AllisonNorway

I arrived back in Bergen Friday morning at 7am. I headed back to my dorm to pack and check out of my room. I had two more mountains to climb. After turning my keys in and leaving my stuff in Stephie's room, she and I headed to climb them. It was late afternoon when we started and it took about two hours to climb Lyderhorn. When we reached the bottom we were both exhausted and it was starting to get late. We decided to forgo climbing Damsgardsfjellet. Although I would have loved to climb all seven mountains I'm happy with the six I climbed. Stephie said that the last one was the steepest climb and most boring anyway. I guess I will just have to come back to Norway to complete the last of the seven. ... read more

Our train arrived in Munich at 2am. Marvin had arranged for us to stay with a friend of his that night. In the morning we checked into our hostel, locked our luggage, and headed to the city center. We had lunch at Donsil, a restaurant with nice outside tables. We split white sausages, a pretzel, roasted pork, and potato dumplings and topped it off with a cold beer. I am really enjoying the food in Germany! After lunch we took a 3 hour free walking tour of the city. My favorite part was watching the large cuckoo clock on the city hall. It’s the largest cuckoo clock in the world and three times a day it goes off for 15 minutes. We also went to the English Gardens and watched a few people surf on the ... read more

We arrived in Stockholm Saturday evening and headed to our hotel Rica Kungsgaten. We explored around the hotel and shared a calzone for dinner. We slept in Suday morning and enjoyed a large breakfast. The hotel offers: crepes, eggs, bacon, sausage, sliced meats and cheeses, cereal, fresh fruit, fresh breads, and much more. After breakfast, we walked along Gamla Stan, old town Stockholm. We stopped in front of the palace and at 1:15 watched a spectacular changing of the guards, complete with calvary, and a mounted brass band. They are not always mounted, but we were lucky! It was like marching band to the extreme. Talk about playing music and moving all while mounted on a horse. After the changing of the guards we toured the armory. As Sweden's oldest museum it contains suits of armor, ... read more

This past week has been a busy week! On Tuesday morning we woke up to pouring rain in Bergen. We took the bus to the train station to catch our train to Voss. This was the first leg of Norway in a Nutshell, a popular tour of Norway. In Voss we caught a bus to Gudvangen. We traveled along the winding road in the rain. We passed numerous waterfalls and drove down a switchback road to the bottom of the fjord. There we boarded a boat cruise through Aurlandsfjord and Sognefjord, the world's longest and deepest fjord. It was still raining, but luckily the boat had covered areas. For the most part we remained dry, other than when the rain was angled towards us. The cliff walls along the fjord were steap and many waterfalls flowed ... read more