Up the Fjord, Down the Fjord

One of the most fun parts of the day is playing our nightly game of Up the Fjord, Down the Fjord (sometimes known as Up the River, Down the River) or Norwegian Gin (aka Chinese Gin).  Usually we play in one of our hotel rooms, all laid out in bed; if we are lucky and have a hotel with a great lobby or cozy nook, we use that.  Bottom line, lots of fun, and we usually play way too late (remember, it's the land of the Midnight Sun), especially if Gabey has had kaffe (she has acquired a taste for the hard stuff on this trip -- great).  So far, the best cozy nook has been at the Hoyflottelgrotli -- a  historic hotel high up above the tree line in ski country in Grotli that has been in the same family for 6 generations and is truly splendid.  (See Maaike's comments on the food there from earlier in the blog.)  Wow, wonderful.

Card-wise, Gabey is a thrill seeker and overbids; Maaike can't seem to get the hang of it and usually is just one bid off;  Stan plays it all very close to the vest; and I usually just wander off to sleep and/or a state of Alzheimers and screw up royally, no matter what game we're playing.

Awesome game playing ambiance in Grotli.

Gearing up for cards in Roros -- an ancient copper mining town and UNESCO World Heritage site.

And, in other non-card-playing news (aka 'here are some random photos'):

 Decorating the back of the Mercedes for the 4th of July. 

Idea for the Crystal Lake Forest Advisory Committee:  We can grow trees on our roofs, like they do in Norway.  

Trolls were everywhere -- they are especially scary in the misty fog (which enveloped us on a regular basis), high on the hills of Bergen.

Takk for alt!

C.L.  July 6, 2011

Cutest Girls in Norway

Some pictures from our life on the road:  This was taken at Oslo's wonderful folk museum.

Maaike and Gabey in their North Face finest, in Bergen. 

Antikking! Yeah! Fist bump!  Lots of fun rummaging around this interesting store, right smack on the water's edge in Alesund, just north of Bergen up in Fjord Country.  Alesund is also right in the middle of cod fishing country, where Grandpa Mike's side of the family originated.  We went to the Fiskemusset (Fish Museum, not spelled correctly) and saw how the ancient Myres and Melkilds and Hammers and Johnsons no doubt lived their life.  And, why they came to America: It was darn hard work, cold, monotonous and dangerous.  The smell of old cod isn't so hot either.   

---CL  1AM Sunday morning. Sky is still sunny, but time for bed.

We Come from the Land of Ice and Snow

Well, not quite, but almost. Apparently the Norse God of mischief, Loki, thought it would be really funny if he prolonged our Seattle spring of cold and rain and gave us more of the same here in the Motherland.  Not funny, Loki!  We have endured days on end of pouring rain and gray skies, with an occasional glimpse of blue that makes us all look at each other and gasp.  "What is it?! Sun?!"  Fortunately, at last we think we've finally broken through: the Midnight Sun is out in force for our first night in Trondheim.  It's 11PM and bright as day.  Brighter than any day thus far, really. 

The good news is the rain and gray has not dampened anyone's spirits.  It's all a part of the adventure, and no one has been grumpy about it. The girls are completely cheerful, and I am snug as a bug in my new rain coat, purchased just days before we left at REI.  Gabey too, has a new North Face jacket that cost a bundle; at the time I thought it was expensive -- but come to find out it was about the price of four beers in Oslo, so a total bargain.  Stan, who wrote the book on preparing for the weather and packing right (in fact, I thought of him, and how proud he'd be, as I shopped for our last-minute rain coats) didn't pack anything remotely rainproof, and, in fact, LOST his rain cap the first day.  Anyhow, back to our good weather attitudes; no one has complained or said anything negative about the weather, at least out loud.

Some of us really look sharp, don't we? You can bet I turned a lot of lustful Viking heads in that get up. 
 
