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.