Norwegia

So, back in July . . . of 2007 . . . we went to Norway to celebrate our anniversary and Katie Anne’s birthday.  We took several hundred pictures, and we’ve been a little busy since then, so we took some time to get around to posting them.  So long, even, that I didn’t even know I was pregnant until we got home from this trip, and now Callum is 5 months old.

We flew into Bergen and rented a car, because we thought we would enjoy the drive up to Balestrand, a town on the north edge of the Sognefjord.  Bergen itself was a perfect starting point - a beautiful little town with plenty of interesting sights to check out.  We didn’t have long, but we were anxious to get up to the fjord, so that was fine.

Our drive took forever, but it was a fun adventure.  Taking ferries seems to be a way of life up there.  The directions kept telling us to drive across the water, and there wouldn’t be a bridge on the map. . . we were glad to see the ferries, because we weren’t sure our rental car would make it across the fjords on its own.

Balestrand was as beautiful as we expected, and the people who ran our hotel were very helpful in pointing us toward fun things to do.  Since we had the car, we were able to use Balestrand as home base, but we could still drive around and explore.

We expected our trip to be a fairly lazy four days, but somehow we managed to squeeze quite a few big activities in there.  We went for a short hike that ended up - as short hikes are prone to do - being a fairly long and arduous hike.  The weather was gorgeous and we had a great time.  

Then we went kayaking in the fjord.  Before you ask, yes, the water WAS cold, but perhaps not as cold as you might imagine.  Also fun, and we enjoyed chatting and joking with our guide, who was American.  

We ate an enormous buffet meal at the big fancy hotel in Balestrand - no booze, though, because the cheapest wines there were the equivalent of about $70/bottle, and they were brands that we recognized as inexpensive wines.  Those Norwegians really tax their booze - no wonder people were loaded down with duty free at the airport!

We drove to Jostedalsbreen, the biggest glacier in continental Europe, and we were actually able to hike up and on part of it.  It was sort of like hiking a giant snowcone - not solid ice, but little pebbly ice.  It was actually less challenging than perhaps we expected, but the view was amazing, and we got to wear crampons and carry pickaxes, so we felt cool anyway.  

Here are some pictures of our adventures.

The last day, we took a ferry along the Sognefjord and down one of the narrow branch fjords (Aurlandsfjord).  The weather was pretty cold, extremely windy, and at times drizzly, but it was just astonishingly beautiful - so much so that it actually made up more than half of our trip photos and is largely the reason it took so long to sort through them and post this.  There are quite a few here, but they are all so amazing that it was very hard to choose.  As it is, this is less than 10% of them.

This short trip to Norway ended up being one of our favorite trips ever.  Norway is high on the list of places we would like to go back to.  We went for four days and barely saw anything, but everything we did see was breathtaking.  The blues were bluer and the greens were greener.  If you ever get a chance to go to Norway, go go GO!