Questionable fashion sense aside, we are seriously blessed by sharing the weather with a great co-travelers.  We have three families: The Egerdahls - Ed, our intrepid leader, his wife Laurie and their daughter and son-in-law Heidi and David Winters; and another great family, Alice and her two adult kids Don and Kay, from San Diego.  Alice has a farm on Whidbey, and a condo in San Diego, which is a pretty smart combination.  David and Heidi are on the last leg of a 10-month tour of the world, on a motorcyle!!  Their own travel blog is at thewintersabroad.com.  They are young, adventurous (duh), funny, and good company.  Their fearless attitude is a great example for Gabey and Maaike.  We couldn't be luckier with our crew.  No one gripes, no one complains, no one is picky or grossly eccentric or otherwise bothersome.  (Hopefully they say the same about us...! Yikes.)

We're in Trondheim for the next couple of days; tomorrow we plan to go to church at the seat of all that is holy in Norway: the Niadros Cathedral, built before the Norman Conquest -- waaaay back when. It is truly glorious.  And you can bet we'll be praying for more sun.

Takk for alt - Carol

Operation Mountain Climb

Today we left the lovely (but very rainy and windy) Alesund for the snowy mountains of Grotli. Grotli is a big skiing area in the winter and the hotel we're staying at is a historical skiing lodge. But let me back track a bit to our adventures getting to Grotli.

To get to Grotli we had to climb up and down the sides of two mountains. The roads up and down the mountain sides are entirely switchbacks with hairpin turns. Our small van was enough of a challenge to maneuver along the switchbacks but there were also obstacles along the roads to hurdle, scoot around, and plain avoid. We like to keep it exciting here in Norway. The obstacles mainly consisted of enormous, German/Chinese/French tourist- filled tour buses. Luckily we are blessed with a fabulous and fearless driver, Ed our tour guide, who faced these challenges with the outmost calm and collectivness. The same could not have been said about the rest of us. Every time a tour bus grazed past us I could literally feel all of us cringe. One of the most terrifying (and I'll admit exciting) moments of the trek was when we witnessed a German mini-Rv and Norwegian FedEx truck face off along one of the switchbacks.

Battle Royale: German Mini-Rv VS Norway FedEx

 No worries though, all potential danger/ death/ crashing and tumbling off the sheer cliff face was avoided! The views from the top of the mountains were fantastic... here's just a glimpse of the all the natural beauty we saw today

Yes. Gabe and I were one of the attractions.

The 7 sisters' waterfall

Birds' eye view of our twisting curvy road we traveled on for 3 HOURS

Finally we arrived at the Grotli Hotel! In no way is it not my favorite hotel that we've stayed at, the trip was sooooo worth it. Its a historic ski lodge as I've mentioned, cozily and comfortably decorated AND Rupert Grint shot his new movie here! Can it get any better? (Dramatic pause............) YES IT CAN! The fooooooood. Words can hardly describe the flavors, variety, and deliciousness! You filled up your plate, ate it, got a new plate, filled it again with a completely different assortment of delicacies, sat down again, and repeat x 1000! My favorite new thing I tried (and there were many, ask me about it sometime) was the precisely slivered moose meat, and perfectly seasoned salmon. Mom please find out the recipe. I'm still in a bit of a food coma..... delirious with happiness.
The food was all you can eat and buffet style. Some of you more observant readers (though I really don't know how many of you are there) may have realized my last experience with buffets..... do German landwhales ring any bells? WELL I am happy to report no terrifying experiences or cultural confusion this time! Though there was a buffet, and old people tourists, the one significant difference was the people were DANISH! A nice change that resulted in an extremely pleasent meal for me :)

LOOK AT ALL THAT BRIE! be jealous Kyla :)

The local selection of meats

Off to Trondheim tomorrow!

For Some Weird Reason...

