France, Norway & Denmark 2024- A Vacation of Firsts on Points

A year and a half ago, my cousin introduced me to the world of earning points for traveling. It wasn't completely a foreign concept to me- I already had a Chase Sapphire Preferred card, and had used the portal to book an all inclusive in Cabo (which, I still think was a fantastic deal) and that same year, had taken advantage of a Southwest credit card offer for companion passes for the remaining year. However, the concept of transferring points to airline and hotel partners, and getting the best possible "saver" rates, in addition to maximizing bonuses and categories, were not things I knew or really paid attention to. My cousin tempted me with a girls trip to Paris, if we could earn enough points for our hotel and airlines. After doing some research to see what was doable, I dipped my toes in. It didn't take long at all to accumulate the points we needed for both our flights and hotels, and my mind marveled at the possibilities, as it had always seemed too expensive to fly my entire family that far.

In March 2023, I got COVID, and during my time in isolation, I reviewed the 10x travel points course (it's free, and I felt it was very informative!), and came out with a plan to go to Norway. It is where my husband's heritage is from, and while none of us have been, I felt it was a good time for my kids to see where their ancestors came from. I did a ton of research, because I knew nothing about Norway except that they had there were fjords, and it was light out all summer. I joined a bunch of facebook groups, made lists of areas of interest, and modified my plans a thousand times based on airline and hotel availability and points prices. This ended up being our final itinerary:

Air France LAX-CDG-OSL (Los Angeles-Paris-Oslo)- 67,200 points used (+taxes)

Air France saver fare to Oslo was 24,000 points per person, but kids 11 and under are 25% off! That comes out to 84k points for 2 adults and 2 children, which is already a great deal, but on top of that, I was able to take advantage of a 25% transfer bonus from American Express, so to get 84k points I only needed to transfer 67,200 points for all 4 of us. But wait, there's more! Air France also offers a free stopover program, so I arranged for us to stop over in Paris for 3 nights at no additional cost (subject to availability)! Because I had points for a hotel, we were able to add another city for basically free!

Hyatt Paris Etoile- 3 nights- 21,000 points per night for a suite (to accommodate 4 people). I transferred Chase Ultimate Reward (UR) points for this, and the cash price would have been over $600 per night, which we would have never been able to afford. My friend generously gifted us Guest of Honor status here, so we were able to check in early (so important since our flight arrived in the morning and we were tired), and have free breakfast and club access, which resulted in us having to spend very little money on food, and being able to splurge a little more on fine chocolate and desserts. While in Paris, we went to the Eiffel Tower (Decked out in Olympic rings), Louvre, Catacombs, and took a free (tip based) walking tour!

Air France CDG-OSL- the second leg of our flight, which didn't cost us any extra since it was part of our itinerary.

(Gol Stave Church, Oslo, a wooden church almost years old!)

Clarion the Hub Hotel Oslo- 2 nights- 16,000 Choice points per night. Citi Thank you points transfer at a 1:2 rate to Choice rewards, so it was really 8k Citi points per night, which is an absolute steal considering that the hotel fits 4 people! Most European hotels are tiny and only accommodate 2, maybe 3, unless you book an expensive suite. The downside of Choice hotels is that you can only book on points 100 days in advance, which is not much considering how far in advance I booked everything else. We stayed at Choice/Clarion hotels for the majority of our time in Norway because of the fantastic points price. They all also offer a fantastic breakfast buffet included with your stay, so you can really enjoy a hearty breakfast every morning. This location was right across the street from the train station, so it was very convenient, as you can hop on the train straight from the airport and it basically takes you directly to the hotel. While in Oslo, we did a bike tour (which took us to a lot of the main attractions in the city), went to the Fram Museum and the Norsk Folkmuseum.

(A small community on the Naeroyfjord)

After Oslo we did our own version of the Norway in a Nutshell tour. This is a popular tour that a lot of tourists take, but you can book it yourself instead of through their website, as it uses all public forms of transport, you just have to figure out your timetables yourself, which was not hard. I didn't use points for this portion of the journey, and will go more into this in a future post, but we took the train from Oslo to Myrdal, then changed trains to go from Myrdal to Flam (which is considered to be the most beautiful, and steepest train ride in the world), a Fjord tour of the Naeroyfjord, one of the most beautiful fjords in Norway, which ended in Gudvangen. We stayed. the night at Gudvangen Fjordtell, which reminds me a lot of Yosemite Valley but with so many waterfalls in a small area, and went to Viking Valley, where we learned about the Viking life. We took a shuttle back to Flam, and then took an express ferry from Flam to Bergen. All this will be documented in more detail in a future post, but it was much cheaper to book it independently than through the Norway in a Nutshell website.

