In today’s post I’m sharing the itinerary from my recent 3 week Europe trip! This itinerary covers the best of Norway, Sweden, and Scotland including fjords, coastal towns, scenic train routes and plenty of photo opportunities.

The itinerary is super detailed and is structured into morning, afternoon and evening. If you’re not planning on visiting all of the places in this itinerary, each country can be isolated and become it’s own trip. I’ve kept all of the flight routes, flight times, links to the exact day tours I did as well as plenty of tips I’ve added since returning from the trip.

This is not just a generic chatgpt generated itinerary, I did over a hundred hours of research to create this itinerary.

In this post I’m also sharing what I liked and didn’t like about this itinerary so you can learn from my mistakes and have the best trip possible!

Download a copy of the itinerary here. If you’d like a copy you can edit to add and remove things that suit your personal tastes, there is an editable version in my shop here.

3 Week European itinerary: Sweden, Norway and Scotland

On this trip I visited these places (the below durations exclude travel time to get to the destination):

Sweden

• Stockholm (2 days)

Scotland

• Edinburgh (3 days)
• Inverness (3.5 days)
• Glasgow (1.5 days)

Norway

• Bergen (2 days)
• Lofoten Islands (3 days)
• Oslo (1.5 days)

What I liked about this itinerary

1. The northern lights and autumn foliage

I had seen the northern lights in Finland back in 2019 but that was during a solar minimum and they were really underwhelming. 2024 and 2025 are solar maximum years – the lights are meant to be stronger during these years. If you miss the maximum, a solar cycle lasts approximately 11 years, so the lights may not be as strong and your chances of seeing them not as high.

I’ve always wanted to see the northern lights in Norway and once I saw a photo of the red fishing huts in the Lofoten Islands I had to go there and see it all for myself.

Got very lucky and saw the northern lights!

The Lofoten Islands ended up being the highlight of the trip with stunning scenery, winding roads with plenty of lakes, fall foliage, mountains, tunnels, cute villages and those famous red fishing huts. It was a bit stressful to get there (story for another day…) but it was worth the time and hassle.

My version of the photo I saw online that inspired this trip…

Hamnøy in the Lofoten Islands

One of the best clusters of autumn leaves I’ve ever seen! (Vigeland Park, Oslo)

2. Stockholm

I liked Stockholm more than I was expecting. It was clean, easy to navigate and people were very friendly. Gamla Stan is easy to wander around in an afternoon and there are plenty of free viewpoints to get great views of the old town.

3. Flam

The day trip to Flam from Bergen was one of my favorite days of the entire trip. There was bus, boat and train all in one day. If you’re looking for a ‘best of Norway in a day’ this would be it. Drove through tunnels, stunning scenery everywhere, visited a Viking village, saw waterfalls and cute villages in the fjord, plus a scenic train ride that reminded me of the Glacier Express (where you go through tunnels and don’t know what you’re going to see when you pop out the other end).

What I would change about this itinerary

1. Don’t visit Scotland during Autumn

I had always planned to visit Scotland on the way to Iceland and that the trip would be around May. I usually visit Europe with my Mum and every time she has been fine with whatever countries I pick, but this time she really wanted to visit Scotland. And it made sense since we would already be in the northern part of Europe, so Scotland was added to the itinerary.

Everyone knows Scotland’s weather can be unpredictable… but I never expected to time an ex cyclone during our visit. It didn’t just rain, it absolutely poured for days and the wind was so bad in some places, that there was no point putting up an umbrella as it would just immediately turn inside out.

I had researched so many scenic viewpoints but when we got there, all of the rain just created a white sky blocking the scenery 🙁

Not quite the Jacobite steam train going over the viaduct photo I was hoping for, but I was lucky to even get this…

While we were in Inverness, there were murmurs of a storm coming on a Thursday, and Scot rail announced trains wouldn’t be running on the Saturday. The Australian media tends to over hype weather events so we didn’t think much of it. I didn’t realise that a storm in Europe is a legit weather event. I never expected weather so bad that basically the entire Scotrail network would be cancelled for 2 days, and that those days would coincide with our trip – such bad luck!

So I made a rash decision at midnight on that Thursday to switch our Jacobite steam train day trip with the Isle of Skye and I’m so thankful that I did. We managed to do the steam train on the Friday morning. By Friday afternoon / night the weather turned worse with trees and power lines down. On Saturday morning we boarded a bus expecting to visit the Isle of Skye, only to make it to the outskirts of Inverness where the roads were blocked. The bus drove back to the pickup point and all of us tourists spent the day wandering around the tiny town of Inverness. It’s a nice town, just not a place I needed to spend a whole day in.

I know I was very unlucky to time weather that bad, but if anyone asks me if I’d recommend visiting Scotland in Autumn? I’ll be telling them to stick to peak season when the weather isn’t so unpredictable.

2. Don’t visit Scotland on the same itinerary as Norway and Sweden

While Scotland is close to Norway and Sweden on a map, it’s not just a quick, direct plane ride between countries. Edinburgh is one of the worst cities I’ve had to try and fit into an itinerary with a surprising lack of direct flights to… anywhere. Edinburgh airport is actually quite small (a lot smaller than I was expecting). I couldn’t find a direct flight from Edinburgh to Bergen. We had to go via Amsterdam with a 3 hour layover, which meant we had to waste most of a day just moving from one place to the next.

