Roadtrip in Norway - part 1 | Eliška Janoušová

Hey travellers!

So I finally went through all my photos from our biggest vacation this summer!

I have written several times, that I hate just laying on a beach for two weeks and a best vacation for me is hiking and exploring new places. If this kind of summer break is what you like as well, go through this post, it might inspire you for your next trip!

We got this idea in February this year, when we were visiting the Oslo & Bergen and in that moment we decided to get back in the summer. So we took Vojta’s best friend and his girlfriend and got onto the road. We planned everything on our own, so it took a while until the plan was real.

The biggest thanks goes to my mom, who lent us her off-road jeep. We slept in tents – sometimes in a campground, sometimes in the wild nature. The whole trip was planned with the help of the Norway guide by Lonely Planet and a huge road map of southern and middle Norway.

In Norway, the sun sets at midnight and rises at about 5, so the day is really long. The plan was 4.500 km on the road, which was quite a lot (and I even wanted to go to the Lofoten, which would make about 11.000 km lol). At the end, the odometer said a bit more than 6.000 km anyway.

Our path went from Prague through Hamburg to the danish port Hirtshals, where we spent the night in a local campground. We could drive the whole way to Norway, but none of us slept more than an hour the previous night due to lack of time. Before we pitch the tents, we drove to the most northern point of Denmark, called Skagen. We hung out for a while on the beach and took some pictures of the lighthouse, but it was getting really cold and windy, so we drove back to the campground.

At 10 am the next day, we got onto the board of our pre-ordered ferry from Hirtshals to Kristiansand. It took about two and a half hours to get there, but it didn’t even feel like that because as soon as the ferry departed, we fell asleep.

The weather in Kristiansand was perfect, so we chilled for a few minutes there and got onto the road again towards the Norwegian adventure. There was a lot to see before we even got to our first point of interest, so we kept stopping along the road. The first two days was the sun shining (unlike the rest of the trip), so we were really excited about that.

We stopped for example at Sogndalstrand, where we could see the typical Norwegian wooden houses from the 17th century. There was absolutely no one in this village, which was quite nice but a bit creepy on the other hand..

We arrived in Stavanger in the afternoon, where we hung out in the old town, characterized by dozens of white wooden houses. During the walk a group of people yelled at us, if we don’t want to join them. After we sat down to the table with them, they told us that they recognized the Lonely Planet guide and they found it amusing. They gave us some blankets, wine and fruit and told us where to go and what to see, that’s not in the guide. After it got quite cold, they even invited us to their house, which we had to decline, but at least took a selfie with them lol.

The next day we planned to the Preikestolen, or the Pulpit Rock in translation. The guide said it was a five-hours roundtrip with quite a big height difference, but not even that scared off hundreds of other tourists to go there. It took us a little bit longer due to my constant stopping and taking pictures, but it was definitely worth it!

The next morning we got up really early, because we had a big hike ahead of us. Trolltunga (troll’s tongue) took us 11 hours to complete and we came back absolutely soaked. Unfortunately it was sprinkling the whole time and at some parts we had to struggle through some snow and dirt. The path was really really steep and exhausting but the view from this unusual piece of rock jutting horizontally out of a mountain was just stunning. At the very top it was nearly freezing, so we couldn’t spend much time up there. Again, we were surprised by the hordes of people climbing the trail to the top with us.