so i've been a little busy...

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it's been a while since i've written a proper blog (and this one won't be too long either)...my apologies on that...i've been a bit busy trying to squeeze the most out of the eurail pass that marc and i got. we did a WHILRWIND tour of scandinavia - if we were't sleeping or on a boat or hiking we were on a train, there was no downtime at all. norway was spectacularly beautiful. took a fjord cruise down the longest and deepest fjord in the world. cliffs that went straight up into the sky and straight down to the water. train rides through mountain passes and valleys...ferry rides through tiny islands to even tinier villages.

our plan to get to the UK was to take a ferry from stavanger norway to newcastle or up through the sheltand islands to visit my dog's ancestral home (okay, and that area is super gorgeous as well!). right, so after a half a day on the phone with lots of help from various travel agents, we had our passage booked...on a cruise boat. so we had a day and a half to get to the ferry port, which happened to be close to one of norway's most famous tourist attractions - preikstolen, a glacier carved rock that juts out 600 meters above a fjord with vertical to overhung sides. so, a day and a half to hike it...only if we don't make all of our connections, marc won't make it back to dublin in time to fly home, so i was a bit stressed about it, especially since we had limited funds adn the bus to the trailhead ran at very limited times etc etc.

so here's a super quick rundown of how we managed it.
ferry to stavanger, ferry over to tau, bus ride to jorpland (now it's midnight), end of the bus line with no campsite around, talk to the bus driver via a kurdish man, bussed to a campsite. stealth camp, sleep for a few hours, wake up, pack up, bus to the preikstolen bus stop. at this point almost took a taxi up to the trailhead to avoid waiting for the bus, but the bus came, up to preikstolen. dump our packs at the hostel, chug water, RUN up the trail, sit on the outcropping for an hour, take lots of pictures, jog back. (marc ran to call a taxi down, me not so fast, wasn't so much feeling like dealing with a broken ankle) the roundtrip normally took 4 hours of hiking, we did it in 2 hours 15 minutes. back to the hostel. instead of the taxi we score a free ride with two ladies, drop us off at the ferry terminal instead of the bus stop, run onto the waiting ferry in tau to get to stavanger. preikstolen is now synonymous with fortuitous timing. it really couldn't have gone any better. so about the cruise....eurail has deals with cruise companies, so we got a hugely reduced fare, and it was overnight so we dind't have to worry about lodging, which was a welcome break. the cruise was okay, it's a big boat in a big ocean...we brougth lots of food on board so we ate, did laundry, napped (our legs hurt after the run!) and saw the movie die hard 4 - had to use up the norwegian kroner somehow! landed in newcastle england and began our adventures in scotland.

i'm writing this in galway ireland (west coast) and an about to run out of time on the computer, so that's it for now. i've been loving ireland, green and english speaking adn friendly and easy to get around now that i've been doing this for 3 months!

cheers,
kristin

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