There are direct flights from Edinburgh to Iceland which was why I had planned to visit it on the same trip. Or if you wanted more time in the UK you could easily get the train from Edinburgh down to London for more flight options, but I had already spent a month in London on past trips and didn’t need to go back there.

Related post: 4 Week Paris and London Itinerary (plus thoughts from my first time trying slow travel)

Scotland was still very scenic despite the weather!

3. Skip Glasgow

I’m sorry to anyone that lives there but I only visited Glasgow as it was a departure point for a bus day trip visiting Oban and Glencoe. There were people in the tour group that had taken an early train from Edinburgh that morning and took one back after the tour. I’m not so brave (what if there’s an issue with the trains and tickets for the backup bus option are sold out?!), but this would’ve saved an afternoon in Glasgow where there wasn’t much to see or do.

I have very limited annual leave from my day job so really need to maximise every single day of leave that I get. Glasgow was ok, but it’s not super touristy and I don’t consider it a ‘must do.’

4. Increase the length of the trip from 3 weeks to 4 weeks

I’ve never done a Europe trip that is so short. My minimum to visit Europe is usually 4 weeks. However, I had limited annual leave with my new job and we didn’t want to impose dog sitting for more than 3 weeks.

I think this itinerary would’ve worked better as a 4 week itinerary. I also wanted to visit Tromso in Norway and Gothenberg in Sweden but had to cut both places from the itinerary due to lack of time. In the few weeks that I’ve been back from my trip, my Facebook feed is spammed with posts in the Facebook groups I joined to check out tips and recommendations, with the most amazing pictures of the northern lights in Tromso – I’m so jealous!

I considered taking the train from Oslo to Bergen as it’s supposed to be scenic, but it takes 7 hours, so would’ve required another day.

I’ve been to Amsterdam before. But a day or two in Amsterdam with some day trips to dutch towns would make the forced flight to Amsterdam a better use of time.

Related post: 5 Day Amsterdam Itinerary (including 2 day trips, where to eat, stay, things to see and do)

If I had done this trip in April I would’ve squeezed in a visit to the tulip fields in the Netherlands, however the main purpose of this trip was to see the northern lights in Norway which would have basically no likelihood of happening in April when the tulips are in bloom.

I did 34 revisions (literally, that is not an exaggeration) of the itinerary trying to maximise those 3 weeks of annual leave. The thing that really limited the options was the limited flights out of Edinburgh. The only flight option out of Edinburgh to return home to Australia, was via Doha, which is a flight departing Edinburgh at 8am. Since you need to be at the airport around 3 hours early for an international flight, this could mean a 3 – 4am wakeup. Nope, definitely not starting the 24 hour journey home like that. If I’d had more time I could’ve added a stopover in Doha to make the return flight route more bearable, or added another stopover somewhere else in Europe. If you’re a fellow Australian visiting Scotland, try and put Scotland / Edinburgh in the middle of the itinerary so Edinburgh is not your entry or exit point out of Europe.

Other things to note

Norway, Sweden and the UK are all notoriously expensive to visit. I did this trip with my Mum which helped reduce costs. The most surprising cost to me was the cost of accomodation in Scotland. We avoided airbnb’s and bed and breakfasts as we didn’t wanted to have to commit to an arrival time to meet someone with a key, lug suitcases up staircases etc.

We wanted to stay in hotels but there’s actually a very limited number of hotels in Edinburgh and Inverness and they’re very expensive ($500 – $600 AUD per night for a decent one in a good location).

As expected, food in Norway was very expensive. The cheapest dinner we could find at a restaurant was usually around 280 NOK – 300 NOK (about $45 AUD) for an average quality meal (and usually pizza or meatballs). Interestingly, the price of restaurant meals and groceries was actually the same in the Lofoten Islands, as it was in Bergen and Oslo.

The roads are narrow in the Lofoten Islands and Scotland, there is no centre line marking so driving on your own could be stressful. There were also limited places to pull over and park to take photos. I’m glad we didn’t attempt to hire a car and drive ourselves.

I compared the cost of doing a multi-day tour such as a Globus tour of Scotland, and the cost worked out cheaper to do it on our own. We had much more flexibility over the schedule and saw far more than we would have on one of those bus tours which don’t include enough activities per day, and from past experience, too much ‘dead time’ waiting around for other people in the tour group.

Everyone spoke English everywhere we went and the places we went to were easy to navigate. I would feel comfortable doing this itinerary solo, the only thing stopping me is that the cost would be obscene.

I hope you find my itinerary helpful! If you have any questions just comment below.

Download a copy of the itinerary here. If you’d like a copy you can edit to add and remove things that suit your personal tastes, there is an editable version in my shop here.

More Europe trip planning

• Using ChatGPT to create a travel itinerary – time saver or waste of time?
• How to Efficiently Plan a Month-Long European Itinerary in Just One Week
• How to plan the best flight route: A type A traveller’s step by step guide
• 4 Week Paris and London Itinerary (plus thoughts from my first time trying slow travel)

Found this post helpful? Pin it!