After a string of early mornings, we were finally able to sleep in! We woke up to beautiful sunny weather and ate breakfast out on the hotel deck. The rest of the day was spent driving along winding roads with switchbacks and hairpin turns up to Alesund, with stops at the glacier museum, a few lakes, another fjord cruise, a walk out to a beautiful viewpoint, and lots of waterfalls. Throughout the driving so far, we have seen most ‘normal’ cars (ie. what you’d find in the U.S., including trucks and SUVs), not the typical small European cars.

Breakfast spread of local ingredients

View from the deck

Enjoying breakfast!
     

Little house with a garden and chickens next to the hotel

Woolly mammoths outside of the Glacier museum

View out the front of the glacier museum

Lake Hornindalsvatnet, the deepest lake in Norway and 13th deepest in the world.

Seven Sisters Waterfall

Adam and Ryan at a waterfall on the side of the road. Pretty rainbow

Other nice views.
          

I love these structures with greenery on top!
     

Moon’s out!

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