Hey everyone!
Here’s the second part of our Norwegian journey. Maybe you’d like to see a map of our roadtrip, so here it is!
After the hikes to Preikestolen and Trolltunga we decided that it was about time to get some rest, so we were all excited about our next stop – Bergen.
Me and Vojta were recognizing all the streets we had visited during our winter trip back in February. It was nice to come back and see some of the most interesting places of this marvelous town again. The most beautiful part is, of course, Bryggen, which we all visited in the first place. It was not so cold like last time so we spent some time in the town centre, especially the fish market with traditional “fish cakes”.
After visiting Bergen we were about to spend several days on the road more or less.
We drove on one of the most beautiful roads in Norway – Aurlandsfjellet, known also as “snowy road”, connecting Aurland with Laerdalsoyri, climbing over the mountain range. Underneath this astonishing road goes one of the longest mountain tunnels in the world, but we decided to take the more spectacular drive. There was quite a lot of snow on the top and we had to drive carefully because of all the sheep herds lying around in the middle of the road.
After the first couple of kilometres of ascending, there was a terrifying viewpoint from a modern, wooden vista that gives you an overview of Laerdalfjorden. We did not really see too much after this point, because the weather gods got somehow angry at us and send us a dense fog to wreck the rest of our drive.
Since we were driving through the mountains we spotted lot of glaciers, but no one was as much interested in taking a closer look at them as I was so I ended up only taking pictures from the car.
The next thing on the program was the Lovatnet lake, which we could recognize quite easily for its greenish color. We went to see the Lodalen ship wreck, which was about an hour round-trip. We could see the valley and all the surrounding mountains.
We arrived in Hellesylt later that night where we spent the night in a local campground and took off early in the morning. We took the tourist ferry across the famous Geirangerfjord all the way to the other end and a city, coincidentally called Geiranger. It took us over an hour and half to get to the other shore. We thought about renting some kayaks, but unfortunately the weather was not so wishing. There were multiple waterfalls falling into the fjord with the most popular one – Seven Sisters.
From the town of Geiranger is the only road you can take to get somewhere else. The road slithers like a snake and it is probably the road with most switchbacks I have ever seen. Not even the well-known Trollstiegen can beat this one. The views from above the fjord reminded me of the ones from Horseshoe Bend in Utah. We continued to be amazed by the nature around us and had to stop every couple of minutes to take pictures of everything. Unhappily, the fog stroke us again and we did not get a great view of the Trollstiegen road, which was impressive anyways. We were glad to see the fog go away as we descended to the bottom of the valley.
The next hike we did was Litlefjellet which gave us some spectacular views on the “Troll Wall” in the valley of Romsdalen. We happened to see just a little of “the wall”, but the experience was still magical, maybe especially because of the fog following us everywhere we went.
After this hike we were back on the road with rain in our back, as usually…our next target was Kristiansund – the northernmost point of our trip. The road that took us to Kristiansund is called Atlantic Road and is composed of several bridges connecting little islands and fjords. Kristiansund (it’s funny that the southernmost point in Norway we visited was Kristiansand) is a typical Norwegian town divided into three islands connected by a bridge and a ferry. We visited the oldest coffee place with its own roasting room and brought back some local coffee beans.
After this we started heading back south, visited Jotunheimen National Park, Oslo, Sweden and Denmark so there is still couple of places left you can look forward to hearing about.
Hope you are enjoying summer!!