Off for a relaxing trip out of Bergen. All we had to do was maneuver through the tourists and tour buses and we could make our grand escape. Well, we made it a little less grand by backtracking and taking the highway instead of driving through the city streets (and potentially getting turned in circles again), but we escaped nonetheless.<\/p>\n
And wouldn\u2019t you know it? The weather was gray and drizzly again. Mother Nature has not been our friend through the majority of the trip. Part of our time in Oslo was bright and shiny\u2014I particularly enjoyed the park with the girls sunning themselves in bikinis\u2014but for the most part, the skies have been overcast.<\/p>\n
Thankfully, we spent most of the drive on highways, so the weather didn\u2019t affect the roads a whole lot. We just got on the road and drove south until we arrived at the ferry from Halhjem to Sandvikv\u00e5g. There were two boats and they went back and forth, departing from Halhjem every 30 minutes. We got in Line 3 just as they were getting ready to load the ferry, which you would suspect would mean we would have to wait for at least half an hour, but you\u2019d be wrong.<\/p>\n
As Lines 1 and 2 began to shorten with people driving onto the ferry, the cars in front of us started scooting forward. Hey, if they were gonna move, we were gonna move with them. We followed the car in front of us and got onto the boat just as one of the dock workers was walking past us and holding his arms out to stop more cars from coming onto the ferry. We may not have been the last ones on the boat, but we were close. And we were on the boat, which was really the most important part.<\/p>\n
Everyone was getting out of their cars and heading to the upper deck, so Mom and I used an elevator to get up there and check out the scenery. There were chairs and benches on the outer deck so people could sit down and enjoy the fresh fjord air, but remember what I said about the weather? We decided to poke our heads outside to take a look around, then quickly scurried back inside with rain-dampened heads.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t long before people headed back downstairs to get in their cars, so we jumped back in the elevator, drove out of the ferry and into the middle of a whole bunch of cars heading in one of two directions. At least we could console ourselves with the knowledge that the slow traffic wouldn\u2019t be our fault this time.<\/p>\n
Yeah, we were kinda surprised at how fast people drive here in Norway. After hearing about how severe the punishments for speeding can be, watching people race by us when we\u2019re already driving over the speed limit\u2026 I can\u2019t count the number of times Mom pulled off to the side of the road to let cars get past.<\/p>\n
Which is not to say that punishments aren\u2019t severe. We were talking to a waiter earlier who told us a story about his nephew. Apparently, the kid had his license for a month or so and got nailed by a traffic camera driving 75 km\/h in a 50 zone. That\u2019s pretty far over the speed limit, which might explain why the judge sentenced him to 30 days in jail, slapped him with a 2000 kroner fine and suspended his license for six months. Let that be a lesson to you, kids: Always make sure you\u2019ve left the country before that notice from the traffic court arrives in the mail.<\/p>\n
Once again, we stopped for gas twice today, but not because we were burning up the fuel. This time, the first station required you to pay at the pump and since Mom\u2019s credit card doesn\u2019t have that chip in it, we couldn\u2019t use it. At least she found a kind stranger to help her figure out how to use the pump, even though his effort was in vain.<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t have the same problem at the second station. Was it because there was a kinder soul behind the counter who took pity on us poor Americans who couldn\u2019t use the pumps with our non-microchipped Visa card? Well, the cashier might have been, but the real reason was because all of the card readers were broken, so everyone<\/i> had to pay inside. Ha!<\/p>\n
About 20 minutes outside of Haugesund, we took a detour toward the Nordvegen History Center and Viking Village. There was a small possibility that some of my distant, long-deceased relatives were buried in the graveyard behind Avaldnes Kirke there, so why not visit and absorb a little of the native culture while we were in the neighborhood?<\/p>\n
Alas, most of what we got were pictures. We took a quick look around inside the church and got a few photos, but a girl there offered to answer any questions we had. I thought of one shortly after we left, but didn\u2019t get the chance because the church had closed before we got back. It was like a sphere with a vertical loop and a horizontal loop and the horizontal one had a bunch of little candle holders on it. While we were inside, she added a few candles, then took one off and blew it out. Mom thought that perhaps people lit them in prayer for dead relatives or something, but the one the girl blew out was still about two inches long. I thought maybe adding and removing candles around the loops (if they had wicks of certain lengths or something) was a type of clock or calendar or something, but like I said, I didn\u2019t get the chance to ask.<\/p>\n
