Norway in a nutshell

Let me tell you, Norway has this tourism thing down. We bought a tour called "Norway in a Nutshell" that included train tickets and a boat ride. It was not cheap, and maybe if my mom hadn't come with me, I wouldn't have done it, but it was really nice. On the first day we took the train to Myrdal-on a glacier halfway to Bergen- and then switched to the Flam railway. The Flam line descends several thousand feet very quickly through a series of long tunnels, including one which does a 180 degree corkscrew inside the mountain. This section of the trip is gorgeous- ok every part of the trip was pretty spectacular- with a series of high waterfalls. We arrived in Flam in the early afternoon and went to find our accommodations for the night- a tent in the campground. As this tour is very popular in the summer, it was hard to find places to stay (and especially places we could afford) in Flam, the only hostel was full several weeks ahead- so we
borrowed a tent. Now, over the past few months I have slept in some great place and some not so great; since we also had ground pads and sleeping bags, this was actually not that bad for me. I would even say that I was more comfortable than in the hostel in Kiev (horrible bed!). For my mom though, it was a bit hard. My mom is an experienced camper, but in the past fee years, she has had a camp bed or has slept in our camper-van when we have gone camping. The other problem came when we actually tried to put up the tent. As Tor was using their
tent for a boys weekend, we borrowed an old tent from his family. An old tent with missing poles and no instructions. I've put up a lot of tents, but this one was a puzzle- there was a frost line that we decided to ignore and in better weather we may have ignored the rain fly as well, but since it had been raining off and on we couldn't risk that. We got the main part of the tent up and eventually rigged the rain fly so that it was covering most of the tent and not touching it. It wasn't pretty, but when it did inevitably rain that night we stayed dry. My mom was a bit sore the next day, but I slept great . . .

The morning found us and we packed up for the main event- a ferry ride on a fjord. I had never really known what a fjord was before- I was expecting a sort of craggy outcropping, but what it really is is a sort of finger of ocean that juts inland- like he opposite of a peninsula. Anyway, the boat trip took us from Flam which is at one end of the fjord up and down to another fjord and then we got on a bus to go to Voss.

Voss was a nice town with a pretty church and if I hadn't been raining, a lovely mountain lake to swim in. In fact we did see a few people swimming, but they were crazy- it was cold! In Voss we stayed in a nice hostel and in the morning we caught our train back to Oslo.

In Oslo, we got an "Oslo pass" one ticket to cover all the attractions in the city (seriously could they make being a tourist any easier?). The highlight was probably the folk museum where we saw a traditional dance performance and a gorgeous wooden church. Another highlight was the Nobel museum with an exhibit on South Africa.

Our week in Norway was over too soon, but I was excited to get on my way to my next destination: HOME! See you in Denver . . .