It has become a pattern with us that we vacation
every other year in Norway. Two years ago we drove to Rjukan and stayed there
for a few days before ending up in Notodden for the blues festival. This year
we decided to drive to Ålesund and Molde, as I have always wanted to see these
cities. I have heard a lot about Ålesund and how I had to visit it. Molde is
known as the city of roses and jazz. It is internationally famous for its annual
jazz festival; this year, Pat Metheny and Herbie Hancock were among the invited
performers. We arrived in Molde a week prior to the festival’s start, a smart
idea given that most hotels are fully-booked during the festival week and we
would not have gotten a room anywhere.
We left Oslo early on a Monday morning (July 10th)
with the aim of making it to Fjærland the first day. We drove via Kongsberg and
Geilo; the drive on the Fjærland Road took us through some lovely areas. Fjærland
itself is a small town, but an incredibly lovely one on the Fjærland Fjord. We
stayed at the Fjærland Fjordstue Hotel, run by Bård and Linda Huseby. We really
enjoyed our short stay here, and can recommend this hotel. It is truly picturesque,
situated right on the fjord, with a lovely terrace overlooking the water where
one can sit outdoors and drink coffee or have a beer. The dining room also
overlooks the water. We spent one night at the hotel, enjoyed a walk around
town before dinner, and then a very good dinner afterward. I took some lovely
photos of the fjord and the surrounding mountains on the morning of our
departure.
On the advice of the hotel owner, we decided to
check out the Supphellebreen glacier arm, which is not far from the hotel. We
drove out to the edge of the arm and walked to the body of water that lies
beneath the glacier arm. It is amazing to see something like this in person; I
have never seen a glacier up close before, and was surprised to observe that
the ice in the glacier had a bluish tinge. I took some photos, and then we
drove on. At my urging, we decided to check out the Haugabreen glacier as well,
but that turned out to be a rather nightmarish drive up a gravel-covered dirt
road with a 20% incline in order to reach it. My husband is a good driver and
his Porsche managed the trip up and down again, but I would not want to repeat
the experience any time soon. I don’t have the nerves for steep narrow roads
with no protective railings. I kept wondering if we would end up going over the
edge. As it turned out, we made it to the top, but found out that we would have
to walk a bit in order to reach the glacier, so we decided against doing that
since we had a long drive ahead of us to Ålesund. On our descent, we met a
large dump truck carrying gravel coming up the hill. There was no way we could
pass it, and we could not back up as it would have meant backing up the hill
from which we had descended, so the truck had to back down, and it did. I was
impressed by the truck driver who took it all in stride. I would have been a
nervous wreck.
We made it to Ålesund by late Tuesday afternoon and
checked into the Brosundet Hotel, also right on the water. This hotel was also
quite nice; I liked the fact that both breakfast and dinner were included
in the price, also that the kitchen staff provided cake and coffee during the
late afternoon before dinner. The dinners were standard fare—turkey wings the
first evening and lamb stew the second evening—but it beat having to find an
open restaurant (many restaurants close in July in Norway—right during the
height of tourist season, which makes no sense to me at all). Those that were
open were quite expensive; main courses were in the forty to fifty dollar price
range. Overpriced, in my opinion. Ålesund is a quaint city, with many old stone
buildings (a big fire in 1904 destroyed most of its wooden buildings), but
there were a fair number of buildings in need of repair and renovation. It did
not strike me as a wealthy city, but I could be wrong. While we were there, the
annual boat festival got underway, and we enjoyed a flyboarding exhibition that
was just about the coolest thing I have ever seen (see video in the next post).
Otherwise, we walked around the entire city and out to the Aquarium, which is
also known as the Atlantic Sea-Park (Atlanterhavsparken). The aquarium is
well-worth visiting; it is right on the ocean, and has large outdoor open pools
for seals, otters, and penguins. The large indoor open pool holds a variety of
fish, manta rays, lobsters, starfish, and anemones.
We left Ålesund for Molde on Thursday morning, and
arrived in Molde around lunchtime. The weather was very nice, so after we
checked into our hotel (Molde Fjordstuer Hotel) we took a long walk around the
city, ate lunch and then hung out at the hotel until dinnertime. This hotel was
modern and quite stylish and I enjoyed staying here. It would be nice to visit
the city again at some future point during the jazz festival.
We left Molde for Bygdin on Friday morning, with
planned drives up Trollstigen and through Geiranger. I’ll let Wikipedia’s
description of Trollstigen suffice—a serpentine
mountain road, narrow
with many sharp bends, and although several bends were widened during 2005 to
2012, vehicles over 41 feet long are prohibited from driving the road. I’m
very glad my husband is a good (and confident) driver and that his Porsche
could make it up Trollstigen and then down and up the road to Geiranger, which
was equally serpentine and a bit nerve-wracking in my opinion. We stopped to
have coffee at the Hotel Utsikten (literally the View Hotel), which had breathtaking
views of the Geiranger Fjord. After that, we drove on to Bygdin through mountain
country, and arrived at the Bygdin Fjellstue Hotel in late afternoon. The nice
weather was conducive for walking, so we took a good walk before dinner. We
stayed at this hotel for one night (we stayed here before in 2002, my first
trip to the mountains in Norway), and managed a walk along Bygdin Lake on
Saturday morning before we left for home.
We were quite lucky with the weather; most of the time
it was sunny and fairly warm. There was only one evening/morning in Ålesund
when it rained heavily. Although there was a lot of driving on this trip, it
was endurable because we drove along many scenic routes (my husband’s plan) rather
than standard (often mind-numbing) highways. It’s no wonder that Norway is
considered to be a beautiful country; this trip merely confirmed that fact.
(I'll post photos in my next post, as well as videos of the flyboarding performance in Ålesund).
