Norway Fjords/Sweden - The Planning

I have been wanting to visit Norway for so long...why? I don't know, maybe its all the Jo Nesbo novels I read or some of the movies I watched which had Norway in it. So it is has been on my bucket list forever. 

Finally, I planned it out. It took me a loooong time to figure out what In I needed to do, and when I did, it seemed that it would be hard for me to book all the hotels, get all the train tickets etc. So for the first time I decided to use KimKim, a concierge company for travel. They charge of course of doing all the work, but in this case like mine this time, it seemed worth it. There was a lot of booking to do. I may not use them again.

So the plan is:

1. Arrive in Oslo, stay 3 nights; 
2. Take the train to Myrdal and change to take the scenic train (Flam Railway) to Flam, stay two nights.
3. Take the train to go to Bergen, stay 3 nights.
4. Take a short 2 night cruise (Hurtigruten) from Bergen to reach Trondheim and stay there 2 nights. This maybe the relaxing part of my journey. 
5. Come back to Oslo via train and stay 1 night. This turned out to be two nights because the cruise turned out to be 2 nights and not 3 as my planner had thought, so I had to adjust it here.
6. Last let of the journey would be Oslo to Stockholm by train and then fly back to USA on 3rd Oct. 

Total of 18 days!! It seems a lot, but I was hoping to do as much as I could because I am not sure when I will be back here. The good thing about this agency is they will make the bookings for me, all hotels and trains. If I want to do any activities, they will buy the tickets. But I think the more things I had them arrange for me, the more expensive it became despite the fact that the activity may not have been that expensive. My hotels were not going to be that expensive but when I added up the daily rates, KimKim charges came out a bit more for booking. It could also be that some of the rooms I got had great views, which I probably would not have booked myself. So in the end, I think it turned out okay.

Another reason to go with them was because there were going to be too many bookings for me and I could have messed up somewhere or another. So even if I did overpay, I am going to think of this trip as a treat for me. It still came out to be a cost that I would expect for an 18 day trip, minus the personal tours I took.

The planning was between me and KimKim's contractors, Silvia and Halldor, in Sweden. They were nice, but they delayed a lot and then did not catch my mistakes and made some of their own. All in all, it was okay, but it could have been better if they had paid a bit more attention to detail. Next time I will try to keep my program simple and make my own arrangements. 

The good thing that KimKim's sites has are ideas of itinerary that can help one plan any number of days program. I did get my ideas from there and then there were things that I wanted to do, like the cruise, and then there were things that Halldor suggested, staying one more day in Flam. This time I am going all out on enjoying myself, since I am on sabbatical and I have time. 

So, with all this preamble lets start my journey.