Nutty about Norway..

I think that as a family we have collectively fallen in love..with Norway. We had a fantastic vacation, one of the best we have ever had. The pics below give a taste of what we saw and did. The scenery was breathtaking, just when we thought it couldn't get any better we could turn a corner and be astounded. We walked through clounds, scrambled over boulders, climbed on glaciers and waded through waterfalls and streams. As you can probably tell it was a very outdoorsy holiday, we spent all our time on foot exploring the countryside. We fit in a bit of culture in Bergen but by and large we spent our time with mother nature.

Our first night in norway we spent in Bergen, looking around that beautiful city. Sam was taken with the fish market and wanted to bring home one of the live lobsters as a pet. From Bergen we hit the road for Flam. It was about a 3 hour trip, hindered by constant heavy rain and a rental car with no get up and go. We seemed to spend most of the journey going through tunnels, in fact, in the week we were there I think we must have set the world record for tunnel driving!

Flam is a lovely little resort town and the end of a fjord. It is very small, with only one hotel, a few guest houses and one restaurant and pub. For a small town there was quite a bit to do and we managed to spend both days there hiking around the surrounding mountains and along the side of the fjord. Most of the visitors seemed to come for the day either by ferry or by bus so they litterally rolled up the sidewalks in the evenings. The boys amused themselves by painting warhammer figures and I caught up on my reading. That set the tone for most of our evenings. The boys would get out the paints and I would recline with a good book. It was very relaxing.

From Flam we travelled through the world's longest road tunnel (12 miles) then on a short ferry ride to the Jostedal valley to go glacier climbing. We stayed in a very small town called Gjerde a couple of miles from two of the arms of the glacier. It is a lush green valley and our nearest neighbors at the hotel were a herd of cows and a rushing river. We spent three nights at the hotel and in truth could have spent a least a week. There were tons of good walks in the area as well as rafting and kayaking. The highlight for us all was without a doubt climbing on the glacier. Getting to it invovled scaling huge boulders and sam was up to the challenge, in fact he was in his element. He was delighted to be able to go bouldering, especially as at the end of the trail was something as exciting as a glacier. Our guide for the glacier was extremely experienced and we felt completely safe at all times. I think we spent about an hour up on the ice, including having a picnic! Only sam was able to sit down as he was the only one with waterproof trousers. It was warmer than I expected up there, in fact at one point there was a warm wind blowing. Had it not been overcast I am sure that we would have been able to top up our tans nicely. Sam was on a huge high we we finally got back to the car, I think he didn't come down until he was tucked up in bed.

Having spent most of our vacation in the majestic outdoors being back in Bergen was a bit of a shock. We spent a few final hours there on our last day soaking up the sunshine and the atmosphere.

All in all it was a fantastic vacation and we definately plan to return.