Norway

Norway is the trip you save for. It is genuinely expensive — but the western fjords and the Lofoten Islands deliver landscapes that nothing else matches. Summer means midnight sun and 24-hour hiking; winter means aurora and skiing without the alpine crowds.

Most first trips split between Bergen and the fjords — the Flåm railway, a ferry up the Nærøyfjord, drives over hairpin mountain passes — or fly north to Lofoten for fishing-village cabins and ridge hikes that rise straight out of the sea. In summer the days barely end, so you hike at 10pm because you can. Managing the budget becomes its own activity: supermarket picnics, cabin kitchens, and accepting that every restaurant meal costs more than you expect.

The honest part: the prices are not a rumor — a casual dinner and two beers can cost what a good restaurant meal does elsewhere, and there is no workaround beyond cooking for yourself. Grey, wet spells roll in even in July, Trolltunga and Preikestolen are queues in high season, and an aurora trip can deliver a week of solid cloud. Budget travelers and food-first travelers should look south. Everyone else gets landscapes with genuinely no substitute.