cause really long delays). I don’t know if the troll car operators are always flexible about the time of your reservation, but we changed our minds about what time to visit the glacier on the day we traveled since we wanted to visit the Loen skylift in the afternoon when the weather was scheduled to be better. I emailed the troll car operators at 9 am as soon as we got on the bus towards the glacier, and they had already switched my reservation by the time we arrived at the troll car office. We traveled in May, when things are less crowded so I don’t know if they will be able to accommodate a change in reservation time during the busy summer months. The troll car website where you can make your advance reservation is available at: http://www.oldedalenskysslag.com . or I believe Olden Adventures may now be able to make troll car reservations for you directly.

 

Near where you pick up the troll car is a small café off the souvenir shop; they have excellent waffles. They are best freshly made, so if you have time keep an eye on the plate where they store the waffles and order them when everyone else bought up the older waffles. My family started off by ordering 4, and ended up eating 12 (the kids really loved them and since they’d just finished hiking to a glacier without a single complaint I wasn’t going to say no), so we were able to get a lot of fresh waffles. 

 

Thank you for this. I will definitely investigate it more. Most appreciated!