Making it to Norway

Hirtshals for 2.5 days... Day 1, secure tickets to Bergen and walk on the beach.

Riding out to the ferry terminal, past beautiful white sand beach

Day 2, Oceanarium. Where they have a sunfish!

And sea lions you can swim with! Just kidding, they had a tunnel under the water. Pretty fun. They also had a little feeding show with them where they waved and did little tricks. The Oceanarium is all about the North Sea, and we learned a lot.

Spies' meeting

Don't touch

The morning of our ferry day we were very early. We ended up waiting in the queue a long time, but were rewarded by being able to ride our bikes right up into the huge ferry! We had a cabin, on the inside, with no windows, so we spent a lot of time on the upper deck while it was light out.

First glimpse of Norway!

We slept pretty well, after a few games of Spite and Malice, with the most expensive decks of cards ever.  And we were arriving in Bergen around 8am, so we were up very early, ready to get out as soon as we hit land. We even got to ride off first! Woo hoo!

We spent the morning in Bergen, trying to plan how to ride to Øystese over the mountains. When we had pretty much settled on a route, we ran into a cyclist who asked us about our trip and plans. When we said we were riding over the mountains he agreed that we had the best route and said it was a pretty good ride, he had done it before. However, he then checked the weather and told us that the biggest rains in a long time were predicted for the following few days, and maybe it would be nicer to hop on a bus. Oh, right, and it was going to be windy...

The bus is 1.5hrs, then we ride for 20 minutes up a huge hill. The ride over would be about 80km, up and down many huge hills. In wind and rain, with traffic and no shoulder for much of it, no thanks! We took a bus, and before we knew it we were in Norheimsund, where Anders works. We surprised him, and he grabbed his bike and rode home with us! By 4pm we were cozy in the house with Natalia and Anders and their three kids.

Anders!

Here we come, final few kms

We arrived on Sept 13th, and the next day was our birthday. We were celebrated with fresh chocolate croissants baked by Anders and birthday crowns, and even presents! The next few days it did rain a lot, and it rains less on the fjord than over towards Bergen. It was sad not to ride from Bergen, both of us were a little disappointed. Since then we have ridden up and down the big hill a few times. Trying not to lose our legs right away. Now we have been here for almost two weeks and it has flown by.