*by Whitney*

In the summer of 2023 after our wedding, we set off on an epic 10-week honeymoon trip to Europe, targeting bucket list destinations where we had not been in our prior European travels in 2018 and 2019.

I’m a bit delayed (ok three years, haha) on finally getting this post written recapping our trip. I had previously written a detailed article just about our 2.5 weeks at the beginning of the trip in Switzerland, and planned to come back to write a post about the remainder of the trip, but time slipped away and here we are. Better late than never, though!

Planning Our Trip

Before we left on this trip, we only had about half of the itinerary booked. This was partially due to time constraints with being busy planning and having a wedding immediately prior to the trip, but we also did this a little on purpose because we had been burned on prior trips with having everything booked, then having our plans derailed and having to cancel and change a lot. In this case, I’m so glad that we didn’t have everything booked because we encountered some major travel issues on this trip. Also, we didn’t have a ton of time to research each location prior to leaving for the trip, so had we just booked in a hurry based on our rough outline (below), we actually would’ve missed out on so much in one of our favorite stops on the trip: Norway.

Here was our loose itinerary we were planning to follow before leaving for the trip:

Switzerland: ~2.5 weeks
Liechtenstein: day trip from Zurich
Slovenia: ~5 days
Latvia: ~5 days
Estonia: ~5 days
Finland: ~1 week
Sweden: ~1.5 weeks
Norway: ~ 1.5 weeks
Denmark: ~1.5 weeks

We knew that the top destinations for us on this trip were going to be Switzerland and the Nordic Countries. But since we didn’t have a ton of time to research the Nordic countries prior to leaving, we just anticipated that we would divide our time equally between Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Norway (we were leaving Iceland for a future trip all on its own).

After spending 2.5 amazing (and jam-packed) weeks in Switzerland, we planned a bit more down time in our next three destinations (Slovenia, Latvia and Estonia) where we would map out the rest of the trip. Once we really started doing more research about the Nordic countries and asking for advice from others, we found out that we would much rather spend more of our time in Norway than the other 3 countries due to the mountains and our love for hiking. So, rather than divide up our ~38 days for the Nordic countries into ~9-10 days per country, we ended up choosing just to do ~5 days each in the capitals of Finland, Sweden and Denmark, while dedicating a full 3 weeks to Norway!

Even with having a generous 3 weeks to spend in Norway, we were still rushing and didn’t have time to do everything we wanted! Norway is just a magical wonderland filled with stunning natural beauty—a true dream for the outdoor enthusiast! But let’s get into a recap of the full trip prior to diving into the details of our amazing time spent in Norway!

Here’s what our final itinerary ended up looking like:

Switzerland: 2.5 weeks
Liechtenstein: day trip from Zurich
Serbia: 1 day
Slovenia: 4 days
France: 1 day
Latvia: 4 days
Estonia: 5 days
Finland: 5 days
Norway: 3 weeks
Denmark: 6 days
Sweden: 6 days

The random days in Serbia and France were because of flight delays causing us to miss our flights and have to stay overnight at locations that were just supposed to be layovers! You can also see where we cut down our time in the other Nordic countries to spend more time in Norway.

Trip Recap

Switzerland

We kicked off the trip in Switzerland for 2.5 weeks. We used the train system to travel all over the country. Our favorite stops were in the mountains, particularly the Lauterbrunnen Valley area. Switzerland quickly moved toward the top of our favorite countries of the 55+ we’ve visited. It was truly spectacular and we can’t wait to go back!

I wrote a full, detailed article all about our 2.5 weeks in Switzerland that you can read here.

Serbia

The plan was to fly from Switzerland to our next stop, Slovenia, with a connection in Serbia. Unfortunately, things got derailed due to some issues in Serbia. Our flight from Switzerland kept getting delayed, and we later found out it was because of strikes and unrest in Serbia, causing issues at the Serbian airport and major delays. I think had we realized that, we would’ve just cancelled our flight and found an alternative route to Slovenia. But no one was really giving us much info, we just kept getting our flight pushed back further and further, until we finally got going on the flight to Serbia and realized that we’d miss our connection and there wouldn’t be another flight out to Slovenia that night.

