Been a While

Well, it has been quite some time since I have had both the time and the Internet access to sit down and write here! As that infers, we've been really busy!

After we left southern Norway, we spent a lovely night in Stavanger with another cousin. Although we had a very short visit, as we were on our way up the coast toward Bergen, then Ålesund, on the following day, our cousin made us very welcome and took us on a side trip to share one of her favourite photography locations with us! We went to a fabulously beautiful stretch of beach along the Atlantic coastline! I hope I've remembered correctly that the name of the beach was Sola Strand.

The next day, we took a bus (and a couple of ferries) north to Bergen in time to catch the Hurtigruten cruise up to Ålesund. There are actually several different ships in the Hurtigruten fleet, some of which sail to other lands, but most of which cruise up and down the western coast of Norway from Bergen northward. The ship we were on was called the Vesterålen, and though we travelled only as far as Ålesund, she would continue north for almost two more weeks.

The weather in Bergen was wet (as a massive understatement), but as we pulled out past Salhus, we moved out from under the clouds, and by the time we had passed Askøy there was the most amazing double rainbow between us and the shore:

We had about a week in Ålesund, staying with other members of our family, this time on my great-grandmother's side. Up until now the family visits this trip have been from my great-grandfather's side. It was exciting to also share stories and look at pictures from the other side of the Norwegian part of our family! My son also greatly enjoyed spending time with his fourth cousin, who happens to be a boy of the same age, and many of the same interests! As a close friend of the family (same age again) joined them, the three fellows had a great time playing video games, talking, swimming, and once in a while conversing with grown-ups. One of the times that we convinced them to join us for a walk, we went up to Fjellstua to exercise their young dog (and the rest of us) and to check out the amazing view of the city:

Another amazing view I got to see when I went visiting with Dad's second cousin and a friend of hers (the young fellows decided to hang out in Ålesund, that day) was the impressive motorway, called Atlanterhavsveien, that runs along, and bridges between a string of islands northwest of Molde.

The above satellite image comes from Google Maps. I took the following photo of one of the most impressive bridges along the route:

All too soon, it was time to leave Ålesund, but our kind hosts drove us to our next destination via the most scenic route possible: via Geiranger Fjord!

 The first picture was taken by my son from the ferry as we crossed Storfjord on our way to Geiranger.


The middle picture is of the head of Geiranger fjord, itself. You can see that there was a bit of a temperature inversion holding that thin cloud layer half-way up the valley.

The last picture is up at the very top, on the far side of the fjord, as we continued our way up over the mountains to eastern Norway.


A few hours later, we were in Lom at the top end of Gudbrandsdalen, one of the major valleys in eastern Norway, where we saw this amazing stave church: