Thursday, June 28, 2012

The first days of the trip

We have finally started the trip. We managed to find each other in Gothenburg, do the final shopping, put J’s money into my bank account (do you know that all bank offices in Sweden don’t carry money -  we had to drive around for 45 min to find one bank?! ) and go to Oslo on our first day. It was raining the bigger part of the drive, but when we got closer to Oslo the weather changed and the sun started to shine. See below. It was a good start of the vacation.

We arrived safely around 6.30 in the evening to our camping place and I got to see the “car tent” for the first time. It was a pleasant surprise. It was very easy to mount, takes only 5 min to get it up, and you are far away from all the humidity and bugs on the ground sleeping on the car’s roof. See below the pictures of the tent. J’ had of course brought a bottle of sparkling wine to cheer the start of the trip.

We started the day in Oslo by re-arranging the car. J’s had rain in Germany when he packed the car and also when he had to spend one extra night at a camping site (when he missed the ferry). So he had no chance of putting everything in order. Then I arrived with an additional 3 bags, so it became even more chaotic. But it was just nice to spend the morning in the sun re-arranging the car. We found an order we are hoping we can keep.

The afternoon we spent in Museums. We checked out the Wiking ships, Kon-Tiki and RA II and finally the Norwegian Maritime museum. It wasn’t my first choice of museums (I would have rather visited the Munch museum), but we didn’t have the time for everything and these museums were all close by each other. And J was happy that he could see all the things he wanted.

When we started our drive to Flåm and Näröyfjord we were expecting a long boring drive on the E16, but my GPS kept nagging about that we should take the 7 and 50. We decided to listen to her, since she has been right about a lot of other things and we are both glad we did. What an amazing drive. We had a view the whole time: lakes, rivers, high mountains – some even with snow. It was absolutely amazing. We took it easy stopped and several times to look at the view. Unfortunately we arrived too late to the camping site (we arrived 23.15) and ended up spending the night next to a small road. But it was just nice. We had fresh water from a stream nearby and everything else we needed we had in the car. The advantage with camping in Scandinavia – you will find a place to camp everywhere you are.

The next morning we took it easy and left the place around lunch time. We went back to the camping we had planned to stay at the previous night and decided the place was so nice that we would like to stay there 2 additional nights (see below), which now means that we are 3 days after our original plan. J Funny, first we started one day later due to the traffic jam in Germany, and then we took it a little bit too easy out of Oslo, so we arrived one day later to the camping site than planned and finally we enjoyed the place so much so ended up staying 2 extra nights. But isn’t this what vacations is all about? That you can change your plans as you go along? We of course have to cut something else out of the original plan and that is up for discussion later.

When I met J in Oslo he told me that the original foldable kayak that he had bought was destroyed (it was a used one), so he had bought a brand new one. It was the display kayak from the store and unluckily they had NOT included the manual how to mount it. So yesterday we spent the evening mounting the kayak. I’m happy that we are both able to look at things and figure out how they work, so we managed to put it together without the manual in 1,5 hour. We made some minor mistakes on the first trial, but then we redid it, it all worked out just nicely. So today we tried it out. It was a fantastic tour on the fiord, the sun was shining with no clouds at all and the water was calm. I would have loved to show you pictures of this, but my underwater camera (which I use in the kayak, since it can take water) seems to have a quarrel with my computer. She refuses to talk to her. So you just have to take my word for that it was a fantastic trip. Now I’m waiting for the dinner J’s is preparing, drinking a beer and blogging.
The first night in the tent.

The weather changed when we came closer to Oslo

Näröyfiord where we paddled

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