...we tend to have a knack for attracting adorable little two year old blonde Norwegian boys. Unfortunately, this doesn't translate to also having a knack for attracting not two year old Norwegian boys. Dang. Probably cuz 16 year olds don't run around in restaurants and randomly start talking to strangers, as has been the case for the Norwegian two year olds we've met. Yesterday we went to dinner and had two little perfect Aryan boys somewhere between the ages of one and five at the table behind us who kept turning around and giving us stares of awe and waving. Not too uncommon from any little kid at any table next to you in any country anywhere. But my personal favorite was when we went to an amazing seafood restaurant in Bergen and one of the families near us had twins that were a boy and girl that were also perfectly blonde and adorable (imagine that) and the little boy, it turned out, really really really enjoyed running around the restaurant, where he established our table as his favorite and kept coming back for more attention from us while we waited for our food. One of his favorite things to do was show us how his Buzz Lightyear shoes lit up when he stomped them. Oh, and he liked to pay attention to my dad except when my dad tried to get his attention to show him some awesome (and by awesome I mean not awesome) magic tricks. So basically, this little random kid was our evening entertainment. It was awesome. And he was adorable. End of story. I hope this dude gets famous so that I can be all like "Oh yeah I just entertained him when he was two at some random restaurant in Bergen no big deal I'm better than you."

Of course, if you were to respond to that with, "Well at least I don't completely repel Norwegian boys that aren't two, SUCK IT", then that would be an effective rebuttal. Seriously, Merty Terty and I have luck that is basically equivalent to the French and Belgians in WWI and II combined. One of our only chances was at dinner two days ago with friends of our Norway Master, Ed. It was with a family that he knew that had grandparents and the son in his forties (Jan) and his family including his son and daughter that were a little bit younger than us. During dinner, Maaike and Heidi and David (just some other peeps on our tour, if you hadn't figured that out) were busy being entertained by the dog, Cecil, which we later found out that it was actually named Cesar, when Ed asked Jan, "So, how old is your oldest now?", to which Jan replied, "Oh he's 17 now." And when Ed asked where he was, Jan's response was "He decided to stay at home and watch the dog, getting too old to be with his parents." [insert chuckle by Jan and Ed here] WTF MATE? Not cool. In fact, that's borderline totally lame as butt.
The dinner was crazy good, on a separate note, more on that later in a different post.

Here's some more random pictures from our exploits (or lack thereof):

Bubble busker in Oslo

 Pretty self-explanatory

Bryggen in Bergen, kinda (totally) reminds us of Diagon Alley

The Motherland Has Much to Teach Us

My all the things we've learned in Norway so far. One, is that all Thon Hotels (the hotels we've mainly been sleeping in this past week) are NOT made the same. First one is Oslo, great. Great room, nice location, excellent breakfast. In Al, rooms were comfortable but the food (im basically talking about the dinner)........... not so much. The soup, or would "butter water" be more appropriate?, was pretty terrible, and the rest of the meal isn't really worth describing. I do love Norwegian breakfasts though, always a wonderful combination of fresh breads, meats, jam, and cheese.
Second, gabe and I have learned that old German/French tourists are SCARY. I had decided to get a little of this white flan-type dessert after my less than satisfying dinner where in line getting dessert were about 5 loud, very large German ladies. (AKA "landwhales" as one so accurately put it). The dinner area being a buffet was naturally two sided, so people could come on either side to serve themselves.......or so I thought. As I came up along the opposite side of the German ladies to help myself, they all just stopped and stared at me. I'm naturally minding my own business and hardly looked up until I realize 5 women are boring their eyes into me. I look up startled from my flan only to see one of the largest landwhales angrily gesturing and yelling at me in German. I manage to infer from the muddled grunts and shouts that I am gasp.....cutting. They seem NOT to realize that the buffet goes two ways and that each flan dish (there were 4) is NOT a different flavor( Each lady was taking a large spoonful from EVERY flan dish there was for reasons I couldnt figure out). So startled as I was, I dropped the spoon and proceeded to wait at the back of the line as every one of them got their 4 scoops of "different" flavored flan. Darn tourists.

One last interesting tidbit from our adventures thus far is that most Norwegians own two separate homes much like most Americans own two cars. One home is their normal everyday house and the other is usually a cabin up in the mountains where they stay in the winter to ski. This is very common and we saw many cabins scattered along the hillside as we drove through the mountains to Bergen today                         Maaike T

I got suckered

(BTW:  Does anyone else think the pants I got at Anthropologie especially for our trip -- modeled in the photo of us in front of the Norwegian Royal Palace -- look like Mom Jeans??   I thought they were so cool when I bought them only to discover I look like Tina Fey in her infamous Saturday Night Live skit.)

CL 6/26/11