We were told that it wouldn’t be a huge deal, that the airline would accommodate us and put us in a hotel for the night plus give us food, then we’d be on the next flight out to Slovenia in the morning. This didn’t sound terrible in theory, we’d just miss one night in Slovenia. However, it got worse because there was no communication at the Serbian airport, just hundreds of angry travelers and a few workers who wouldn’t tell us anything. We were getting bits and pieces from other travelers who spoke the local language. At some point someone told us it would be best if we just didn’t leave the airport at all because of road blockades outside. We considered just staying in the airport until our rescheduled flight in the morning. But ultimately they did finally arrange a bus for us to go to a hotel sometime after midnight. It was all really sketchy and uncertain. We ended up only sleeping for about 2 hours at the hotel, before it was time for the bus to take us back to the airport for our early morning flight to Slovenia.

We finally left Serbia, but had to connect in Germany because there weren’t any direct flights available. Then, we ended up having yet another delay in Germany causing us to spend the entire day at the Frankfurt airport. We finally made it to Slovenia late the next night after 10pm. We ended up surviving this whole ordeal, but it was one of the most chaotic travel experiences of our lives. And naturally it left a super bad impression for us of Serbia.

Slovenia

So we ended up missing our first night and full first day in Slovenia, which was a bummer. But at least financially we ended up okay because we were using hotel nights where the fifth night was free, so technically we only “paid” for four nights there anyway, and we did get a few hours rest at a “free” Serbian hotel, ha. Plus, we later filed a claim with our travel insurance and ended up getting partially refunded for our flights and other expenses.

Once we finally got to the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana, it was really nice and we enjoyed our time there! The hotel where we stayed was really nice. It was a little on the outskirts of town, but it was very walkable and we had beautiful weather to enjoy the walk.

We spent two days exploring Ljubliana, including doing a free walking tour and also touring the Lubljana Castle. We loved that the historic area isn’t open to cars, so it was really quaint and walkable. We had some really good food there as well. Ironically one of the best meals we had was at an Irish Pub (Harat’s Pub) near the “dragon bridge” — highly recommend! We also ate at a traditional Slovenian restaurant called Slovenska Hisa which was good!

On our third and final full day, we took a day trip to the famous Lake Bled! It absolutely lived up to the hype! We took a bus from Ljubljana to Bled and back which was a fairly smooth process. We spent the day walking and hiking around the lake. We hiked up to the castle. Then we hiked to an incredible, post-card worthy view (see photo). We also spent some time jumping in the water. Then relaxed and had some food and beers while taking in the views. It was a wonderful day, and we wish we had more time to spend there than just on a day trip!

France

Our time in Slovenia was short, and before we knew it, it was time to head to our next stop in Riga, Latvia. But first, a layover in Paris. We thought our flight delays were behind us, but boy were we wrong. Our plane arrived late, plus we had to go back through security, so we missed our connection again, and there were no more flights that day. So we were about to be stuck overnight AGAIN in a country we never planned to stay in this trip. At least at Charles de Gaulle airport, they had the process extremely dialed in. The staff was very efficient in rebooking our flights, issuing us vouchers for a hotel and food, and getting us a shuttle quickly to our airport hotel for the night. We thought, oh well, here we go again, at least it was smoother this time.

So the next morning, we got our free shuttle back to the airport, boarded our new plane to Riga, and were excited to get on with the trip. But, not so fast. We kept sitting on the runway, not going anywhere. Eventually, the announcement came. There was a flat tire on the plane. We were going to have to DEPLANE and go back into the airport. We thought, okay, how long can it take to fix a flat tire? Evidently the answer was 10 hours. We proceeded to sit in the airport ALL DAY again, before finally getting to go to our next destination. So we once again missed our first night and first full day in our next destination, arriving to Riga finally after midnight!

Again, fortunately, for this stop we had also used hotel points with the 5th night free perk, so we weren’t out money on the hotel, but it was still disappointing to miss an entire day and waste all of our time in airports. We did also file a claim on our travel insurance for this ordeal, plus got free food for each delay, so financially we came out fine in the end after all the hassles.

