Tues day last week visited Skjolden, a village in Norway's longest fjord, Sognefjorden. We saw a glacier!
A bloody massive chunk of ice next to a lake near Skjolden.
Skjolden was nice although quite a small place - it was interesting to see the mooring process here, as opposed to Stavanger, where they (I assume - I was asleep when it happened) sailed up to the dock, in Skjolden a boat went to the quayside with a rope, which two lads heaved onto a metal lumpy thing (the thing that you tie boats to - it probably has a technical term) with the aid of a tractor. At one point one of them nearly fell in, which was quite exciting.
On the Wednesday we visited Geiranger, probably the best known of the fjords and extremely pretty, although quite a touristy place. I did get a photo of two Norwegian policemen:
And I dropped off travelling book 9 in the ticket office in Geiranger, I'm hoping by now that someone has picked it up and taken it away!
Geiranger was very beautiful, but there (apparently) is a limit to the amount of water you can watch fall down mountains. We took an excursion up Mount Dalsnibba up some very tight and twisty roads (great fun because our coach driver knew exactly what we was doing, and a lot of tourists in hire cars coming the other way didn't), which culminated in staring into mist (it would have been a great view so I understand if the mist hadn't been there).
The last stop in Norway was Bergen, Norway's second city, and again a very beautiful place. We traveled up the Fløibanen, a funicular (cable railway) which goes up the mountain of Fløyen and is great - we were lucky to get a trip on it quite early in the day, it's a big tourist attraction and gets busy very quickly!
Bergen, taken from the top of the "funicular" (a very steep cable railway)
One thing about the cruise - at the start of the cruise we went through a safety induction, where we were told in the case of an emergency, amongst other things we have to take along with our life vest, is any medication we've brought for the trip. How long do they expect us to survive in the Norwegian Sea bobbing around? I don't think that I really need my sleeping pills for the 30 or so minutes I'll survive in the freezing water.All in all, a fantastic honeymoon and one that has kickstarted in me a desire to go on more cruises!
Schindler's Lift. It seemed funny at the time.
A waterfall. If you like mountains and waterfalls, Norway has lots.
That would be Geiranger village right down there.
We thought that this was the Seven Sisters, but now that I've looked at pictures of the Seven Sisters I don't know if they just weren't on form when we passed, or if we've photographed an entirely different and less impressive set of waterfalls instead.
My pudding one evening.
And the view from our balcony on the way home.
