arrived in Svveden- Stockholm

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Hi Guys,

We have been extensively travelling by bus for the last couple of days so I wont bore you too much with the details. We had mooorree beautiful scenery on the way to Sweden, Im getting sick of it ...well ,not really. The day before yesterday we went north from Bergen to the Sognefjord. It is the longest and considered the most scenic in Norway. They stretch up to 200 kilometres in land so of course I could resist taken dozens of snaps. I've attached a few here, hopefully you consider them some of the better ones.

We went up a part called the Norjefjord which at a guess with my fluent norvegian means narrow fjord . They can get as narrow as 250m and up to 1300 metres deep,.. so they can be as deep as the mountains on either side are tall if you get my drift.. pretty impressive..
I must say Norway has the most impressive natural scenery I have ever seen. I'm no doctor Dolittle but I've seen a few places... We finished our two hour boat cruise at a village called Flam ... no, Im not clearing my throat... it's a little picturesque town at the end of one of the fyords... it has a mountain train that goes from the bottom to the top and is amongst the steepest in the world . We unfortunately spaghettied our way up the moúntain on our bus .... Not for the feint hearted...

We ended our day back in Geilo in the mountain skiing resort I mentioned previously. Nice place with a beautiful view of the mountains if you could only see... there was a dense cloud cover and raining again as it has been doing on most of our trip so far..

We have met this lovely Australian couple and their son. So we were hanging out with them, I went to the bar to get a round of drinks ,as you do and came back to sit down beside this blondle lady whom I thought was Brians wife ,Debbie , who actually turned out to be a Norwegian lady called Elisabeth, I apologised but we got engaged in conversation ..as you do... Her husband Arild joined us and we had good craic.... ended up closing the bar..very enjoyable night... i promised to add them to the blog ...so everybody please welcome Arild and Elisabeth!!

the next day we only had an 8 hour bus trip to Karlstad,Sweden boring ride through the forests punctuated by a laughable meal on the way. We stayed in a prison... luckily it had been converted into a hotel around 68 but it was probably the best stay you could ever have in a prison.. Karlstad is a unremarkable town so onwards to Stockholm..

We finally arrived yesterday in Stockholm .... Heather is going to take over the interesting bit.... Here we are in Stockholm, huge, bustling city. We have walked just about every inch of it in the past few days. The old city of Stockholm is lovely , very quaint with narrow little alleyways filled with cafes and ice cream shops😊 Ronan had a waffle cone with 5 scoops of ice cream today, I on the other hand, watching my waist and all, had 3 scoops.... ha ha. We seem to base our day around eating and deciding which sweet thing we would like to try next! today we visited the Vasse Museum which contains the best preserved 17th century warship in the world. Doesn't sound too interesting but it was really spectacular. It sank on its maiden voyage leaving Stockholm and was buried under the sea for 300 years until it was salvaged. 95% of the ship is still intact. I then persuaded Ronan to go bicycling with me as I have been bugging him since we arrived in Scandanavia and we are finally getting some decent weather. The shops here are amazing but travelling with a backpack has seriously hampered my shopping needs. Our room looks like a chinese laundry. Ronan has his smelly shoes hanging out of the hotel window!!!! Must head off now. we get our first lie in bed tomorrow morning in about 4 weeks, whaich I haven't stopped going on about!!!! Hope everyone is great, miss you all. Love Heather and Ronanxoxoxoxo

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