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Date: 02 – 03/08/2017
From/To: Helsinki – Tallinn
Distance: 5 Km
Total Distance: 14046 Km
Weather: Cloudy, Sunny
Road: Paved

In the morning the ferry arrived in Helsinki and I was happy to see that both bikes were still there without anything missing or damaged.

I had ‘Sibelius Monument’ earmarked to visit. When we had a closer look, it looked like somebody has welded old flues together and sprayed them silverJ. Actually, the pipes resemble organ pipes and the face is the face of Mr. Sibelius, a famous Finland composer.

 


From here we returned to the harbour, and after finding the right gate, the ferry was coming in with not much time to spare. The ferry was new, and the interior was impressive. Bummer that the crossing takes only 2.5 hours.


And this was our first view onto Tallinn. I felt a bit like we had our private rain cloud with us again this year.


We arrived at the prebooked flat. The host did welcome us, showed us the flat, gave us the keys and we settled in. The next day we decided to walk to the old town, it was less then 6km. On our way we came across a street fare, so we made a small detour. It was a bit early and not all stalls were open. There were some intersting art stalls where we had to buy something (small). Lucky enough


The first monument we came across was the ‘War of Independence Victory Column’ at the ‘Fredom square’. It is a pillar out of glas squares with a cross on top. It should remember all people fallen during the war of independence (1918-21 -Wiki is great). Not far from the Freedom square is an old Bastions Tower (Kik in de koek).


From here we entered the old town, it looked quite nice considering that a large part of the old town was destroyed during the second world war.


Some sovenier shops come up with unique exhibits.

Next we visited the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, it is the largest Cathedral in Estonia.

 


On our way back we passed a couple more town walls with intact guard towers.


And there are the monks, some sculputers in the Danish Kings Garden.


We discoverred a restaurant on the town wall, so we had a look. On the left you can see the first steps, after that it gets really steep, but there is a chain to hang on.


The view from the restaurant was great-the prices were as high as the view, so we gave it a miss.

This is a sculpture, representing the Danish flag falling from the sky during a battle, which encouraged the troops to win the battle.

This is a rain gutter of a church, I thought what a great idea.


And here it is, we found an Irish Pub with a happy hour J

Not far from the pub was a pedestrian path with a square plate for important historic dates. Looks like the guy putting the stones down must have been in the pub before, since he put the events for 2384 and 2418 down J

From here we walked to the other end of the old town. I like the narrow streets and the small yards.



Here we are at the entrance of the old town. The two watch toweres in the foreground.

When we walked home, we passed an art museum, with a piece of Berlin Wall and some suite cases. Sigrid tried to pinch one.


We found as well a sculpture with two boys, which sort of reminded us on the Angry boy from Oslo.

Next we will travel to Riga

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Date: 01-02/08/2017
From/To: St. Petersburg – Helsinki
Distance: 0 Km
Total Distance: 14046 Km
Weather: Sunny
Road: Paved

After a nice relaxing night on board of our ferry we hopped off the transfer bus at the same point as a day before, the ‘Issac’s Catherdral’. This time we decided to have a closer look and climb the tower and have a look inside the cathedral. So we purchased the tickets and off we went.


As you can see, Sigrid is fitter then I am, I needed a rest on the handrail J


Here we are, finally we made it.

The view was great. Here a view onto the ‘Isaaks place’. Looking around we could see plenty of palaces and golden church towers, some we could identify, some we couldn’t. The turquise and green church towers of the ‘The Savior on Spilled Blood’ looked interesting, so we earmarked it for a later visit.




After we came down from the tower, we had a look inside the cathedrale. Lucky that we took a guided tour otherwise we would have missed quite a bit of information. The first stop showed us how the cathedrale was constructed. There was a huge wodden frame build to errect each of the giants columns before the walls were build, which was the first time that this appoach was used. On the right hand side you can see the model of the dome.


Below a model to scale, made by the architect.

Here you can see the pillar and the dome.


The huge door is covered in reliefs, we had to get closer to appreciate it.


Here a view onto the altar and a close up some sculptures. The heads on the sculpture are acutally paintings.