(Our view of Bryggen from Clarion Admiral Hotel)

Clarion Admiral Bergen- 16k Choice points for 1 night (8k Citi points). We arrived to Bergen around 8 pm, and the hotel was a 3 minute walk away from the ferry station, which was fantastic. It is located right across the harbor from Bryggen, which is what most people picture when they think of Bergen. We got a wonderful room with a view there! Unfortunately we were only here one night before going to our next leg (but would return to Bergen later). This also had a breakfast buffet included in our stay. We also did a load of laundry at Clean Kokos while we were here (since we were traveling on carry ons)

(Flatholmen Lighthouse, where my husband's ancestors lived)

Comfort Hotel Square Stavanger- 5 nights (16k Choice points per night=8k Citi points, for a total of 40K Citi points for 5 nights)- We rented a car from Hertz and drove from Bergen to Stavanger. It is a relatively easy drive, about 4 hours with 2 ferry crossings. We stayed longer here because this is where my husband's ancestors are from, and we wanted to spend more time exploring the area. We were able to find the lighthouse that his ancestors manned (and where they also lived), as well as the statue of his great aunts commemorating their bravery (again, more on that in a future post). While in Stavanger we went to a lot of different museums, did free (tip based) walking tour of the city, hiked Pulpit Rock, explored Tananger (the adjacent town where the lighthouse is), found a boat to the lighthouse, went fishing, and experienced a Norwegian floating sauna!

(View from the Funicular going up Mt. Floyen)

Clarion Hotel Havenekontoret Bergen- 2 nights (16k Choice points per night=8k Citi points)- We drove back to Bergen after Stavanger, and stayed at a hotel in Bryggen this time, right across from the Clarion Admiral where we stayed previously. They had both a breakfast buffet and a dinner buffet, which was great! I found food in Norway to be similarly priced to what we pay here. It seems like more up front on the menu, but the tax is included, and there is no tipping culture, so it ends up being about the same. Nevertheless, it is expensive to eat out at every meal, so these included meals were really nice for our budget! By now, the kids were really tired of museums, so we just walked around, rode the Funicular up to the top of Mount Floyen (what a great place!), ate at the wharf and marveled at all the interesting seafood that we saw. Bergen is also a good place to shop for outdoorsy gear/wear, especially rain jackets, because it rains so much here and Norwegians love the outdoors, so their gear is very effective! This was the last of our hotels on points. We got 10 nights worth of Choice hotels for 80k Citi Thank you points, and didn't have to ay any other resort fees. Often times it felt like the hotel was paying us to stay there, with free breakfast, and sometimes dinner and laundry too!

(view of the sky at Midnight)

Our next leg of our trip was the Havila Coastal Cruise, which leaves out of Bergen. It is a smaller cruise ship, and goes north from Bergen to Kirkenes (just miles away from the Russian border), stopping at 30+ ports in 6 nights/7 days, and then back down. It functions as a postal service, bringing mail and cargo to all the small communities that are not easily accessible by car or air, as well as a port to port ferry system for the locals. But, it offers a nice food and board for those who just want to experience to Norwegian coastline, and has some longer port stops (about 1 per day) for those who want to check out some harder to reach cities without the hassle of driving or flying. There is no other entertainment offered, so not a typical cruise, but the food was good, the views were spectacular (we got to experience true midnight sun!), and it was a really nice way for us to relax after a couple weeks of being constantly on the go. We got off at every longer port stop to explore those cities (will write in more detail later!) and disembarked in Kirkenes.

(Reindeer Feeding at the Snow Hotel)

Kirkenes Snowhotel- 2 nights- There were no hotels on points in Kirkenes, but after doing the math, doing the package at the Kirkenes Snowhotel was quite cost effective considering all the excursions and experiences they offered (the cruise also offered these same excursions but at almost twice the price). So we got to stay 1 night in the ice hotel (what a once in a lifetime experience!), 1 night in their gamme cabin (very welcome after the ice hotel stay), go on a husky hike, feed reindeer, pet huskies, and go on a King Crab fishing/eating experience. We were able to do this because we didn't have to pay for 13 nights of hotel (3 in Paris, 10 in Norway), and these were some of the most memorable experiences of our trip (although, it's really hard to rate these experiences, they were all incredible).

Norwegian Airlines- Kirkenes to Billund- we didn't bother with points for this flight, it's a pretty short journey, but we figured, while we are in Scandinavia, let's go to the birthplace of Lego on the way home, since we would have had to fly to a bigger city from Kirkenes anyway to get back to Los Angeles!

(T-Rex build with Lego Technic at the Lego House)

Billund- Airbnb by Lego House- 3 nights- this was a very reasonably priced Airbnb- I booked it over a year in advance. It was a 6 minute walk to Lego House and an easy 20 minute walk to Legoland Billund. We have a Legoland by our home, so I was not sure if it would be completely worth it, but I was so impressed by both Lego House and Legoland and would do it all over again!

Air France- Billund-Amsterdam-Los Angeles- 67,200 points used (+taxes)- Originally I had to book the flight out of Copenhagen, because the flights out of Billund were 4x the points cost, which was 24,000 points per person, but kids 11 and under are 25% off! That comes out to 84k points for 2 adults and 2 children, which is already a great deal, but on top of that, I was able to take advantage of a 25% transfer bonus from American Express, so to get 84k points I only needed to transfer 67,200 points for all 4 of us. However, that was not ideal because Copenhagen is a 3 hour train ride away. Fortunately, there was a major change in the itinerary, and the rescheduled flight did not work well for us, so I was able to call Air France and ask them to change the departing airport for no additional cost! We had an hour layover in Amsterdam, and then home to Los Angeles!

While this was an incredibly demanding schedule (we moved 10 times in 27 days), my family did amazing and we enjoyed every moment.

I know this was a very "points heavy" point of view of the trip, but I'll go through each leg in more detail about the types of public transportation we took, things we saw and did, timelines for booking, and the very unique experiences that Norway (and Paris/Billund) has to offer!