August 11th - Aurland, Norway

We left the village of Flam on a ferry that took us to the village of Aurland on the Aurland Fjord. Flam is the first of five fjord villages we will be visiting, with Aurland being the second. When we stepped off the ferry we walked through the quaint little village of Aurland to find our room which was not difficult considering the size of the village. Where we stayed was down near the water so the rest of the village was built on the hillside as you can see below. Everywhere we walked was up hill and all of the streets were built with switchbacks which gave us interesting and higher views as you'll see later.

The next two pictures are from the inside of the old house where they serve breakfast in the morning.  Notice in the next two pictures the wood or coal burning stoves that were used to heat the house once upon a time and the copper pots and serving dishes.

Just for comparison I took a picture of the breakfast served here and while it was a very good variety it was not as extensive as the one in the previous post.

Right beside our room was this old boat house.

This is from inside the church that is right behind the our room. This church is over eight hundred years old and what struck me as somewhat interesting is, if you look at the size of the arches for the windows, the windows themselves were just very narrow slivers.

The village built this small Lagoon to give the locals a place where they can actually have a beach that was protected from the waters in the fjord which apparently can get a little rough with wind sometimes. 

This was around the edge of the lagoon

It made a good place to take another anniversary picture.

I thought some of these rooftops were interesting.

A bunch of different views from walking up to the higher elevations.

You can see the lagoon in this picture from one of the streets we were on that was higher up.

Looking back into the Flam valley.

A very small but protected marina.

Looking back into the village of Flam. 

The silver looking horizontal line through the center of the picture is not a road on the other side, it is a utility line from the side of the road that we are on.

Here is a bus stop shelter with a sod roof.

This picture is taken from the street behind our room. Our room is at the top of the white steps that you see near the center of the picture. The rooms of the place where we stayed are made up of several different former houses. They seem to take every small piece of space they can and create a room for tourists to generate income to survive through the winter.

And for all my friends that like to barbecue, we have seen in several grocery stores Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce. You'll notice the price here of 46.90 Norwegian Krona which is equivalent to about US$5.68.

August 10th - Oslo to Flam

I had a few people asked me about the breakfast bar so I included a few pictures to describe that to you. We will start off with the bread bar portion of the breakfast buffet. These breads and rolls were fresh (and often still warm)from a private bakery, not a commercial bakery, so they weren't perfectly sliced and some of them you had to slice yourself.

Starting from the left side of the sandwich material bar, the first one there with the red sauce was smoked mackerel in tomato sauce, then smoked trout, pate`, turkey, salami, and ham. Right next to the ham, the yellow round things you see, are pads of butter.

Moving on down the line from the right side you see some cucumbers, red and yellow peppers, four different kinds of cheeses, tomatoes, pickles, red beets, and cottage cheese. On over to the left those white pitchers contained a few different flavors of yogurt. The two tubes in the left front foreground are tubes of either mayonnaise or caviar mustard.  Not pictured were a variety of grains for cereal, dried fruit, hard-boiled and soft-boiled eggs, a few different varieties of nuts, scrambled eggs, bacon, turkey meatballs, small sausages, some beans that resembled baked beans, freshly made waffles, Danish pastries, and our favorite, freshly made croissants spread with Nutella. All the places we have stayed all had a good variety for breakfast but this particular place had the best variety.

After eating breakfast and checking out of a hotel, we walked into the Oslo train station and looked up at the board for our departure platform. It's not much different than going to the airport and checking for the departure gate.

The next several pictures are the countryside we saw on our train from Oslo to Myrdal.  This train heads north out of Oslo to the fjord area and it was just beautiful the whole time. We could not take enough pictures to do it any justice at all. When we first started out we saw pristine farms, a lot of trees, mostly pine but some hardwoods, and beautiful lakes. Then as we got higher up in elevation we saw magnificent waterfalls, very rocky areas, glaciers, and beautiful rivers. Our opportunity to get pictures was limited due to the shelters built over the tracks to help protect it from the snow. 

Once we reached Myrdal, we changed trains to the famous Flamsbana Rail Road that takes you from Myrdal down through the Flam Valley to the village of Flam.

August 7th - 9th - Oslo, Norway

We left Stockholm, Sweden on the morning of Sunday August 7th. The train ride from Stockholm to Oslo was almost 7 hours. Actually, I should say the journey from Stockholm to Oslo was almost 7 hours. The reason being is when they work on the railroad tracks they use a replacement bus for segments to detour on the train route. So we had to take a bus part of the way. It's not much fun to have to move your luggage from the train to the bus and back to the train again but that's the way it is and there's not a lot you can do about it. This picture is us waiting in the Stockholm train depot.

Even though there was a threat of rain we went ahead and went to a very popular garden filled with sculptures designed by the famous sculptor Gustav Vigeland. In the picture just below, the granite tower was not one Gustav sculpted himself but rather was designed by him and actually sculpted by three sculptors that worked for 14 years to carve 121 human figures in the granite tower. Do not zoom in too closely because the figures are anatomically correct of men, women and children all tangled up and are unclothed.

The bronze statues all around the fountain are also designs of Gustav and are also all anatomically correct and naked. Actually, every sculpture in the park is of naked men, women and children of all ages.

We left Vigeland Park and took a trolley to the harbor to catch a bus over to Viking Ship Museum. This sailing vessel was sitting in the harbour and is still used. I found it very interesting because of its age.

Although it's hard to see because of how dark it is this Viking ship was from about 820 A.D. People of power where buried in the ships along with food, their horses, their clothing, and much of their belongings. They were found and excavated in the late eighteen hundreds. This is one seriously old ship!

After leaving the Viking Ship Museum we went to the town hall. This doesn't look all that grand and it really wasn't on the outside because it was built in the mid-1950's.

However, this picture and the one below it, are hand-carved displays along with probably a dozen more as you approach the entrance of the town hall with each one telling a story. 

Once inside, many of the rooms are hand-painted murals in grand scale. This building is for when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by Norway to the recipient. It is common in the Scandinavian countries for a town hall to be the focal point of the city.

Later in the day we walk down the main pedestrian street in Oslo. As you can see we were joined by 100,000 of our closest Asian friends. Yes, you do see people wearing long-sleeve coats and long pants because it is chilly and windy here.

The yellowish colored building with the rounded front and the Norwegian flag on top is the Parliament building. Out front is a peaceful demonstration which happens quite often apparently. You can see there are many umbrellas up because it is raining and we are sitting on the second floor of a deli having dinner overlooking this park in front of the Parliament building.

This picture is of the Oslo Cathedral which is a Lutheran Church and it is where Norway commemorates its Royal marriages and deaths.

On Tuesday Morning August 9th, we took a tram up to the top of Oslo where a ski jump was built.  We just happened upon this ski jump where students that appeared to be junior high and high school age were practicing ski jumping. They did this by saturating the green carpeting at the bottom and also putting a mist of water on the white part of the track of the ski jump itself. Notice the pond at the end of the green at the bottom of the ski jump, which I suspect is for practicing ice skating in the winter time. Beyond that is a view of Oslo.

So here I am on my first attempt at ski jumping. That's me in the white ski suit just leaving the ski jump. Okay, I know none of you believe that's me ski jumping so I will confess it's not, however, there was a guy about my age that was also ski jumping. I often wonder who was the first person to look at a long hill like this and think "huh, I think I'll try to ski down this hill as fast as I can then jump off at the end."

This is the ski jump we were searching for when we ran across the other one. This one is an old ski jump that was built for the Olympics and is now kept for zip lining for tourists and locals.

On our hike back down, we came across this restaurant with a sod roof and we noticed there were many buildings up at this higher elevation with sod roofs.

This struck me as rather funny, the stone carving of the troll and the little troll in the woods. We ate our picnic lunch near the trolls.

When we got back down into Oslo, we walked down a narrow neighborhood street. The small houses were on one side of the street and they had gardens on the other side of the street. It appeared as though they would go out into their gardens to gather their fresh vegetables and would grill their evening dinner there because several of the places had a grill sitting out by small picnic tables in the garden. 

This church is the oldest building in Oslo.

This is just another picture of one of the many fountains around. Just beyond that you can see a building with interesting architecture.

Here is the Royal Palace and when the flag is flying the royalty is in the country.

OBSERVATIONS:

• we were told by some of the locals that this is Oslo in August so it's very rainy. We have done everything we wanted to do outside, but it has rained two, three and four times a day.

• food is expensive, we just saw one place today that a can of Coke was $5.  A bottle of water is commonly seen for about $4 a bottle. A medium pizza is about $30.

• most hotels include breakfast and the breakfast they provide is a wide variety of breads, meats, cheeses, cereal, eggs, yogurt and fruit.

• for those of you who have an interest in electric cars, I am really surprised at the number of Tesla cars I have seen. No wonder Tesla is having a hard time keeping up with production because it appears like most of their vehicles are being shipped over here.