We could not believe our bad luck with all of these flight delays. We’d never encountered delays this bad before, and had never been stuck overnight somewhere unintended in all of our travels to 40+ countries. Then it happened twice to us, back to back, in a week! This was at the end of June/early July 2023, right around the 4th of July holiday for the US. So we heard that it was a very busy travel time for US residents flying in and around Europe for vacation. Plus, it was one of the busiest travel seasons since COVID with more travelers getting out in general.

Latvia

Once we finally arrived in Latvia, we had 3 full days to explore. We discovered while we were there that there was the Latvian Song & Dance festival going on, so that was fun to be around. We saw lots of traditional dances and heart traditional music. Plus there were food vendors and lots of activities going on. We also enjoyed visiting the Central Market where we got fresh fruit and some yummy pastries. We spent time walking around the city of Riga and did a free walking tour where we learned more about the history of Latvia and the other Baltic Countries. We hadn’t done a ton of research on this area prior to traveling there, and we learned that the Baltic Countries consisted of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. We planned stops in Latvia and Estonia, but not Lithuania, which we regretted after the fact.

On our final day, we took a day trip by local train to a small town called Sigulda. It was nice to see an area outside of the capital to get more of a feel for the country. This was a cute little town where we explored two different historic castles, as well as a cave with ancient inscriptions dating back to the 17th century. It was fun to walk around this quaint town and take in the sights.

Estonia

Fortunately, we had already planned to take a bus to our next stop in Estonia, because we were so done with plane travel at this point. Moving forward, we made every effort to avoid flights for the rest of our trip when possible! It was about a 4.5hr bus ride from Riga, Latvia to Tallinn, Estonia, which was luckily uneventful. In Tallinn we stayed at a cute Airbnb for 5 nights, where our host left us some local wine and chocolates to try which was a nice surprise!

We loved visiting the historic Old Town of Tallinn with the medieval architecture. We did a free walking tour here to see the sights and learn more about the history. This was during the early days of the Ukraine-Russia war, so we saw a lot of protests about the war. We learned more about the Baltic Countries’ history of invasion and rule by Russia, so this hit particularly close to home for them.

We also visited the Telliskivi area of town, took in the views from atop the Tallinna Linnahall, visited a prison exhibition, and walked along the waterfront area of Port Noblessner. We enjoyed going to the Pohjala Brewery, and we splurged on a nice date night, surprisingly at a delicious Argentinian restaurant.

We had some down time during our stay in Tallinn as well where we spent time planning out the rest of the trip that we hadn’t booked yet. Here we decided how to divide up our time between the Nordic countries, and we planned our travel routes while trying to avoid flights where possible.

Finland

Our next stop was Finland which is just across the Baltic Sea from Estonia, so we were able to take a short ~2hr ferry from Tallinn to Helsinki which was nice. We learned on the ferry ride that people take the ferry to Estonia to buy cheaper alcohol in bulk and then transport it back to Finland! The ferry was super nice, with good food and drinks, and even some live music.

In Helsinki, we were able to use hotel points to book a really nice, 5-star hotel on the waterfront (Hilton Helsinki Kalastajatorppa), and with our status we even got upgraded to a sea view room! We use a lot of hotel points for our travels, most of the time staying at average hotels so we can maximize our points and get more free nights, and occasionally we will stay at really nice ones for a night or two if we have a free night certificate that’s not associated with a certain point value. So I was really excited that we were able to secure this very nice waterfront hotel on our Honeymoon for a full 5 nights. The hotel was in a more quiet, residential area of town, but we actually enjoyed that more than being close to the city center. It was well connected by public transit to get to the city center. The hotel had a nice sauna, which Finland is known for. Here we did the sauna + cold plunge combo that is quintessential in the Nordic countries, particularly Finland. The location had walk-out beach access which is nice in theory, but it made the cold plunge really painful because you had to wade into the cold sea rather than jump in and make it quick, haha! We were there in July but the water was still really cold for us! We also got to enjoy a very nice daily breakfast buffet for free at this hotel, and we got free welcome cocktails at the waterfront bar! We enjoyed seeing beautiful sunsets over the water from our room as well. Overall it was such a nice stay!

We enjoyed several activities during our time in Helsinki, including taking a free walking tour of the city center, taking a ferry to a nearby island where we explored a historic fort, and getting local treats at Cafe Regatta, and eating local Scandinavian food at the outdoor Kauppatori food market and the indoor food hall (Vanha Kauppahalli) near the ports. My only complaint is that it was really cold and windy in the waterfront areas, which for me was not what I was expecting in July!

