Day 15–Bergen, Norway

We woke up to sunshine today. As I understand it, this city, the 2nd largest in Norway, doesn’t really get that much of it, so we were lucky. The city center was probably a kilometer away, but there were no taxis to be found, so Neesh decided to hoof it. We just took stops here and there to not push it. In the Bryggen section are some extremely old wooden warehouses, built in 1702.

The old warehouses

We finally made it down to the pedestrian mall, which was all closed up given it was Sunday (oops). It was a worthwhile destination in itself, though, just for the sights.

Center of the plaza

Sadly there’s a McDonald’s in this plaza, the first one we saw. Our trip was now ruined. Fortunately, there were shops in the center and the Bryggen area that were all open, so we went back. There’s a large fish market in the center, and the vendors were cooking up all kinds of things including lobster and crab. The cooking smelled wonderful, the raw fish, not so much.

A small part of the fish market

So we were now buying stuff to use up our supply of Norweigian Kronas, including souvenirs, lunch, more humongous raspberries and some blueberries, and another expensive round of drinks. This time, however, I found an amazingly delicious beer called Ø Porter. So I said to the bartender “O Porter” and she looked confused. “Ah, you mean uhh.” Oh, ok, that’s how you pronounce that, as in the oo in look. We sat in the sun, which had been in and out all day and had a fine time.

Ø is Norweigian for yummy

We explored a couple alleys in the old warehouse area, which was pretty neat and in some places quite dark.

A lighter alley

So we attempted to spend our last 68 Krona, and of course, anything we liked was 69 so we gave up. More coins for the collection. We took a shortcut through a park complete with a fortress and castle. No energy to do that today, Neesh’s legs were pretty much spent.

Castle and gate

Fortress

Back to the ship, and we sailed, sadly saying goodbye to Norway. It is an amazing place. The people were great and the scenery was beyond belief. I would definitely love to come back here some day. I’m just not sure Neesh will let me drive.

Day 14–Ålesund, Norway

Pronunciation: ō’-luh-sund. Yeah, I wouldn’t have figured that out either. Another yucky looking day.

View from the balcony, day 14

Neesh was feeling lots better today. Turns out she had the exact same 8 hour bug that I did early on. So we were up early and decided to go into the city for a bit before our noon tour. This is a nifty little city, and the buildings reminded Neesh of Germany.

Cobblestones galore

We did a little browsing, but had to head back and hoped we had time after to do some more poking about. Today’s tour was Mt. Aksla, which is a hill that overlooks town, and an aquarium. First, the aquarium, though while small, was very diverse with North Atlantic fish and plants, some of them very bizarre.

One well hidden fish

Yeah, well you’re ugly too

 
In the bizarro world

The highlight was a diver coming down feeding some pretty good sized (and snappy) fish, but I only got video of it. The only non-native attraction was some penguins that a place in Spain had too many of. They really, really smell bad.

“I can walk like a penguin”

Then it was off to the viewpoint. Not too shabby.

The view from Mt. Aksla

View from a side path

This is a statue of a famous mountaineer who’s maps, 100 years old maybe, are still in use.

I wanna be a famous monutaineer, too!

From there it was a brief tour of the architecture of the city, including monuments of the starting and ending points pf where the great fire of 1904(?) left 10,000 people homeless. We saw some pictures, and it was pretty horrific. From there, back to the shops, and another expensive round of drinks. $25 for a beer and a rum and coke. Alcohol is heavily taxed here.

Day 13–Geiranger, Norway–The Eagle Rd. and Mt. Dalsnibba

So this was to be the highlight for me of the entire cruise. Up a couple of mountain roads to viewpoints over the fjord, but first we had to gather and wait for a tender. Then we had to gather and wait to board the tender once it came. Then we had to wait for the putt-putt motor to get us to the dock. Blech – this sucked. The diesel fumes were bugging Neesh on top of it.

