Another early morning . . . We woke up at 5am and left the hostel at 6 to drive up to Jostedal for a glacier hike. I previously mentioned that Norway was known for their tunnels, and we had driven through an 8km long tunnel. I quickly learned that was nothing! We drove through a 24.5km tunnel and multiple tunnels that had roundabouts inside of them!

Crossing a bridge into a tunnel

Roundabout inside the tunnel

The glacier hike took us on Nigardsbreen, one of the Jostedalbreen glacier tongues.  “Breen” is glacier in Norwegian.  Jostedal Glacier is the largest glacier in continental Europe.  The glacier hike was really cool! We were equipped with crampons and ice picks and fitted with harnesses. A large group was then hooked together with rope, so if one person went down, the rest followed. Ha ha, just kidding.

All ready to hike, with picks and crampons

Due to low water levels in the lake at the bottom of the glacier, we first had a one hour hike out to the glacier. Three hours were then spent on the glacier, followed by another one hour hike back. Unlike New Zealand, where the entrance to glaciers were roped off, people in Norway can just walk right up and onto the glacier.

Long hike out to the glacier

Loan is almost there

The hike was really cool (literally and figuratively). Walking over the deep crevices was the best part. The crampons dig really well into the ice. When we stopped for a break, I walked up a slope that was probably about a 60 degree angle. There was one person in our group who was very tentative crossing all the crevices, so it was very slow going at times. On the way back down, we picked up a person from another group who was also having some problems, which made it even slower going. We wouldn’t have minded so much, except it had been 4 hours without a bathroom at that point.

Be careful!

Hiking on the glacier . . .

Some very large crevasses . . .

View looking out from on the glacier

At the bottom of the glacier, there was an individual who had broken his ankle during the hike. Because it wasn’t a life threatening situation, I feel that it’s ok to say how fascinating it was watching the medivac helicopter come in, lower down a paramedic in a basket, fly back up, and then return again to pick the paramedic and patient.

Between the glacier hike and hotel, we stopped at Jostedal Kyrkje, where Oscar’s grandfather Lars Haugen is buried. According to Oscar, Lars used to carry mail across the Jostedalbreen glacier.

This is already getting to be a long post, but I can’t end it without writing about the great hotel we stayed at that night, the Fjaerland Fjordstove Hotel. This hotel was a small family owned establishment, almost more like a bed and breakfast, situated right on the fjord. The rooms were quaint, clean, and comfortable. There was a large sitting area on the first floor, with windows out to the fjord, filled with antiquey books, photo albums, and games, in all different languages. From the sitting area, there was a door out to a wrap-around deck looking out on the fjord. Also on the first floor was a beautiful dining room, where we enjoyed a delicious 3-course dinner made with local ingredients. The menu included Juniper smoked trout with beets and horseradish cream sauce, lamb with cauliflower and pumpkin purée with mint yogurt and salad with grapes, and meringue with lemon curd fresh cream and berries for dessert. We ate it all before we remembered to take pictures.  What a beautiful place to relax after some hard glacier hiking!

FJaerland Hotel

Local beer at dinner

We got up early to drive to Pulpit Rock (real name Preikestolen). I drove, Ryan slept. Because Ryan is not feeling great, I’ve been doing the majority of the driving. I enjoy driving, but not as much as I enjoy looking at everything we drive by, which is why Ryan typically does most of the driving. It’s hard to complain about driving an X3, it handles really nicely.

Pulpit Rock is steep cliff with a flat top, which makes it a huge tourist destination. The hike was 4km up and 4km back. It wasn’t too difficult, but definitely got a bit steep in a few spots. This trip is Kerwin’s first experience hiking, and he is doing an extraordinary job not only keeping up, but frequently beating the rest of us to the top. It was fascinating to us that there could be this huge cliff full of visitors and no fences. That would be unheard of in the US. There were some amazing views once there. Ryan and I both have Pulpit Rock pictures as our computer screen desktops now.

Just getting started . . . .
   

The mandatory pictures at the edge of the cliff . . .

Adam and Loan

Kerwin, Dan, and Adam

Ryan and Nicole

View from a small ledge above

Group photo. Can you see us?

Kerwin and I cautiously look over the edge

On top of the world . . .
One guy hiked to the top with his heavy duty drone and was flying it while we were up there. That would be some great video footage. On the way down, there was a zipline that ran across a ravine. I am never one to pass up a zipline, and it was crazy cheap (only $19, you would never find that in the US). Dan and I took the zipline across and met the others at the bottom. Dan, as I learned, is not a huge fan of heights. Not sure why exactly he decided to do the zipline, but pretty impressive.

