Norway Final Day

Our last day in Norway.

We went for a drive to see the Voringsfossen Waterfall, which was pretty beautiful.

I think, however, we are ready to leave Norway now. It is so empty everywhere, and I think we have gotten, dare I say it, a bit saturated with the Norway scenery, as beautiful as it is.

I find it sort of amazing, the way the human brain seems to need differing stimuli so frequently: too much city, needs quiet beauty; too much of the same mountains and fjords, needs something different yet again.

Well our brains are certainly going to get something different, as we are heading to Berlin. I know we sort of swore off cities before, but we are going to give it a go anyway. If it turns out to be a mistake, we can head somewhere else.

Berlin seems like it will be a fascinating place. Steve was there many moons again, right as The Wall was coming down, so I imagine it will be amazing for him to see the differences.

Plus I have been reading so many Len Deighton books over the past few years, I feel that I already know the myself!

In addition to being our last day in Norway, today also marks 11 weeks since we left San Francisco.

Eleven weeks, I cannot believe it has been that long. It feels both like the time has flown by and gone at a snail's pace at the same time, if that is possible.

Thus far it has definitely been challenging: getting sick so often was obviously hard, but there have been other challenges that I didn't exactly expect.

Just filling days can sometimes be difficult, and having to figure out where to go next and where to stay has also been harder than I thought it would be.

Hardest of all I think, has been being without friends for so long. I thought we might meet more people along the way, but apart from our friends' wedding in England in June, the one couple we met while kayaking the Geirangerfjord, and the weekend we spent in Paris with Paul and Christen, we haven't had anyone else to talk to or go out with.

When was the last time you spent 11 weeks, 24/7 with your spouse in, for the most part, small spaces, with hardly any time to yourself or with other people?

It can be difficult at times, and a bit confusing, because sometimes I think we want desperately to just get away from each other, and yet we also know that, for this time, we're kind of all we have!

I think if we can make it through this trip and still want to spend time with each other after, then we can make it through anything!

Next post...from Berlin.

Melkevoll Bretun

Currently we are staying in an area of the Western Fjords called Oldedalan. It is almost impossible to find on a map, and in fact, we couldn't even find Oldedalen on Google Maps, but the town of Olden we could find, and that is about 24km from where we are. I cannot really even begin to describe how beautiful it is here.

We are staying in a cabin (the second on the left in the photo above) that is part of a large campsite called Melkevoll Bretun at the foot of the Briksdalbre Glacier. All around us there are mountains, raging waterfalls that cascade down the mountains and become the icy-blue rapids that rush by our door, and in the distance, the quiet fjordwaters.

It is truly an amazing place. Yesterday we walked up to the foot of the glacier. Well not exactly the foot, but close enough. The walk is about 60 minutes from where we are staying, and, is of course, a straight vertical ascent. People certainly are fit here. Along the way there are markers of where the glacier used to terminate in the 1700's, 1800's, 1900's and of course, now. It is incredible to see how much this glacier has retreated in the past few hundred years.

At the foot of the glacier is a still, peaceful pond of melted ice, and there are chunks of ice floating in it. Brave souls wade into the water to carry out as big a lump of ice as they can carry, and then everyone in sight takes turns picking it up and having their picture taken with it.

We are looking forward to taking some more hikes and to going kayaking in the fjords. This is such beautiful country, and I am so glad we decided to continue our journey. I would not have wanted to miss this.

The Norwegians here have all been extremely nice to us, and so far we are the only native English-speakers here.

I do have one question though: what on earth do the Norwegian people eat in day-to-day life?! Restaurant food that we had in Lillehammer was not good, and the only affordable item on the menus was pizza.

In the grocery stores, meat is incredibly expensive: two salmon fillets cost almost $50, and I'm pretty sure they were from frozen. I had the idea that fresh fish was going to be abundant and relatively inexpensive, but clearly I was wrong. Maybe this is why they eat so much ham and cheese and waffles-they are the only things that are affordable. And hot dogs. They LOVE hot dogs.

They do seem to also have a love for food in tubes. I saw many items in the grocery that were in tubular form: mayonnaises, both plain and in many different flavors like bacon and shrimp; all sorts of condiments; Nougatti (that wonderful Nutella-like spread); plus all sorts of caviar and fish pastes.

These caviar tubes are yummy. Well, the tubes aren't yummy but the stuff inside is. It's like a red caviar paste that you can spread on a cracker and it is tasty. Why we don't have more tube-fish in The States I will never understand. I'd buy it, that's for sure.

Rally

Well, I don't want to be too optimistic here, but I think we may be starting to rally a bit.

Steve is still under the weather, but after a major crying jag this morning (mine), during which we tried to decide whether or not to pull the plug and head back to San Francisco, we decided to carry on a bit further.

It would be such a shame to miss Italy and not try to see some of the spectacular scenery we were hoping to see along the way. And since we haven't yet tried staying in one place, I think we would be stopping prematurely.

So we have decided to make a go for Norway, where we will stay for at least two-three weeks. That will give us a chance to relax and settle in a bit, and enjoy some quiet and natural beauty.

Just knowing we have three more nights here in Alsace is comforting. Neither of us has left the apartment today. We've done some planning, read, watched movies, done laundry, and it has been wonderful.

I think I forgot that sometimes it is possible to get sensory overload when traveling, and it can be necessary to just tune out, stay in and recharge before moving on to the next thing.

I'll be honest with you, it's been such a lazy day...I haven't even brushed my teeth!