I would say the most memorable and enjoyable experience from Helsinki was visiting the traditional Saunas at Loyly Helsinki. I highly, highly recommend this experience! We tried out several different types of saunas, and did several rounds of sauna + cold plunge. Here we were fortunate to have a nice dock to jump off of directly into the sea, which made the cold plunge a lot more tolerable! They also had a nice cafe and deck for relaxing with a drink after your sauna and cold plunge. This definitely stands out for me as one of the most memorable experiences on this part of the trip!

Norway

For the next part of the trip, we looked into lots of different options to avoid having to fly, including taking another ferry to get to the peninsula where Sweden, Norway and Denmark are, and some very long train or bus rides or road tripping via car. Ultimately though we didn’t want to waste too much unnecessary time on long transportation options. So, we did end up booking a couple of flights, BUT we made sure they were all direct flights with no connections to avoid major travel delays like we experienced earlier in the trip. Thankfully, this strategy worked out, and the rest of our transportation experiences went pretty smoothly on this trip.

Oslo

We headed from Helsinki, Finland to Oslo, Norway next. For us, there wasn’t anything too exciting about the capital of Norway (we aren’t big city people- so the highlights of Norway for us were going to be more in the mountains), so we used a couple of down days here to get caught up on work and plan ahead for the more exciting stops coming up on our trip. We used hotel points again to stay at a hotel on the outskirts of Oslo and used public transit to get around.

In Oslo, we did a free walking tour, which is a good way to see some of the major sites and learn some history. We also toured inside the stunning Oslo City Hall building, as well as walked around near the Akershus Fortress, Royal Palace, and walked on top of the Opera House to take in the views. We ate at the waterfront food hall called Vippa where we enjoyed some local fish and chips. Then we walked around inside the incredible Deichman Bjørvika, their public library. It’s not just a library but a cultural center. It was so cool to see how the locals were using the space, including access to cool features like 3D printers, sewing machines to make clothing, a gaming area, podcast studios, and more. On a different day we walked around some cute, historic neighborhood streets like Damstredet and Telthusbakken. We ate at another foodhall called Mathallen Oslo. And we toured the strange art exhibits at Vigeland Park.

Lofoten Islands

Oslo was a good stopping point to get into Norway, but the real amazingness was about to begin as we flew from Oslo to the incredible Lofoten Islands! I actually learned about this place from a photographer on Instagram, which may be where a lot of people find travel inspo but I’ve never really planned travel that way in the past. But when I saw the photos of this magical place I knew it was somewhere I had to go! I was so excited that we were able to work this into our trip, because it’s a very remote location above the Arctic Circle.

Travel logistics to get to and around the Lofoten Islands can be a bit complicated. We chose to fly from Oslo to Narvik, then rent a car and drive about 2.5hrs to where we were staying in Svolvaer. There are a lot of cute little villages where you can stay further south on the islands, but we chose Svolvaer because it was a little more central between the airport and the southern villages, and also had more amenities like grocery stores and restaurants. Then, we took day trips driving further south to various hikes and scenic spots. The islands are connected by one road which is nice because it’s all drivable, but it is a narrow road at some points and only one way in and one way out, so travel times can be long.

I absolutely loved our time in the Lofoten Islands. We saw some of the most incredible views that I will never forget! It was unlike anywhere else we’ve ever been. The negative is that it was pretty crowded, and with it being a small area made up of tiny fishing villages, it’s not made for a lot of tourists. This made driving and parking in different locations a little frustrating. I hope it doesn’t continue to get overrun with tourists as more people learn about it, but it inevitably probably will (honestly it probably already has from when we visited in 2023). Maybe they’ll have an opportunity to improve the road and infrastructure to make it more tourist friendly. But regardless, we had an incredible time.

We visited a few beaches here, took in incredible scenic views all along our drives, and enjoyed the adorable villages with the classic “rorbuer” fishing cabins. But the highlight was absolutely the hikes. All of the hikes we did were very challenging, most of them fairly short but straight up with very steep grades. But when we got to the top, WOW. You’re looking down on beautiful water, beaches, villages, fjords, and the most incredible jagged mountain peaks. You have to see it to believe it. It was truly other-worldly!