The rest of the day was spent on the long drive (4 hours) to Loftus, on lots of narrow, curvy roads on the side of a mountain with no line down the middle. The locals all like to zoom around the curves in their fast cars. It was fun and exhausting driving. There were waterfalls and great scenery all along the way.

That evening we stayed at a hostel, where we had to rent sheets and towels, separately. I’ve stayed in a lot of hostels, only a small number of which required you to rent linens, and none where linens and towels were rented separately. We got in so late that there were no restaurants or grocery stores open for food, so we ate dinner at the gas station. Everyone except me got a hot dog, and I picked up some ramen noodles to make back at the hostel. Overall, the lodging was fine. Rooms with bunk beds (I got the top) and shared bathroom were very clean, and we met some nice Swedish girls traveling during their gap year (talk about making us feel old!).

Room at the hostel. I slept on top.

View out the window of our hostel

Tuesday morning was the start of our road trip. Kerwin, Dan, Ryan, and I took a cab to the car rental company to pick up our cars. Kerwin and Dan were helped first, and got the Golf Polo they had reserved. Ryan and I were helped next. The rental company was out of Polos, so got a free upgrade to an X3 instead. What a shame . We found our way back to the AirBnB with only a few wrong turns (signs in Bergen were slightly misleading). The Polo was too small to fit all of KLAD’s bags, so we put half of them in our X3.

We hit the road and drove about 15 min to Fantoft Stave Church. Stave is a style of architecture, after the English word ‘staff’, describing the columns that hold up the church. We visited a few of these types of churches in Norway. This particular church was a replica rebuilt after the original was burned in a fire.

After the church, we headed to Stavanger, our destination for the evening. The drive took us through 2 ferry crossings and a bunch of really long tunnels. The longest was around 8km. Many want down for the first half (at a 7 degree grade) and then back up for the second half. As I learned on the trip, Norway is known for their tunnel construction.

Once in Stavanger city proper, we got lost finding the AirBnB. This turned out to be a recurring theme throughout our driving experiences in Norway. We finally found it, moved the car 3 times because we couldn’t figure out from the street signs if we were legally parked, and unloaded our luggage. We headed across the street to the grocery store to pick up sandwich ingredients for the following day. Not obvious, was that there were actually two grocery stores across the street. We walked into the first one, split up and walked around. Something wasn’t right with this store, it looked familiar, but not quite ‘normal’. Turned out, we had walked into the Asian grocery store. No wonder we couldn’t find bread and deli meat! We headed next door to the typical grocery store, and purchased the necessary sandwich-making materials.

Loan found us a great restaurant for dinner called Matbaren. Of course, we got lost on the walk there.

Establishment we did not go to while in Stavanger

Back to the room for an early bed-time, cause the next morning was a very early start. Oh yeah, I should mention that, as is typical on vacation, Ryan was already sick. He caught a cold from Loan he thinks. At least we weren’t in a third world country, so no IV needed, just annoying sneezing, stuffiness, and congestion.

Also known as a train to a bus to a ferry to a train to a train. The ferry cruise through the fjords consisted of beautiful weather, nice views, tons of waterfalls, lots of colorful lupins. The scenery reminded us very much of New Zealand. Enjoy the pictures!

Here comes the first train

Views from the train.

Time to board the bus

View from the bus

The bus ride took us down a steep narrow mountain road with many switchbacks at 18% grade. It also went through Voss, the adventure capital of the Norway, where we caught a glimpse of someone parachuting.

Can you see the guy in the air?

How about now?

Adam and Loan waiting for the ferry

On to the ferry

Beautiful views from the ferry and enjoying the ride!  Lots of photos below courtesy of Loan’s camera.

Dan photobombs while Ryan is just wandering by

I get sleepy on the ferry

On to the Flamsbana!

Very odd stop at a waterfall where there was a performance with two woman singing/dancing on the rocks

Closer up picture of the woman at the falls

At some point during the performance, one performer ‘disappeared’ near the top of the falls, only to ‘reappear’ at the bottom of the falls.  I don’t remember who it was, but someone asked ‘How did she do that’?

The last train of the day.

Dinner was at a restaurant next to the fish market and was delicious! Ryan and I had seafood and fish soup. I followed it with salmon and scallop sashimi, both delicious. Ryan had wolffish, which looked really cool. Great meal all around!

Kerwin enjoyed the classic car gatherings in downtown Bergen.

Though we felt good when we arrived, it was pretty obvious we were a bit jet-lagged when everyone (even Kerwin) slept in late. Ryan and I woke up around 10:30am, made some breakfast in the room (after purchasing supplies at the 7-11 down the street the night before), and were ready just in time to make the noon walking tour. The walking tour was less walking than expected, but was still interesting. The guide took us through the Bryggen Museum, describing the many fires throughout the years that had burned down much of Bergen and viewing remnants from original buildings.

