Alesund, Norway - Aug 3

Partly cloudy and 23 degrees is a wonderful change from the past couple of days. When we went to bed last night we were sailing through torrential rain and woke up to rain, but by the time we left the ship the skys were clearing.



another view of the hair pin road

hair pin road and WIND

and another

We have a long day ahead of us when we board the bus this morning, but it proves to be worth it. Much of the day is spent on the bus also, but we have quite a few photo stops along the way to break up the distance. Today is more about Norway’s waterfalls and mountainous terrain and less about fjords. We can’t help but see fjords - tomorrow’s focus is on fjords. It is like the mountains just popped up out of the sea. There’s messing around here - no beach, or slowly rising land, but water and mountains – maybe like some lakes in the mountains at home.


one of MANY waterfalls

over-hanging platform to view water fall



We take an incredibly winding road with 11 hair-pin turns called Trollstigen to finally reach a gorge. It is breath-taking. Once here we have ascended to about half-mile above sea level. The tourist infrastructure here is incredible – it seems like the road has been solely built for tourists.



Once we move inland a bit at the beginning of the day waterfalls appear everywhere – I don’t think I will ever tire of looking at and listening to waterfalls. The landscape here reminds me a bit of BC – roads carved into the mountain, pine trees and even orchards. They grow fruit here despite the fact that the latitude is the same as Anchorage, Alaska. Norway has a lot more sheep (and little else in terms of wildlife) and little buildings with lawns growing on the roofs as compared to BC.



another over-hanging platform

We don’t leave Alesund until 3 am, so we head to town after dinner. Our visit is short lived as we choke a bit on 12.00 beers! We weren’t surprised as we had been checking out prices and had chatted with a few people who had been here before, but – WOW! I guess that’s how they can have such swanky road-side ‘facilities’. I guess that’s a difference between here and BC too – fancy toilets at highway rest-stops.