Sunday 13 May 2012
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| Our card for the couple |
Mothers Day was memorable for Dian and for Charles and Nicole it was pretty nice too. We started the day at 8:45 with a lovely breakfast laid out by Katja which included bread and hard Norwegian bread strips, great cheeses, cucumbers, tomatoes, cream cheese with chives, kefir, raspberry jam, honey, Turkish yoghurt, cereal, tea, milk and coffee. Wow! It turned out Katja, a kindergarten teacher, loved making breakfast but Mattias usually wasn't that hungry. We were.
After chatting with Katja about the life of a Swede and a Dane in Norway, we got down to the celebration and Nicole gave Dian a book by Sasek called "This Is Edinburgh" to add to her collection of his children's books on Paris and New York. What a perfect gift for Mother's Day and how expertly Nicole and Charles had kept it hidden from Dian. Then Katja pulled a bunch of wooden posts out of a cloth bag and placed them precisely all over the floor and introduced us to the Viking Game, or Kube, making sure we knew that the last throw required bending over and throwing it backwards through your legs. We loved it and resolved to look for one when we drove back through Sweden, since she said it was big there but hard to find in Norway.
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| The breakfast spread |
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| Katja explaining the game (photo by Dian) |
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| The "king" piece (Picture by Dian) |
We went for a hike with Mattias and Katja to a gorgeous waterfall nearby that we wouldn't have found on our own. We took their dog Seco too, who hunkered way down in trepidation when crossing the shaky wooden footbridge. (Mattias told us he had to carry him across the first time. And he's a big dog.) The craggy mountains surrounding the area we were told are known as the Scandinavian Alps. When we got back to the twin white vans we all crammed inside for a bit of the Beatles "Norwegian Wood," with Dian and Nicole harmonizing and Dian strumming. We said goodbye to our new friends and they said they would follow the blog.
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| Mattias and Katja told us this was somewhat of a local attraction because of its tree-roof |
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| It is typical in Norway to have a roof with moss and grass on top, but not usually full blown trees |
The houses we saw were all beginning to have sod growing on the roof (and sometimes trees). We also stopped at an over 800-year-old STAVE church (stavkyrkje). It was pitch black and indeed the black covering the old wood was pitch that kept the wood from rotting, for nearly a millenium. We drove along the historic route and Nicole confirmed the area was a bona fide "Woodey woo!" We read some postcards with Viking Rules and saw cherry trees that were just beginning to blossom. Brace yourselves, there are many pictures to come.
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| For our friend, Mary Bergen |
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| Nicole and the stave church |
We had to cross on the ferry, about 20 minutes, to get to the north side of the big fjord, and when Nicole and Dian asked Charles to look at the receipt and see how much it cost and he said 125, they freaked! til he quickly explained that was kroners, about $25. We walked around the little town of Laerdal, where we saw many people in colorful folk costumes, just coming from church services. We ran into some sleet and after a few tunnels we came upon our first unobstructed, spectacular view of Sognefjord which was turquoise blue. If it weren't for two pretty inaccessible fjords, in Greenland and Antarctica, this one would be the world's longest (205 km) and deepest (1.3 km). Charles wished we had "TROLLhouse" cookies to celebrate Mothers Day but instead he and Nicole gave Dian a 15-minute massage. Then we pushed on. It was raining lightly (or liquid sunshine as our friend Gretchen calls it), a tough, narrow road, sometimes one lane, and after getting tired of picking our jaws up off the floor over the constant succession of turns in the road revealing yet more endless scenic wonders, we decided late in the afternoon to take a shorter road down rather than the much longer scenic route. Just short of the ferry back to the other side we found a pull-off with a fantastic view of an arm of the fjord that looked like a very big lake, and we had spaghetti with sauce and a salad with pears and homemade garlic croutons. We called Grandmother to wish her a Happy Mothers Day (using the cell phone - a splurge because there was no Wi-Fi for miles) and turned in at 10 (it was still very light out, and the sun would be coming up around 3 AM).
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| Trying to get her to smile |
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| Locals |
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| And more locals |
We had Spaghetti Bolognese and looked at photos from the fjord that Nicole had captured.
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| Our first view of Sognefjord |
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| The wind was so strong it made the metal railing moan |
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| So cold the ice was blue |
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| Excalibur, taking the cold weather quite well |
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| Bologneeeese |
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| Guess what time it was when this picture was taken? If you said 10:30 PM you'd be correct |
We went for a hike with Mattias and Katja to a gorgeous waterfall nearby that we wouldn't have found on our own. We took their dog Seco too, who hunkered way down in trepidation when crossing the shaky wooden footbridge. (Mattias told us he had to carry him across the first time. And he's a big dog.) The craggy mountains surrounding the area we were told are known as the Scandinavian Alps. When we got back to the twin white vans we all crammed inside for a bit of the Beatles "Norwegian Wood," with Dian and Nicole harmonizing and Dian strumming. We said goodbye to our new friends and they said they would follow the blog.
We had Spaghetti Bolognese and looked at photos from the fjord that Nicole had captured.
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