Back on the road

Sorry everyone! Forgot to post this when I wrote it and just realized. Should have been posted on Wednesday:


Monday morning, mom and I left Tromso for Bergen, with a layover in Oslo. We were sitting in the Oslo airport, both slightly annoyed that we were wasting most of our day in transit, when who should show up at our gate but CYNDI LAUPER. Seriously! After Google imaging her picture to double check, I spent about 20 minutes deciding whether I should go talk to her. Finally I did, and she looked just about as surprised that there was an American on her plane who recognized her, as I was to see her. We had a short conversation—I told her to break a leg on her concert, she asked what I was doing, told me that mom and I were cute, and then autographed by Norway guide book. Totally worth the layover.

We got into Bergen that evening, just in time to wander around the old part of town and have dinner. The architecture was gorgeous, but we couldn’t go into most of the buildings because it was still the Monday holiday—the holiday was Pentecost, by the way. That was a big disappointment but I guess it just means I’ll have to go back there someday:-)

I ended up ordering reindeer patties for dinner that night which, honestly, made me seriously consider going back to being a vegetarian again. It actually tasted pretty good, especially with the cloudberry (who knew that was even a thing!) jelly they brought to put on top, but the consistency was… not really my thing. I’m not sure whether it was just how reindeer is, or it was a low quality piece of meat, but I sincerely hope I never eat anything like that again. I’m thinking the jerky is may be different though, so I’m still planning on eating that. Speaking of which, not that sharing the jerky is a competition, but if it was, Michelle Evans and Emily Rosenzweig would be winning and Alex Miller would be losing. Oops. So off topic! Anyways…

Tuesday morning we woke up early and hopped on a train along the water, which took us to a bus through a canyon, which took us to a boat through some fjoyds, which dropped us off in the endearing, yet touristy, town of Flam. The fjord tour was absolutely incredible. We passed a few old towns, which were fun to see, but the real draw, of course, was the fjord rock walls rising up on either side of us. They are all REALLY tall. Some are even high enough that people base jump off of them. As soon as they mentioned it, mom turned to me and said something like “I know I don’t have veto power in your life, but I still want to veto you ever doing that.” Oh well…

But back to the canyon walls. This is a very interesting time of year because the bottoms of the mountains are covered in greenery while the tops still have snow. The melting snow (maybe along with other sources. I haven’t done research.) creates streams down the mountainside, but since the mountain sides are so steep (more like a series of cliffs) there are waterfalls everywhere. I’ve probably taken about 1000 pictures of them trying to get one that actually captures anything even close to how cool they are.

Last night we stayed in a really cute hotel in Flam that reminds me of a less fancy version of the Carolina Inn at Pinehurst. Everybody here is so nice! I’m getting very spoiled and have no interest in ever dealing with customer service in the US again.

Now I’m on another train and haven't seen anything but snow, ice, and rocks for about 2 hours. Mom and I decided that we were a little bit too ambitious about how much ground we could cover in a week, and as a result aren’t spending enough time anywhere to fully explore it. At least with all of the transit we’ve gotten to see a lot of the countryside. Now, on to Oslo!!