New ZealandI decided to split this article in three parts as it is quite long. The first part will cover from my home town to the end of the Kjeragbolten hike, the second part will cover from the Trolltunga hike to the end of the Via ferrata in Loen and the last part from The Geiranger Fjord to the way back home. In the last one, there will also be the budget you’ll have to consider while doing a road trip in Norway.
Road map
(In this article will be the points in green)
- Amsterdam
- Hirtshals (Not worth staying long. If you have time before your boat leaves, go to Skegan, 50 minutes away)
- Kristiansand (Sleep)
- Road 44 (Helleren; Songdalstrand; Hafrsfjord (Swords in Stone))
- Lysefjord, Kjeragbolten camping (Check the weather before choosing going to Kjeragbolten or Prekeistolen first. It would have saved us time for the Prekeistolen hike)
- Prekeistolen Hike
- Kjeragbolten Hike
- The Touristic 13 road
- Odda
- Buer Glacier
- Trolltunga Hike & here
- Bergen
- Lovanet Lake
- Via Ferrata in Loen
- Maloy (Whale rock)
- Geiranger Fjord
- Alesund
- The Atlantic road
- Trondheim
- Box in the mountain
- Oslo
- Gothenburg
- Copenhagen
- Hamburg
- Home
Day #12 — Geiranger Fjord, Alesund & The Atlantic Road
After our second night in Loen, we left for one of the most touristic Fjord in Norway: The Geiranger Fjord. We wanted to take the first boat so it won’t be crowded. The first surprise was just before going on the boat. As you can see on the picture below, on the pontoon there is a water pipe working… putting water into the Fjord…! Mhmmm… Interesting.
After seeing many Fjords the days before (by boat or hikes), the Geiranger still appeared very impressive. It is very well known for its waterfalls. On one side, there are seven waterfalls at the same place. They are called the seven sisters and are among the 50th tallest waterfalls of Norway.
On the other side of the fjord, right in front of the sisters, there is another very impressive waterfall. It is not by its height though, it is because of is width. The flow of water is high. More over, the boat is allowed to go very close of the edge of the mountain, you can feel some water drops on your skin. It is called the Bridal Veil because it looks like one, the water falls over one rocky edge, and when seen a certain way with the sun it looks like a veil over the rocks.
On one side of the mountain, there is a farm that is standing on its edge. If I remember correctly, it was a school some time ago.
Bellow is the most famous road of the Geiranger Fjord. The snaky road you have to take in order to go north. We took it to continue our trip to Alesund.
Alesund was really not worth the detour as we say in french. The town is small, everything was closed, we even struggled to find something to eat for lunch. It looked nice and a bit like San Francisco (where I’ve not been yet — Two weeks from now I’ll be in SF!) but that’s it. Nothing like Bergen or Trondheim. We should have spent more time in Trondheim actually.
After Alesund, we took the road (and boats) to one of the most amazing road I ever took: The Atlantic Road. The sun was setting, the moon was rising… It was unbelievable.
The Atlantic Road is a series of bridges going from one island to the other in order to cross the water and go back on the land on the other side. It is known to be impressive and quite dangerous while a storm.
We slept on the road between the Atlantic Road and Trondheim. Big mistake! I don’t know why, there were SO many small flying insects. It looked like mosquitos but smaller and they were not bitting, just getting in our eyes and nose… We had to eat under the tent to escape them! The ground was not in a good shape and the showers were not that clean either. I wouldn’t recommend it for a long stay. One night was ok but we could have found better. The problem was that is was already really dark to put up the tents so we didn’t really had much of a choice.
I wanted to take pictures of the stars as it was our last night in the middle of nowhere and the sky was very clear for once (we didn’t had any luck with the weather at night) but the bugs were so anoying that I couldn’t stay out for more than a few minutes.
Day #13 — Trondheim & The box
On the next day we hit the road around 8AM to go to Trondheim. Our Northern stop for this trip. I would have wanted to go to the Lofoten Islands or to see the midnight sun but it was too far North for the time we had left. Trondheim is a nice town bordered with water.
We were pretty quick to see everything though and we left right after lunch to start our big way down to Oslo. It was the first time we took a highway in Norway, but still it didn’t really looked like one.