Similar to parts of New York, the parts of Bergen closest to the water are built on landfill. When a fire occurred, the rubble would be pushed into the water and new buildings would be built on top of that. She then walked us through the Schotstuene (old assembly hall) ending at the Hanseatic Museum.

Dried cod, at one time the principal export of Bergen — Looks delicious!

After the ‘walking’ tour, we did some more walking; to the train station to pick up tickets for the following day, past the lake, some art museums, around Johanneskirken.

Longhorn found in Bergen

Yoga in the middle of the square

I become part of the art

There was a slack line setup near the lake.  This is about as far as we all got before falling off.  Pictures courtesy of Loan.

View from Johanneskirken

Bryggen Quay from across the water. The 11 houses on the right are original and are all slightly tilted from settling.

Kirken means church in Norwegian, and we visited a few of them in Norway. We don’t quite understand why, but all the churches in Bergen were closed on Sunday afternoon.
Mariakirken, a big church in the center of town, had been closed down for renovations and had a special opening this evening for an organ recital. It was a new organ that had just been installed, and the builders of the organ were in attendance. There were a few presentations before the recital (all in Norwegian, best guess was thanking the people who donated $, thanking the people who built the organ, etc). The organ sounded great. But there isn’t really much to watch during an organ recital, since the organist plays from the 2nd floor back of the church. I’m pretty sure all of us fell asleep at some point during the recital.

We arrived in Bergen around 11am on Saturday, June 20^th. The plan was to take the bus into Bergen, which we quickly learned was easier said than done. Taking the bus itself was easy, trying to purchase tickets from the machine was a bit more challenging. The sign on the machine translated roughly to “only short cards”. Huh? Everyone else attempting to buy tickets also had problems. After a few of us trying with credit cards, Dan finally got his debit to work, and we all loaded on the bus.

Bergen is a beautiful city on the west coast of Norway, the second largest city after Oslo. The city is in an area known as the ‘Seven Mountains’, which we personally experienced while dragging our bags from the bus stop down near the quay up the steep cobblestone streets to our lodging.

This was the first time Ryan and I had used AirBnB. Turned out pretty well, very small flat, but clean and in a good location. The owners lived on the 2^nd floor and were available for anything we needed. We took a nap and showered, and met back up with Adam, Dan, Loan, and Kerwin (thinking this needs an acronym, cause I’m not going to want to type it over and over; how about KLAD?). The weather was beautiful, a trend on this trip, so we walked around the town, over to the Bergenhaus castle, with view of Rosencrantz Tower and Hakon’s Hall, down to the quay. Ryan and I were having some camera issues at this point, so most of our pictures are out of focus. Luckily, the issue seemed to resolve itself.

During the summer months, all the bars along the water, called Bryggen Quay, have tables and benches setup outside, where people sit and schmooze till midnight throughout the week. We stopped at the fish market to pick up some very fresh fish for dinner. The market was relatively small, maybe about a 100m of sidewalk with vendors (mostly fish) on either side. Ryan and I got kabobs, with shrimp, salmon, and cod. The shrimp and salmon were delicious; Some of the best salmon I’ve ever had. I also had samplings of reindeer and whale sausage, both of which just tasted like sausage.

Bryggen Quay

Delicious fish kabobs

Ryan enjoying his fish kabob

After dinner, we took the Floibanen funicular railway up to Mount Foyen to enjoy the beautiful view of the city.

View from the top

We walked back down, through the troll infested woods and past the invisible witch.

Troll pictures above courtesy of Loan.

The guys couldn’t pass up joining the late night crowds sitting outside at the quay, and we stopped there for a drink before heading to bed.

P.S. Loan took some amazing pictures throughout the trip, some of which I’m including in the blog.  I will try to give credit whenever possible.

Last year, Ryan’s cousin Adam told us about a trip he, Loan (girlfriend), Dan (brother), and Kerwin (father) were taking to Norway. Ryan and I never pass up a chance to travel to a new place, so we asked if we could tag along. Luckily, the timing worked out perfectly for us, and we were able to join them.

Selfie at JFK: Waiting for our flight

Huge thanks to Adam and Dan for planning an awesome trip! Ryan and I were total slackers, barely looking at any plans until two weeks before the trip. Adam and Dan planned a great route, starting in Bergen, heading down to Pulpit Rock, up to glaciers in Jostadalbreen, continuing up to Alesund, across to Ringebu, followed by Lillehammer, and finishing in Oslo. While it was a lot of driving, we really enjoyed having the flexibility of a car, and the view around each curve was more breathtaking than the last, and there were a lot of curves.