We headed down a short hill to the History Center and started talking to the kid working behind the desk there (dressed up in the proper ancient Norwegian attire, of course). He said that we could pay there for the tour of the Center, but the Viking Village closes at 4:00 (it was about 3:15 at the time), so we might want to go down there first. It was a 10-minute walk at a normal pace, but since Mom and I are a tad gimpy nowadays, it seems more accurate when you double the time, especially when there are long hills to climb and descend to get to the village.<\/p>\n
Yeah, lots of hills there, but it\u2019s the natural contour of the land\u2014whaddya gonna do? We headed up and down on the trail, avoiding wet spots, dog droppings and what looked like a little kid\u2019s fake mustache. Why a kid would be wearing one of those while trekking to a Viking village was beyond us, but we were more concerned about the time.<\/p>\n
It turned out that we needn\u2019t have worried. The \u201c4:00 closing time\u201d was really just the time when they stopped giving tours around the village. Given that we showed up and didn\u2019t ask for any help, we were left to wander around and take pictures of all the buildings there. A lot of them looked like huts where people could live, store food, have a fire indoors, etc., but one down by the harbor was a giant boathouse where you could store longboats after pulling them out of the water. You could also put a bunch of picnic tables around it where families could eat, but I don\u2019t think Vikings were really big on the whole \u201ctablecloth\u201d thing.<\/p>\n
After taking some pictures and absorbing some centuries-old Norwegian culture, we headed back up toward the History Center. During the trek, we saw that mustache again, only we realized it wasn\u2019t a mustache this time\u2014it was a big, black slug crawling along next to the path. We took a nice close-up photo (Who knew slugs were so photogenic?), then walked about ten yards before I almost stepped on a second one. It wasn\u2019t long after that before we saw a third. Why they were appearing all of a sudden, we\u2019re not sure. It had been damp and moist for a while today, but maybe slugs are slow to react to changes in the weather.<\/p>\n
When we got to the top of the final hill and back to the parking lot, I wasn\u2019t really in the mood to go back to the History Center for even more walking. We weren\u2019t feeling particularly enriched and no long-dead relatives had risen from the grave to say \u201cHi\u201d, \u201cBoo!\u201d or show off a ghostly sword for me, so we took off toward our hotel, the Scandic Haugesund, instead.<\/p>\n
The directions were good enough and the roads were easy enough to follow this time that we only missed one turn and drove around the block two or three times before pulling over and walking around the building to get to the reception desk. Thankfully, the parking lot was underneath the hotel, so we drove down and parked right next to the elevator to bring our bags upstairs. The lot wasn\u2019t very full at that point, but it could be in part because the hotel was built back in March, I think. It was a very young, very modern hotel.<\/p>\n
Yes, very<\/i> modern. There were a lot of straight edges in our rooms, especially in the bathroom. There were square tiles over all the walls, a square sink and, well, the toilet seat curved a little, but probably only because sitting down and having corners jutting into the backs of your legs would be a tad uncomfortable. Trust me, they were some plush digs.<\/p>\n
When we went downstairs and asked the girl at the reception desk where some good restaurants were, she pulled out a city map and pointed to two places. One was really good and really expensive; the other\u2014To Gross\u2014was also good and had some traditional Norwegian dishes. Since we\u2019re trying to eat more culturally diverse cuisine versus hamburgers and fries all the time\u2014that\u2019s only happening about half the time\u2014we opted to walk to To Gross, which was supposed to be just a couple blocks away.<\/p>\n
It sort of<\/i> was. She showed us how to get there, but had circled a couple intersections where it might be during the course of the conversation, so we ended up walking around for an extra five blocks or so, which thrilled Mom to no end since her legs were pretty much burned out at that point. Surprisingly, we covered about three city blocks and saw six pizza places. It wasn\u2019t a college town, but I figured there were a lot of young people living in the area.<\/p>\n
We ended up asking someone else for directions, which ended up being very close<\/i> to the last spot she circled on the map. Still, we walked inside, got a table and told the waiter what we wanted. Aside from the whole \u201ccultural diversity\u201d thing, I\u2019ve been ordering food that I\u2019ve never tried before, which is why the waiter brought me an ox tenderloin for dinner. Yummy.<\/p>\n
Tomorrow, we\u2019ll be driving to Kristiansand. Time for yet another ferry, some mountains, some coastline or maybe even all three<\/i> if we\u2019re feeling really adventurous. We\u2019ll see what we\u2019re in the mood for when we get there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Off for a relaxing trip out of Bergen. All we had to do was maneuver through the tourists and tour buses and we could make our grand escape. Well, we made it a little less grand by backtracking and taking the highway instead of driving through the city streets (and potentially getting turned in circles … <\/p>\n