September 9, 2015 1:32 PM

Just when I was getting used to Iceland....

(1:30 p.m. PDT, 10:30 p.m. in Bergen)

Greetings from Bergen, Norway. After getting used to Iceland, we’ve moved on to the place Erin’s great grandfather left once upon a time to move to America. Today marks our second day here, and the differences are difficult to miss. Iceland has been almost completely deforested over the course of its history and has worked hard to plant enough trees to now cover 1.5% of its land mass. The Norway I’ve seen thus far is nothing BUT forest, and it’s beauty is far different than what we experienced in Iceland- so different, in fact, that I’m not about to compare the two. I loved Reykjavik and Iceland, and so far what I’ve seen of Bergen and the west of Norway is awesome. And we head to Oslo for the last leg of our trip early Saturday morning.

Early this morning, we took a three-hour train ride to Myrdal, 866 meters above sea level, and then 50-minute train ride down to Flam, which is two meters above sea level. From there we took a speedboat tour through Sogne Fjord, which provided the inspiration for a movie you might have heard of- Walt Disney’s Frozen (Bergen was also the inspiration for Arrendelle in the movie). To call the trip breathtaking would be an understatement of epic proportions. I’m still trying to process everything we saw today…but that seems an almost impossible task. Mountains, waterfalls, valleys, fjords…and more sunshine that we saw in four-plus days in Iceland.

When planning for this trip, I thought “Norway in September,” so I figured maybe not snow and ice, but certainly colder and very likely inclement weather. The short version is that I packed for the next Ice Age, and the high here in Bergen today was 70…and tomorrow’s forecast is for much the same. I actually managed to get something of a sunburn today, this in a place that gets something like 240 days of rain in an average year. Whodathunkit?

Tomorrow, we’re going to spend exploring Bergen at a somewhat slower pace that we’ve been moving at over the past few days. Turns out that traveling can be exhausting; the temptation is to want to go, go, go- which isn’t something that works at home. Trying to do it while traveling, especially on a long trip such as ours, catches up with you- so tomorrow, it’s no early awakening and a much slower day. It still beats working.

On Friday, it looks like we’re going to drive three hours to the farm Erin’s great-grandfather grew up on and where some of her relatives still live. I’m excited for her to have an opportunity to reconnect with her history; it’s something not many of us get a chance to do.

Laissez les bon temps rouler….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on September 9, 2015 1:32 PM.

No, you can't stay here...but thanks for asking was the previous entry in this blog.

The more I try to escape America, the more it follows me is the next entry in this blog.

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