My boyfriend found on the Internet that along the road there was a strange box just standing there were you could see the sun rise and the sun set staying in the same place. It protects people from the wild animals too. We had a lot of trouble finding it because it wasn’t really on the GPS. It is located in a old military zone that was desafected a long time ago. Though, military signs are still there and we (well, only me actually!) were scared it really was a military base.
When you climb up to the box (1km), there are inscriptions on the floor that relates of the story of men and urbanisation.
I am really glad we went there. It was so strange to see this box in the middle of the mountain. Inside it is warm and protects you from the wind. We looked at the landscape for a while before going down.
For our last night, we decided to rent a small wooden cabin in a camping. It was going to rain at night and we had done camping in tents a lot in the past days so for 5€ more per person, we decided to buy our tranquility. The camping was nice, along the water bordered by mountains (again).
Day #14 — Oslo
It was the last nature breath before coming home. In facts, on our way back, we stopped at Oslo for a few hours. I have to admit that I wasn’t that excited to visit it. If I was up to me, we would have stayed less. It was raining as hell and visiting in those conditions is not fun at all. The guys wanted to go up to the Opera Roof (because you can walk on it) but it was so wet it was slippery. We visited the forteress that was nice and then walked a bit around the city.
The weather on the way back was REALLY shitty. From Oslo to Caen, we only had rain (almost a storm).
Olso was the last stop in Norway. We went to Sweden at our friend’s parents house for a night. They lived next to a place where we were supposed to see mooses. They even have a museum about them! The story is that the King of Sweden used to come hunting them there for a while. Though we tried to drive around the mountain at night, we only saw “Bambis”. We also went to see their ‘Preikestolen’ with a view over a big lake (yes, it’s a lake)
PS: They have weird boards in Sweden!
Day #15 — Gothenburg
After that, we stopped in Gothenburg where our friend lives. We left him home and he showed us his city around. Gothenburg is the second biggest city in Sweden and I had never heard of it. It reminded me of Amsterdam and Trondheim. A river goes along it with a lot of canals. Again, it was raining so the visit was pretty quick. I didn’t take pictures there with my camera because of that rain.
Day #16 — From Sweden to Copenhagen to Hamburg
On the next morning, we woke up really early. Only two days left to go back home. The trip was over. We took the bridge between Sweden and Denmark to go to Copenhagen. Oh my god. It was the most expensive bridge I ever took. And that is for say because the Normandy Bridge is really expensive too. We paid 50€ to go across. If you know that taking the boat to Denmark is 100€, 50€ is cheaper. More over, the bridge is so long! And it ends up in a tunnel.
Our last visiting stop was in Copenhagen. We met there with a old room-mate from Montréal for coffee and then visited a bit the city (Yes, we saw the little siren). Of course it was raining again…! After this stop, we slep in Hamburg, Germany. We didn’t really visited it. We were exhausted and we had a LOT of road on the next day. We had to went out though to eat. We found this nice restaurant called Burgerlicious. You order everything from a tablet and pay at the end. Everything is registered in a card they give you at the beginning.
The ‘famous’ little mermaid of Copenhagen. If you go to the city, everybody will ask you if you have seen the Mermaid. It’s nothing really impressive though and to get a picture with it alone, you’ll have to wait for the many other tourists and tour boat to go away.
PS: They have weird boards in Denmark too!
Day #17 — On our way back home
We were supposed to stop between Hamburg and Caen to sleep but we arrived in Lille (north of France) around 1PM so we decided to head straight home.
Conclusion & Expenses
Norway is one of the most beautiful countries I’ve been to. We’ve travelled 7000 kilometers for two weeks and a half and each time we saw different but beautiful landscapes and cities (well, except Alesund…!). It would have been nice to stay longer in each place but we were there to see the more we could see. The first Fjord I ever saw was in Saguenay (Canada) and it was beautiful but it has nothing to do with Norway’s Fjord.
The biggest surprise I had was that I though Norway was really green when it actually is very rocky.
Expenses (in euro)
Total = 769€ each for 17 days.
If you want to add the bike roof fixations (counted in the “Camping stuff”) we went up to 919€ each.
The boats we took in Norway were almost all around 4€ each person (with the car).
The parkings for the hikes and for the cities were all around 10€ in total.
I would love to answer your questions if you have any or if you want more details on where we slept, where we ate so don’t hesitate to contact me in a comment or by email on the contact page 🙂
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