Påskeferie!

Spring break here is titled according to the holiday which they base it around, being Easter of course.  Norway does have a state church, the Lutheran church, so it would make decent sense for things to happen this way, which is neat.  I think I've been putting off the blog entry, because I knew it would be big and take up a bunch of time, but it needs to be done.

So, our trip started out Monday morning at 12:00 am.  More or less.  We decided to leave at midnight, which may sound crazy at first, but ended up being the best choice in the end, for sure.  Our first destination was Stranda, which is in the county of Møre og Romsdal.  It's far enough north, but it really shouldn't have taken us 17 hours to get there.  In addition to some few minor wrong turns and redecision-making, I thought that it would be a good idea to drive up this road called 51.  Well we get within maybe 70 km of where the next road that we need to drive is, and find out that 51 is closed from there on, perhaps why destinations at the end of that particular road were crossed out on the road signs, something none of us caught on to.  So we had to turn around and get onto a bigger road that went up a bigger valley.  The road ended up being beautiful, and after much much driving, we made it to Stranda, located on a beautiful fjord.  Here's a shot out the window of where we were staying:

It was necessary to take a ferry to get there, as with practically everything in western Norway.  We took quite a few ferries when were were there.

So many that I don't know where this one is going from or to.

While on Sunnmøre, as that was the name of the part of Møre og Romsdal that we were on, we saw an old town sort of museum area.  As well as a place that had a lot of old ships, though not really viking ships as we had been told might be there.  But old ships are cool anyways.  However, apparently not cool enough for me to take pictures of.  At the old town place, which was basically a showcase of old Norwegian buildings, there was a great example of soil and grass on building rooves.  

This one even had trees on it!  So I thought it was great.  We also went to a restaurant place, which required walking up 418 steps to get to, at least from the way we came to it.  But it did provide a very nice view from the top!  This was in Ålesund.  It was a nice rest at the top.

So we stayed with that family for a few days.  Not sure actually what they're last name was, but the connection that we had was from Heather to Øystein.  He had a brother who was home at the time, Kjartan (which as their dialect pronounces it, sounds like 'Chartan'), with his wife Malin, and their small daughter Ingrid.

His dad's name was Asbjørn (which I just realized must be the cognate of the name 'Osborne', in any of its spellings), and his mother's name was Anne lise.  She was a fantastic cook, and we definitely ate well.  She also knits fantastically amazing anything.  She was making something for Ingrid at the time, but she showed us some sweaters that she made for her boys when the Olympics sometime in 94 or 96.  One morning we went for a hike along a path on the fjord that they live on.  It was gorgeous as expected.

  We also travelled to the Geiranger fjord, which isn't too far from where they live, and is one of the most visited fjords in Norway.  It's also an Unesco world heritage site.  

Unfortunately I think I have to explain this picture.  It's supposed to be ironic: the thumb is like me saying that it's "good enough", and to make me appear like I'm just satisfied with how neat the fjord is.  Only a madman would think that it's just "good enough", which is the ironic part.  It was absolutely beautiful, and more than a destination in itself.  I am not hitchhiking.  We went for a hike, at lunch, and anything else that was free.

This was more or less the end of the first half of our trip.  With that I'm gonna end this post, and save the second half for another.  This is exhausting!