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Published: August 6th 2007
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Does anyone else remember this book from when we were kids? (I vaguely remember the cat from France like to sing and dance, and I imagine the cat from Spain did something or other in the rain but that's for another blog...) To put it straight Norway is EXPEN$IVE with a capital 'OUCH' (Take London, and multiply by a factor of ridiculously expensive and that might approximate Norway). Often we bought a loaf of bread from the supermarket and shared half for lunch and the other half for dinner! So I really don't know how on earth the cat could afford to buy enough food to get big enough to result in the alleged doorway incident. The whole thing reeks of diversionary propaganda adults used to trick us kids with…
Putting aside the cost of everything, Norway is amazingly beautiful - there are no adjectives to describe this country.
We flew into Bergen which has the dubious honour of being the wettest city in Europe. Ironically this was pretty much the only place we went in Norway without rain! We only had half a day here so we walked around the harbour and took the Floibanen Funicular up to
the top of Mount Floyen down for an absolutely amazing view of the city and surroundings. We walked back down and saved ourselves the GDP of a small African nation!
From Bergen we embarked on a tour through the fjordland of middle Norway. All my life I have wanted to take a boat ride through these fjords I had seen in pictures and it was definitely worth the wait. Not even the Japanese tourists attempting to tame seagulls above our heads (with their lunch) could ruin it! We stayed in the small town on Flam and from there spent an amazing 3 days cruising, walking, cycling, glacier hiking and just relaxing in some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen. Word’s can’t possible do it justice so I’ll just attach loads of photos (which also don’t do justice but I’m all out of options here!)
The trip to Oslo, was meant to be a few hours by train. Unfortunately a flood and landslide over the rail line meant we were slightly delayed getting into Oslo…which is a good thing since it turned out we were booked into A MATERNITY WARD!!! I know we have a slight
The Nigardsbreen Glacier
We took the 4.5 hour trip from Flam to climb this baby and it was definately worth it. It's MASSIVE, but in just a few years it has receeded from where Steph is standing. reputation for exaggerating but this is the honest truth. I booked online what looked like a fairly normal hotel - what they didn’t tell us was it was located in the hospital grounds and was where newly born babies and mothers recover after delivery. It was complete with maternity bathroom, white towels with blue hospital stripe and breast feeding channel (boys, let me tell you there is such a thing as too much information…)
Oslo wasn’t the beautiful scenery that we had got used to, but it did have some really interesting museums. Easily the best was Vigeland Park. This park is lined with about 200 granite and bronze human statues that a Norwegain artist Gustav Vigeland donated to the city. The statue, from various life stages, culminates in the brilliant monolith of interwined bodies. We were moved by the beauty of the statues and the simplicity of the artist’s message: from screaming babies to rumbling brothers, intertwined lovers to tranquil older couples, the journey of life is beautiful.
We quickly visited the Norwegian Resistance museum (lots of info about during the war but with an abrupt finish…who won?!), the Nobel Peace Prize Museum (and not even the
Vigeland Park
With the monolith in the centre Norwegians understand why the Swedish Nobel bequeathed them the honour of bestowing the prize), the open air Spirit of the Wild photo exhibition and the National Gallery (famous for Munch’s
The Scream).
Possibly our jam packed schedule could explain why we were slightly off the ball the next day. After buying the wrong (non-refundable) train tickets to the airport, we arrived to discover our plane was already on it’s way to Tromso (Steph, I apologize once again for the error). So we bought new tickets and tried a second time (welcome to Norway getting even more expensive!) Hopefully I've learnt a good lesson about triple checking departure times!
Tromso is located at N69°40’ - deep inside the Arctic Circle. Tromso was experiencing a 28°C heatwave, so felt more like Sydney! It was a little fustrating becuase it seemed that nothing was working in this town. Cable Car - out of order; Whale Watching - cancelled; Bicycle rental - no bikes. So we entertained ourselves as best we could with a fantastic Midnight Sun RiB (boat) ride and plenty of walking, including up the ridiculously steep mountain the Cable Car normally goes (Mountain 1, Anth & Steph 0). It
was so cool seeing the midnight sun - it didn’t even come close to setting. The nightclubs had massive block out curtains up which was funny and it was even funnier to see the people stumbling home after a big night while it was still broad daylight! I have a hard enough time getting Steph to bed on a normal night, but it was near impossible when it was still full daylight. It’s cool as a novelty, but the flip side of this is 2 months without sun so we decided we were quite happy with both day and night all year round!
Anth
(P.S. There is a second page of photos if you click through...)
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glen
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Fishy fishy fishy
your dinner looks tasty, it looks like something you might cut into just to find another few little fishes.. or an old boot or something?! Norway looks amazing!!!