Bergen

After our amazing few days in Lofoten, we drove back to the airport, returned our rental car, and flew to Bergen. From Bergen, we rented a car and began a two week road trip around different parts of Norway. We spent two nights in Bergen to start off with. Here we took a free walking tour and took in the sights around the city. We enjoyed walking along the Bryggen neighborhood seeing the classic architecture and waterfront area. We tried local sausages and pastries, and we picked up some souvenirs.

Road Trip

Our road trip through the Norway was amazing, where we saw so many waterfalls, beautiful mountains, lakes, and fjords. The drive took us through many tunnels and on some car ferries as well to navigate the unique landscape filled with mountains and fjords.

Our next stop after Bergen was near Odda, where we found an Airbnb as home base in order to hike the famous Trolltunga hike. Our Airbnb there was amazing with beautiful mountain and waterfront views. The Trolltunga hike was somewhat challenging but not as difficult as some of the short, steep ones we did in Lofoten, though of course it was longer (about 14 miles, 3000ft elevation gain). The views absolutely lived up to the hype. But what we learned is that you should keep going on the hike past the classic “touristy” photo point at the “Troll’s Tongue.” While this view was incredible, our joy in experiencing it was slightly hindered by the crowd and long line to get your photo taken there. Past this, we kept going on the trail to an area with arguably an even better viewpoint that was completely empty and we had all to ourselves. The views were just spectacular! Keep in mind that you need to do advanced planning before taking on the Trolltunga hike. You have to book your parking in advance and/or take a shuttle. Ideally you start your hike from the uppermost parking lot “P3” to shave a couple miles off your distance. Also beware of ever-changing weather when you get up here. We got lucky that 90% of our hike was nice weather, but the last couple miles on the way back we got caught in a torrential downpour that was rough! Come prepared!

The day after our hike we took in some more views near where we were staying in Ullensvang, did some short walks to stretch our tired legs after the big hiking day, and visited a cidery called Lofthus Sideri.

Next we continued our road trip north, stopping at a few stunning waterfalls and in the town of Flam. We stayed a couple nights at a place called Utladalen Camping in a little cabin (town of Ovre Ardal). Here we did a beautiful hike that took us to a few waterfalls and a cute little cafe in the mountains.

We continued further north toward our next destination at Andalsnes and went over a mountain pass with beautiful glaciers in Jotunheimen National Park. The drive itself was a huge highlight of our road trip with so many scenic spots!

We had another big hike planned in the Andalsnes area, the Romsdalseggen hike. Unfortunately, the day we planned to do the hike, there was heavy rain with severe storm warnings. There’s several different routes you can take on this hike, some involving getting a shuttle to one end, then hiking back toward the town, which we had researched a lot. But luckily we had not booked anything in advance because we ended up being rained out. On our second day when it was still really rainy and foggy, we decided to at least do a modified version of the hike to see if we could take in some views. From the town, there is actually a cable car that goes up to a view point overlooking the town that gives you some of the great views that are usually at the end of the hike. You can also do a short steep hike up to this view point from the town without doing the full hike. We opted to do the short steep hike, and as we were going up we were getting rained on and the landscape was essentially like climbing a waterfall with water rushing down. It was certainly a unique experience! We arrived at the top to the view being completely fogged over, and we were drenched. Luckily there was a touristy indoor cafe at the top that had warm blankets, refreshments, and games! We hung out there for a while to see if the fog would clear, and we did eventually get some views! Jared opted to do the return hike back down, but I didn’t want to risk slipping and falling on the wet, steep terrain, so I took the cable car back down. Of course the next day when we were leaving town to head to our next stop, the sky and mountaintops were completely clear, ha, but you can’t control the weather!

Our final stop on our road trip was the Geiranger area to go on a boat tour of the Geirangerfjord. On our drive, we traveled along the Trollstigen (“Troll’s Path” or “Troll Ladder”) which is an impressive, zigzag mountain pass with a really cool view point at the top. Of course we also saw more stunning waterfalls and mountains on our drive. In Geiranger, we visited the World Heritage visitor center and Norwegian Fjord Center (Norsk Fjordcenter) and learned more about the unique landscapes and fjords of Norway. There’s a beautiful waterfall in Geiranger with a walking path, and the village is cute as well– we picked up some more souvenirs here. The highlight of Geiranger was taking the fjord boat tour. This reminded us a lot of the fjord tours in Alaska and New Zealand that we had done in the past, but you really can never get too much of seeing stunning fjords and waterfalls.