We got on the bus, and we headed up the Eagle Road first. This is the road to get to Oslo, and the only year round road to the town. I started taking pictures immediately and copiously. Unfortunately, there were lots of reflections from the windows.

The sights were coming even though we hadn’t started climbing yet

Due to the steep sides of the fjord, the road was naturally a series of hairpin turns. And the roads here are barely wide enough (by a few inches) for two buses. So rounding the hairpins, cars had to keep back a ways to allow the bus to make a wide turn. It became clear who the tourists were as they sat in the middle of the hairpin not knowing what to do. There’s farms along the road, despite no flat ground to be had. Given that, goats seemed to be the lawnmowers of choice.

Note the sod/grass roof on the building at left, we saw a lot of that here

We stopped at the viewpoint, and I climbed up a little path from there for the views. That and I had to pee wicked bad.

Seven Sisters waterfall just in view

Note the steepness of the sides of what we came up.

As we headed back to town to go up the other road, Neesh was getting overheated, and starting to feel pretty crappy. I was tempted to take her off there, but I really wanted to continue, and just hoped she’d feel better.

Tons more hairpin turns and we stopped at a viewpoint some ways up, and I could see she was not getting better at all. Now I was screwed, short of sending a taxi all the way up, and who knew how long that would take. All I could do now is comfort her as best I could and, of course, take pictures so she knew what the views were like…

The views don’t suck

There is a village about halfway up, just beyond which is where the road closes for the winter. It seems to be the only flat land around. There large farms there, and it seems like it’d be a pretty cool place to live.

They say it’s a hayfield, but it’s clear they grow giant marshmallows, just like in the states

The tour guide was excellent, and provided a lot of history on the road. In places we could see the old road, flanked by tombstone looking rocks for a guardrail, and only one vehicle wide. Yowza. There were huts along the way where the road crews lived, and they stuffed a lot of people into these small buildings.

At one point very high up next to a large lake, the road continues on to the outside, but a toll road would take us to the summit.

Clear Lake

Neesh was in misery at this point, and I felt like an ass for not getting her off in Geiranger. Only 3 km and we were at the top, though. And oh, what a view.

The water in the fjord can be see very far away, just left of center in the upper portion of the view

Screwed up panorama…

The back side complete with their version of Half Dome

One final picture in a very long post. Note the houses in the field some distance away.

Don’t trip out the back door

Day 13–Sailing into Geiranger, Norway

Another two post day because of the amazing amount of scenery. This one tops the charts, however. It is singularly the most beautiful place on earth. “Wow” was the word I used over and over again to describe it, even when looking at the same thing. Looking out from the ship, you swore it was a movie backdrop because it was just too beautiful.

I woke at 6 AM, knowing we’d be in the fjord itself by that time, and as much as I wanted to go back to sleep, I forced a look out the window. That woke me up immediately. This is the first view I had, and we were still 4 hours from setting anchor.

View from the balcony, day 13

We just kept passing spectacular scenes. Cliffs, waterfalls, and the occasional house perched on the side of the fjord. I was so glad to have not missed this.

One of the many lesser falls. The fjord reaches up to 6000 feet high and 1000 feet deep.

This one emerges from a cleft

Falls a’plenty

Rounding a bend

And then we finally emerged at the end of the fjord, one of Norway’s longest, to the village of Geiranger. We scheduled the tour to the Eagle Road overlook and then up to Mt. Dalsnibba at around 5000’, and I had been a bit bummed about the low overcast, but then something strange happened after breakfast. There was a bright yellow object in the sky.

Geiranger. Mt. Dalsnibba is the lump showing way in the center background.This is a popular RV destination.

Looking right of Geiranger

Looking back up the fjord

The little village shown in the above picture is camps, but people live there year round, and it is cut off from town by road in winter due to avalanches. Two roads lead here, the Eagle Road and the Geiranger Road (heading towards Dalsnibba), the latter of which is closed in winter. Indeed, I have seen postcards with 15 foot walls of snow with a bus going through once it does open in late spring. Crazy!

