I'm trying not to write a travel blog that is only "and then we did this and then we did that" but part of travel is doing this or that. Here is some of what we did last week.
On Monday we left Stockholm and flew to Ålesund via Oslo and arrived late afternoon. Someone we met who lives in Norway was surprised we were going there since it's not really on a lot of tourists' radar. It's where Norwegians go to vacation he said. With good reason I see.
Tucked into the coast of the Norwegian Sea, it's a beautiful waterfront town. On our first night there, we walked, had a nice dinner, and then walked along some of the hills and down a few winding narrow streets. It was a beautiful night and the sun doesn't set here until a bit after 11:00 and the sun sets in long, lingering, lovely ways.
We were up fairly early the next day to do a bit of a hike. We climbed the Aksla mountain (418 steps) and it got us a very nice view of the city and area.
I should mention the prices in Norway were/ have been/ are alarmingly high. We ended up looking the other way and paying the Kroners for a beer and a coke at the restaurant there just so we could sit and take in the view. Dale called his beer 'the prettiest beer ever' and it might well have been.
For lunch we grabbed a sandwich at a grocery store and ate at a bench by the water and watched the boats come and go. It was a lovely sunny day and after Stockholm, I'm not taking those sunny hours for granted (sidenote: I'm writing this in Røros as it pours). In the afternoon we went to the Art Nouveau museum (Jugendstilsenteret). One of the reasons we went to Ålesund was its Art Nouveau architecture. The town burned down entirely in 1904 and, rather amazingly, it was all rebuilt in an Art Nouveau style. The museum was quite lovely and it featured a 'time machine' -- basically an elevator with audio visual cues to take you back in time to the time of the fire. Once through the time machine, they had a very interesting audio visual presentation where historical accounts of the fire were narrated by voices while videos of modern people's faces made them seem alive and real.
It was a powerful exhibit and I'm not doing it justice at all. I love Art Nouveau so it was a real treat to see the buildings and go to the museum.. The rest of the day was spent wandering and taking in the lovely scenery. We went on a 6k walk along the water and then had a great dinner overlooking the harbour. We had bacalao (which we'd also had in Portugal-- they used Noregian cod, I recall them telling us) and after dinner we walked and had ice cream (people seem to eat a lot of ice cream here) and watched the sunset. This is really one of the nicest places I've ever seen.
On our last day in Ålesund, we hopped a city bus that took us to the base of the
Sukkertoppen mountain which seemed high and challenging but clearly no Croagh Patrick.
The air here smelled so nice-- sea breezes and warm pine-- it was a wonderful walk and the views from up top were otherworldly and seeing them permeated our sense of joy for the rest of the day.
We found a good and reasonably priced place for dinner and then closed the long evening on the deck at our hotel. We paid a crazy amount for a beer and cider (still can't quite bring myself to pay the kroner for wine) but it seemed worth every cent to sit outside and watch the sun set late into the evening, It was hard to leave the deck to pack up to get ready to leave early the next morning.
The next morning (Friday), we left the hotel to catch the Hertigruten cruise ship go travel through the fjords and see the famous Geiranger fjord.
I know I described this somewhat in the last post. All I can really say about this is that I've hardly seen anything so beautiful or done anything as wonderful as sailing through this landscape. I'll let the pictures do the talking there. More tomorrow about Røros. Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment