Yesterday was probably the nicest day of the trip and as a result we had a clear night which meant the sun didn’t set until about 11.15 and it didn’t go dark until about 11.30, despite that we slept relatively well although I think we both came too when we stopped at the first village at 3am! We woke up quite early and after coffee and a shower went to breakfast. We are working our way up the coast and are at about the same level as the Faro isles. We stopped at a couple of small towns this morning the first was Torvik which is a town / village of about 30 houses we didn’t seem to offload anything here apart from one passenger although we did seem to pick up some goods, we only stopped for about 10 minutes then we were off again. Our next stop was Alesund where we should have stopped for half an hour but we are obviously running a bit late as we only stayed for about 15 minutes. They seemed to be holding a classic car show on the quayside as there was a variety of cars parked up, the town also seems to be quite old as the wharf area has a number of what look like warehouses along the front. We dropped a few people off here and picked a couple up, in the end we didn’t get off as it would probably have been quite rushed. We went to lunch early as we are leaving the ship at 2pm which was a good thing as the queue at 1pm was really long. The lunch menu provides useful information about where we are which was 62 degrees north going along the Sunnmore Coast. After eating possibly too much as it was only lunch time it was just a case of watching the world go by until our next stop which was Geiranger where we joined a trip. Geiranger is the biggest tourist attraction in Norway, the Fjord is 16km long and partially frozen in winter. The town has a permanent population of 250 people which grows to 750 in the summer season. We found out today that to be called a city in Norway you have to have a permanent population of over 3000. After getting off the boat we got on a bus which would take us around the Fjord and over the Trollstigen Pass. The first thing we did was drive up the road called Eagle Nest, this has 11 hairpin bends to the top and was called Eagles Nest because when they were building the road there were a lot of Eagles nesting on the hillside, sadly this is no longer the case. At 550m we pulled into a lay-by to have a look at the town, Fjord and waterfalls. The waterfalls don’t have names as they don’t always form in the same place each year, however the hairpin bends do have names, apparently they are named after people that worked on the road when it was being built and it helps tourists tell the rescue services where they are when they breakdown! One waterfall that does have a name is the seven sisters, this is named after a local legend about a man who fancied seven sisters and was rejected by all of them, apparently each time he was rejected he caused a new waterfall to form, once all had rejected him he became an alcoholic and there is an eight waterfall that looks like wine being poured out of a bottle – I have to say it takes a better imagination than mine to see this! We drove down the other side of the mountain to Eidseal and took the ferry to the other side of the Fjord. This is where the very strange brown cheese we had the other day comes from. On the ferry you could have a pancake with this cheese in it but we didn’t bother trying this. As we were driving along our guide explained the different colours on the houses and how it determines something about the occupants. White houses are owned by rich people as white had to be imported. Black houses are from forest areas because of the Coal which was used to paint them and Red denotes fishermen as the colour comes from fish blood. I am not sure this is still the case as we have seen some pretty remote red houses but it is a nice story all the same. In this area the sheep and cows can only live outside for a maximum of 100 days between mid May and mid September maximum as the snow comes early and stays late as we could see, apparently a lot has melted in the last couple of days as it has warmed up but it still looked like there was quite a lot about. As we drove to the next ferry we went across a plateau which at 700m was still covered with a lot of snow. Apparently in the winter this area can easily have 3m of snow, which is not thought of as that much as other areas can have 6 or 7m! We stopped at Trollstigen viewpoint where there are a couple of platforms that have been built to provide views over both the waterfalls and the road which apparently is quite famous. We walked to both viewpoints then it was back on the bus as it was time to tackle the road which has a 10% gradient and 11 hairpin bends. At one point we gave the bus a wash as the spray from the falls covered us. At the bottom we all jumped off the coach and took a couple of photos then we continued down to the coffee stop. This road is only open for about 100 days in the summer each year and has around 60,000 visitors or about 6000 per day. At the coffee stop we were given a sandwich and waffle which was nice but strange. the waffle was cold and filled with whipped cream and the sandwich was a bit of French bread with slice of cheese and a bit of salami! But the coffee was nice and it means we don’t have to worry if we don’t like the meal later which was a good thing. We had about a 50 minute drive to our final ferry of the day a 10 minute crossing to Modle which is where we re-joined the boat. We were left at a hotel where they had arranged for us to have our evening meal, unfortunately this was fish and mashed potato so we didn’t bother with this but we did have some ice cream and a couple of drinks which went down very well, then at 10:15 the boat arrived so we all got back on board and headed for our cabin. We left about 10:30 and started heading to our next port of call.
