Norway

We are home!  Norway was incredible!  You may ask, "Why Norway?" An excellent question.  A few months ago, we watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and quickly decided that we needed more cool adventures and travel in our lives.  We looked at places in South America, Canada, and Europe to visit this summer and for whatever reason were completely taken in by the idea of Norway with its fjords, rolling hills and amazing hikes (plus, it is the country that Frozen's Kingdom of Arendale is based on).  I have a friend who lives in Norway and she was amazing in directing us to interesting things to do while we were there, and what kinds of food to eat. So here we go!  Be prepared for a lot of photos!  

We flew into the country on their Constitution Day and the 200th anniversary at that!  Everyone gets all dressed up in bunads (the traditional clothing of Norway) and if you don't own a bunad, you had better be dressed in a suit and tie.  I have never seen an entire city dressed up at one time, and it was pretty fantastic!  It made me wish that we all dressed up for the Fourth of July. As a side note, apparently Norwegians dress up to go out in the evenings and on the weekends and dress down for work.  Kind of cool, really!  How nice to dress up for your friends! 

Here is a typical stall snack from the parade.  Polse wrapped in Lompe or a hotdog in a tortilla-like thing...  Not the tastiest thing I have eaten, but they did run out of ketchup and mustard right before we got ours.   

The Royal Palace

The Oslo Harbor

The Oslo Opera House

The first leg of our train trip

Kristiansand: where resides the coolest McDonald's ever.  It is also considered 'the Riviera' of Norway because it gets so warm in the summer and there are a few sandy beaches.

Kristiansand City Central on a quiet evening

Exploring a peninsula in Kristiansand 

"Oh, hey there!"

 I kept hoping we would see a wild reindeer. Alas, we didn't see one this trip. 

Stavanger:  The center for oil and awesome hikes

While in Stavanger, we were able to try reindeer meat.  Never thought I would try that.  It wasn't too bad, especially with gravy, bacon and onions. 

Preikestolen: or the most awesome and steepest hike ever

A year or so ago they decided to redo the path to make it a little more manageable and so they hired Mount Everest Sherpas (!!) to come and create rock paths and staircases up this steep hike.  

"It keeps going up...!?!"

Almost there!

"Hey look! It's a fjord!"

The View

 "Adventure is out there! The wilderness must be explored!"  (Disney's Up)

 No, that isn't Adam, but it is a pretty cool photo of some random dude sitting at the top of Preikestolen

Back to Oslo for another few days:  

Some random French bathrooms in the City Square (random, because France never owned Norway....) 

A viking ship from 900AD

A Stave Church from 1200AD 

(Fun Fact: Elsa in Frozen is coronated in a church based on this type of church)

Vigeland Park:  The man who sculpted the hundreds of stone statues in this park donated them all to the city in exchange for them paying for his housing for a few years.  The statues are beautiful and there are SO many of them!  

Oslo flower market

Regional Soccer games in a city square.  We watched 7 or 8 mini-games over Friday and Saturday.  It was a nice change of pace from the museum goings of the day before!  

As we flew home, we flew over Greenland.  It was the icing on the cake for  our adventures.  

Moral of the story?  You should probably book your trip to Norway as soon as possible.