Bergen

Pretty soon we'll shut up about Norway, but if you ever have a chance to visit, our advice would be to skip Oslo and head to Bergen instead. There's nothing really wrong with Oslo--it's a perfectly pleasant place, but as a friend who was just there put it, even though it has all the ingredients for a great city, it's just missing a certain something. In some ways it was the opposite of Copenhagen, which we thought was much greater than the sum of its parts. It doesn't help that the Oslo airport is almost 45 minutes outside the city (if you're familiar with DC, it makes Dulles Airport seem close). Since we did two overnights in Oslo, that was a lot of time and money spent just going back and forth to and from the airport.

Bergen, however, was great. Not only is it a physically beautiful city in a great setting on the water--it reminded us of a smaller Seattle or San Francisco--but it also has more energy than you would expect for a city that size. We thought it might be too touristy for our sake, and while tourism is prevalent, we were also pleased to find that it was a vibrant city in its own right with good restaurants, bars, shops, etc., that seemed to be filled more with locals than tourists. Plus, it's a great launching point for seeing the fjords in western Norway. Two big thumbs up.