Fascinating tales about my life on the way to and living in London

Friday, July 24, 2009

Norway - Voss, Geiranger, Oslo

I have to admit that I find it harder and harder to blog since I post so many of my pictures to Facebook. I'm guessing that some of you out there aren't on FB or aren't my friend, so I do feel that I need to keep this up! However, if you notice the quality of my posts falling off from last year's, the reason is probably because I've already been messing with pictures I post here for close to 2 weeks and am getting a bit tired of it. :)

We traveled all over southern Norway it seemed! There aren't a lot of big highways, so I spent a lot of the time feeeling ill as the bus wound around curvy roads and up and down steep hills. We saw so much water, so many mountains and so many trees. The countryside was undeniably beautiful. The scenery was so dramatic and shocking at times to see the steep cliffs and water falls jutting right up from the sea-level fjords! There was quite a lot of rain and chilly weather, but that didn't really dampen our spirits too much.

We spent some time in some smaller places like Elverum, Voss and Geiranger before heading to Oslo. We went white water rafting in Voss, rode a train through the mountains and took a cruise down a fjord in Geiranger. We had to have a few ferry crossings as weel. Prices on everything are very high in Norway, even on gas which is interesting since most of Norway's riches come from oil!

I wasn't terribly impressed with Oslo (I think this might be the first time I've said this about my travels). It seemed very industrial and cold, but somehow was voted the 6th most livable city in the world, or something similar. There is lots of public art, most of a modern nature. Um...I don't have much else to say really! I'm sure there are nice things about Oslo and I was initially disappointed that we only had one day there. But in the end, I was happy to be making progress towards Copenhagen again.

Oh - almost forgot my favorite part of the trip! Bobsledding in Lillehammer!! We went down the actual 1994 Olympic bobsled track in a bobsled with wheels attached. We experience 4Gs of force and were going 100 km/hr. It felt like a super awesome roller coaster to me and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute (OK, second really since the ride was only 67 secs long!). I'd love to visit again in the winter and try it on ICE! :)



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