My mom likes to do a big family trip every summer with my brother, my sister, and me—plus all of our spouses and the grandchildren. There are 13 of us in total. Now that the grandchildren are almost all in college, everyone is starting to have their own schedule and it’s getting more difficult to schedule a time when we can all go on a trip together. So, she wanted to plan one last big trip that all of us could go on.

Magically, we all found one week in July that worked. We had a couple of ideas on where to go, but everyone was really excited about Norway because it’s not a place you often get the chance to visit. My mom had also been in contact with our distant relatives there. She met them back in 2018 on a visit to Norway, so she wanted to take the rest of the family to meet them, too. This trip was her gift to us.

The trip was an amazing success. All 13 of us traveled together for 10 days, and there wasn’t a single argument. No one got annoyed; no one fought. We all had so much fun. I was a little worried because we were going to spend almost every night in a new place—10 nights in a different location almost every night—and that much moving, it could be exhausting and trying to wrestle the teenagers out of bed can be hard. But it worked great! We saw so much and each day brought a new adventure. There’s no way we would’ve seen what we did if we had gone on our own. It was amazing. Now we know where we want to go back and spend more time.

My mom organized a tour bus for the 13 of us. We were a little unsure at first. We’re not really “bus people,” but it was fantastic because everyone got their own row of seats.

We’re all introverts, so the routine went something like this: we’d drive somewhere in the mornings, go on an amazing excursion (for example, go on walks or cruises or train rides, tour museums, churches and towns), take a million photos, and then get back on the bus to our own rows, plug in our phones, and enjoy some quiet “me time” while looking out the huge windows at the gorgeous landscape passing by, while traveling to our next destination.

There was also a heat wave in Norway when we went. It was so hot, and there’s no air conditioning in Norway, which makes sense because you don’t typically need it. But there was air conditioning on the bus, so we loved that, too. We didn’t have to drive, and worry about how to navigate directions and traffic. We could just sit in our comfortable seats with the A/C blasting and enjoy the view.

The whole country we traveled through looks like a national park. It looks like Yosemite. You’re driving along these winding roads, through fjords, up and over and around cliffs. All the cliffs above you have waterfalls because there are glaciers on top, and they’re melting in the summer. You also drive among the fjords and see beautiful green farms, lush trees, dramatic cliffs, and incredible waterfalls. It is just gorgeous.

The first highlight was Glacier Day. We saw the Bøyabreen and the Briksdal glaciers. It literally looks like Yosemite (which makes sense since they’re all glacier-carved valleys). The bus dropped us off in the parking lot. At Bøyabreen, it was a short walk to the glacier viewing area. For Briksdal, it was maybe a one- or two-mile walk up. My mom hired these “troll cars,” which are like little ATV-type buggies, which we rode on and drove up. On the way down, some of us rode the troll cars and some chose to walk/run (some of the grandkids ran down trying to race the troll cars). We were probably at Bøyabreen for an hour and at Briksdal for maybe two.

My second favorite day was Fjord and Troll Day. It was in the Geiranger area. We took a cruise on the Geiranger Fjord, which had turquoise, beautiful blue water. Of course, we also saw some beautiful waterfalls. 

Then, we drove over to Trollstigen, which is a mountain pass. It has a beautiful overlook of the Trolls Road, which is this narrow road with hairpin turns. It was amazing to drive this road down to the valley, especially because that road is only open a limited time through the year due to snow or rain. It had been closed the week before we got there because it was raining so hard, and it became too dangerous. But when we arrived, the weather was beautiful and clear.

Our tour guide told us they’d never been able to drive on Trolls Road because the weather was always too bad, so they were excited to do it. Our bus driver was also brand new and from Lithuania, and he had never driven a road like this before, so he was really excited to try it. There were these 180° hairpin turns you had to navigate, and we were in this huge motorcoach going around these curves. It felt like we were about to drive right off the edge. But our bus driver was having a great time, and of course, the two youngest cousins sat right up front to get the full experience. Every time the bus turned, it looked like we were about to fall off the cliff! I just about had a heart attack.

The third highlight was the one we spent with our distant cousins, visiting the area where our ancestors came from. It was in the Balestrand area. They met us at our hotel and took us up the road to a place called Mel, where the family farm was located. It’s now a summer cabin, still in the family.

We got to see the actual house, which has the same foundation and the same rooms as a photo we have from the late 1800s. They’ve made a few changes, but it’s still the same structure, and that was really fun to see. We learned about their life there, and they had all these old pictures. It was so neat to see the continuity.

Then, they took us up this windy road—it kind of looked like the Trolls Road with the hairpin turns—to a beautiful lookout and a lake. They told us that in the summer, the men back then would drive their cattle up the valley to this area for grazing. It was just gorgeous.

We also visited a little place called Frøysland. That’s our mom’s maiden name. The local school is still named the Frøysland School. We visited the area our family lived in before moving to Mel in 1860. Some of our distant relatives still live in the area, and they were so kind; they showed us around and provided a really wonderful lunch. It was really, really neat and absolutely beautiful up there. The generosity and kindness of our cousins in Norway was really touching. We were practically complete strangers to them, and they showed us around and treated us so wonderfully.

I learned about the stave churches, which I didn’t know much about before. I learned a lot when visiting some churches (e.g. Kvernes and Ringebu). We love the dragonhead decorations on the stave churches. 

I got more information about them and about life in Norway when we visited the Maihaugen Open-Air Museum in Lillehammer. The museum is really immersive. All the buildings are reconstructed, and as you walk through the park, you essentially walk through time, starting with structures from the middle ages and ending in the modern day. The museum was really fantastic.  The older portions reminded my kids of the village in How to Train Your Dragon.

I would create a fly-through of the fjords.