These are the last of my photos of Norway. We took a cruise to see all the fjords; it is a lovely, lovely place. I recommend going.
I’ve forgotten which particular fjord this one is. The huge cruise ship is on the left.
This is Geiranger. There’s a big campground there and it was full. I can totally see why. There’s also a small town with all the amenities, including many cafes and a chocolatier. It’s civilized camping.
A view down the fjord from a mountaintop.
One of the bigger waterfalls.
So, so many waterfalls.
We walked over to town from the dock. They’ve left up this old cottage with a robust sod/grass roof. The Scandinavians are big on the garden roofs; one of our tour guides pointed out that this is at least partially explained by the fact that the old houses all had sod roofs. It was the best way to keep the rain out.
This was inside a church in Olden. Each pew was closed off by a door and had these decorations on the end. I thought they were unique.
A park in Molde. It was a lovely place to sit and rest.
A mountain stream, possibly back in Geiranger.
This was in a town called Norddal. There’s a row of boathouses along the fjord, across the street from the town. People still use them (and the boats) to get around. I liked the blue of the bench against the dark wood. Pretty.
The boathouses at Norddal. I like boat in between the boat houses.
The (well-maintained) church in Norddal. It’s octagonal.
The cathedral tower in Stavanger. Those are hotels along the fjord for all the tourists.
There’s a lot of animal husbandry on the western edge of Norway; it’s not flat enough for a lot of farming. But goats? Goats do great. Goats also have to eat during the long snowy winters. During the summer, they let the grass grow. Then they mow and harvest the clippings, saving them in these giant white bags. You see them everywhere in the Norwegian countryside; they’re called troll eggs.
That is it for the Norway photos. Next (and last) is Stockholm.
The cruise stopped at other ports too – we explored a number of towns. I’ve narrowed the photos down to a couple of the larger cities: Stavanger and Molde. Molde was the furthest north we went, and we were there only a day or two after the summer solstice. The sun rose at 3:30am and set at 11:30pm. How did we sleep? Blackout curtains.
This is the view of old Stavanger from the port (I took this from the balcony of our room on the ship). There are strict regulations about the buildings in this section of town, obviously. Including: only very small signs for stores are allowed. So there’s little in the way of tourist schlock available for sale. It was lovely.
This giant anchor was outside of the maritime museum. It’s HUGE.
Have I mentioned that there were flowers everywhere in Norway? People definitely take advantage of summer to make everything prettier.
This was a little alleyway in Stavanger’s old town. I like the flowers and the lamppost.
Stavanger’s cathedral. It was closed to repair the organ – and had been for more than a year – and was going to be re-opened the week after we were there. Le sigh.
Stavanger had a regular shopping district, too. This was clearly the shopping center for the town, full of locals and tourists alike. This one street, though, is the brightly colored hipster center for Stavanger.
See? Hipster center. Look at the bunting and the deer and the colors. You could buy everything on Etsy, I’m sure of it.
There’s even a manic pixie dream troll. Where else but Norway would you find one?
This mural – women supporting each other and looking cute – tickles me.
I couldn’t *not* get a picture of the local bookstore, could I?
The rest of Stavanger’s shopping district looked more like this: cobblestone streets, white buildings, colorful windows. This is a statue of an old seaman or viking. He has personality.
Then it was on to Molde. They love flowers so much, they’ve got their own rose variety. She’s celebrating that.
The town center of Molde – the torget. Molde is fairly small and very modern. The King of Norway hid here for a bit during WWII, so the Nazis destroyed the city. It’s all been rebuilt.
We also visited Alesund, which has lovely art nouveau buildings. Wilhem II used to vacation there with his family; there was a fire in the early 1900s that burned down about half the town. So Wilhelm foot the bill for rebuilding it, hiring the best European architects. The result is a fabulous art nouveau city. But I was sick during that port visit, so I didn’t get to see it. My husband and daughter tell me it was very pretty.