On our last day of the road trip we made our way back to Bergen to return our rental car. We were treated with a gorgeous, blue sky day on the last day of our drive (too bad we didn’t have that weather for some of the hiking days, but oh well). After three amazing weeks traveling all over Norway, it was time to say goodbye and make a couple last stops on our honeymoon trip! Norway was absolutely incredible, and it’s now one of our top countries that we’d like to return to someday (along with Switzerland and New Zealand being toward the top of the list as well).

Denmark

Our second to last stop on our honeymoon trip was Denmark, where we spent five nights staying near the capital, Copenhagen (we stayed in a suburb called Taastrup). We took a short, thankfully uneventful flight from Bergen to Copenhagen to get there.

After our adventure-filled time in Norway, our time in Denmark was really spent mostly as downtime to rest and catch up on some work. We did do some sightseeing in Copenhagen, where we saw the Nyhavn harbor area with the iconic colorful buildings, plus a lot of other unique architecture and sights. We saw the Tivoli Gardens amusement park which is said to have inspired Disneyland. We also took a day trip across the water to Malmo, Sweden where we found a music festival going on. We did partake in the Swedish tradition of “fika” to have some coffee and snacks and relax over each other’s company, ha.

Sweden

Our final stop on our epic 10-week honeymoon around Europe was Stockholm, Sweden. We took a 5-hr train from Copenhagen and Stockholm, passing back through Malmo on the way. The trip was relaxing and even had wifi so we could work on our laptops. In Sweden, we stayed on the outskirts in an apartment we found on Airbnb, but the building was very unique. It was actually in what appeared to be an old laboratory, which kind of creeped us out because there were still the old laboratory double-entry doors into the rooms to prevent contamination, and there were red alarm lights outside the doors. We looked it up and found out it was The Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control’s building where they studied diseases in the early to late 1900’s. We may not have chosen to stay there had we known this before, ha, but it was fine for a few nights. One perk was that there was a nice gym in the building that we had access to. We were walking distance to restaurants, grocery store, and public transit to get into the city center.

In Stockholm we did a free walking tour and took in various sights around the city including the picturesque Gamla Stan neighborhood. We visited our first ever Ikea (surprisingly in actual Sweden, ha) and enjoyed more than one meal at the cafe (yummy Swedish meatballs)! There was a cultural festival happening in the city where we saw some live music and also live martial arts events happening. We took a scenic boat tour around the Stockholm archipelago. We also visited the Viking Museum and the Vasa Museum, which is where they house the best-preserved seventeenth-century wooden ship in the world, which was very impressive to see! On our last night in Sweden, we enjoyed a nice dinner to close out our honeymoon before heading home!

We flew from Stockholm back to Virginia with two layovers (as is typical for our home airport) and thankfully these final flights went pretty smoothly!

Summary

We had such an incredible time on this trip! The highlights were definitely our 2.5 weeks in Switzerland and our 3 weeks in Norway! These are both top destinations that we will absolutely return to someday! We did have a lot of travel issues early on in this trip with flight delays, but aside from that we had the most epic honeymoon ever! Through our various travels all over the world, including 50+ countries and now all 7 continents (as of 2024), we’ve learned that some of our favorite destinations include more outdoor activities and beautiful scenery, particularly with mountains, fjords and glaciers, rather than in cities. Historic architecture, museums, restaurants and cultural sights are interesting, but at some point the cities all really start to run together. Whereas the views we saw in placed like the Swiss Alps and the Nordic Fjords will live in our memories forever! If you get the chance, we highly recommend visiting those two countries in particular!

I’m glad to be finally caught up as of 2026 on sharing about our 2023 honeymoon trip! Better late than never! You can also check out my article on our next big trip after this one, Patagonia & Antarctica in 2024! Our 2023 Honeymoon trip and our 2024 Patagonia/Antarctica trips were our last big international adventures before we started our family in 2024!