Like the Grand Canyon, pictures cannot possibly convey the true beauty of this place, you just have to see it for yourself, including the fjord by boat or kayak. And this was only the beginning of the day.

Day 12–Molde, Norway–Hiking and Shameless Peakbagging

So I had noticed on the town map some hiking trails leading up to a viewpoint high above town, and was itching to go. Since we had made our run through town, I gathered my stuff together. Neesh was worried about me hiking in some foreign country, but I assured her it should only be a couple hours and it’s perfectly safe, so off I went at 1:30, map in hand.

My hiking buddies will take great pleasure that in the myriad of roads going up, I got horribly off track, zigging and zagging all over the place. First, the map was not all that good, missing a ton of roads, and second, not all the roads were named on the map, so there was much confusion on my part. Finally after some backtracking, I arrived at the path, meeting a couple who left the ship the same time as me, but moving much slower. “We just kept going up.” That seemed the smarter way now, doesn’t it.

The trail is more of a wide dirt path, passing through mixed forest.

I hope this isn’t a nudist path

There were many familiar trees and plants, like my old foe the fir, and I also saw Indian Paint Brush and clover flowers. Can’t say I’ve seen these before, though.

Flowerus Clueless

I also found blueberries. Wait, you’re somewhere else. They look like blueberries. The leaves look right. Indeed they taste like blueberries. Munch munch munch. Yummy. There were plenty of viewpoints along the way towards the harbor.

Guess I’m getting up a ways

Man, was I out of shape. A month without hiking, and this trail went on and on and on. Finally I came to the viewpoint, but then spied the true summit in the near distance.

Hmmm, what’s it like over there?

It had taken 1:15 to get this far, and I’d be pushing the two hour “limit” I had set, but shameless peakbagger that I am, I had to tag the true summit. Off I went, now on a real hiking trail, complete with skinny path, lots of rocks, and even a bog bridge.

As I neared the summit 15 minutes later, I was now above treeline. Pretty cool considering I was only at 1300 feet or so.

View from the top

The trail continued on from here, and I wished I had a few more days now to explore.

But I wanna go there too!

There was a gentleman doing something near a hut at the top, and as I turned, he said something in Norwegian. I said, sorry, I’m American, and as most Norwegians can, he then switched to English. He explained there was a book to sign in inside a metal box. Oh, a register! Cool! He said that to get people out, these are spread about the local trail system on the peaks, and if you sign in 6 of them, and provide a photo of the code on a laminated card for each, you get a mug. Six peaks? My kind of list!

One down (Mt. Television Antenna North of Varden), five to go!

OK, it was now 3:05 and I had to beat feet back before Neesh got worried. No issues there, going down is also quick and easy for me, and I found the most direct way back this time (surprisingly…). Back at the room at 4:00 and Neesh wasn’t worried, but bummed I didn’t get any blueberries. Guess I should’ve said 3 hours instead. Turns out to have been a 6.5 mile hike and 1460’ of gain. Not too shabby after all.

Day 12–Molde, Norway, entering and walking about

Insomnia sucks. I laid awake until 2:30 (with the last of the clocks forward time change) before falling asleep, and woke at 5:50 to Neesh stirring about. After looking out the window I was glad to be awake as we were heading towards Molde.

On the way, I spied Norway’s version of North Percy Peak in Groveton, NH.

Holy rock faces, Batman

We passed Alesund, where we would be going in two days. Then we entered the bay going to Molde, with some interesting little villages along the way.

Nice backyard

Norway’s version of Cannon Mtn. was here, too.

So this is what it looks like without ski runs

And its version of Eagle Cliff, too.

And then just plain incomparable scenes like this.

We arrived in Molde and walked about the small city. It’s a very fragrant place, as wild roses grow everywhere and were in bloom. Prices were also far more reasonable than Iceland.

A rose even on the building

And someone left one on the fountain