After so much information we went out and had a look at park just behind the cathedral. There were multiple sculptures and Sigrid couldn’t resist sitting on the camel J


From here we went to the ‘Hermitage Museum’. We decided no to visit it, since that would take us more then the rest of the day to get through it. Since we had to be back at the boat at 17:00, we opted to have a look at other places. But on the ‘Palace Square’, just in front of t the Hermitage museum, Sigrid spotted a ‘Cinderella’ cart, so we had a look at it. Below are some picuters from the ‘Palace Square’ and the surrounding buildings.



During our walk, we did find plenty of larger and smaller channels which I didn’t expect.

And then we came to the ‘The Savior on Spilled Blood’ church. This church was built on the place where ‘Emperor Alexander II‘in 1881 was fatally wounded.



And here is the place where Alexander II was wounded. This was a foot path bordering a channel. To get this place covered by the church, the channel was narrowed and the foodpath closed.

On our way back we saw multiple fountains and scluptures, but we were headding back to the bus.


With just enough time to spare before we had to be at the bus, we found an Irish pub, so we had to try the food and certainly the beer (might taste different in St. Petersburg) J


The ferry left on a beautiful sunny evening and looking from the ferry you could see multiple historic buildings on side with some modern alterations J,


The sunset on the ferry was just nice.


Tomorrow we are back in Helsinki, we will get on our bikes (if they are still there) and hop onto another Ferry to Tallinn.

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Date: 30 – 31/08/2017
From/To: Helsinki – St. Petersburg
Distance: 0 Km
Total Distance: 14046 Km
Weather: Sunny
Road: Paved

We packed our gear, this time we parked the bikes in front of the house and one person was always there, so we can’t get another parking ticket. We had some time before the ferry to St. Petersburg goes, so we went to a bank to pay our speeding fine. Better to have it done and forget about it. Inside the bank Sigrid is sitting on the ‘Straffbank’ J. German joke, it means is the penalty bench, where the word bench means as well bank.


And he was standing on the side of the car park and on the right is our ferry.


So we parked the bikes on the long term car park, got everything we needed from the bikes, put the cover over and left. Everybody was saying the bikes will be ok in Helsinki. We hope that they are rigth.

We settled in our cabine and not long after the ferry left the harbour. We were not sure about sea sickness, but the Baltic sea was extremly flat, so we didn’t notice that we were on a boat.


The next morning we arrived in St. Petersburg. The building must have been fantastic when it was build, but at the moment it looked very neglected.

So we had some coffee and waited until we could disembark and waited even a bit longer to let the first wave go. Well…Still at the passport control was a long queue, and it took us two hours before we were finally in Russia. That is not too bad, we had worse in central America J, As soon we left the building, we hopped onto the shuttle and got off at the ‘Issac’s Catherdral’

We didn’t have any plan of St. Petersburg, so we looked for a tourist information. When passing a hotel we ask the porter, he mentioned that they had very capable Concierge and we should go inside and ask them. I wasn’t sure, since this hotel looked very expensive. When we entered the hotel, a woman was approaching us and we told here that we were looking for some information but we are not staying in the hotel. She nodded and ask us to follow her, then she offered us two seat on the Concierge desk. Was that a trick? Would they charge us after the service? Well, even if, it would be worth. The Concierge put a two day visit together, considering the weather, the current time and our budge constrains, unbelievable. He had the prices, the schedule and place where the hydrofoil would leave in his head, amazing. So we said thank you, and left. No charge, just very friendly people. So we walked to the place he described and boarded the hydrofoil to go to the Peterhof Palace.

The trip booked from the ferry would have costed each of us 120Euro, the ticket for hydrofoil and entrance fee was around 30Euro. On our way we saw the old sailboat replica and we earmarked it for later. Wepassed as well some fancy buildings,


Some of them reminded me of Dubai J


45 minutes laterwe arrived in Peterhof castle. First we had a look at the main path leading to the castle. The path was lined with plenty of water foutains and golden sculputer.


This is a view from the castle to the sea, where the boat was.

We had a tour through the castle, but is was forbidden to take pictures. There was no chance not to obey, since there was at least one guard per room. It was really impressive. How much work was in there to build rooms like this, with all the preccious stones, wood and gold. Next we had a look at the rest of the garden. There were multiple founains, each different from the other one. First we had a look at the Dragon Cascade or The Chessboard Hill. The dragons looked really cute.


Next we passed the ‘Roman Foutain’ and the ‘Pyramid Fountain’


the ‘Sun Fountain’


the ‘Umbrella Fountain’. This is fun for kids, since the water stops and you can step under the umbrella and then the fountain starts again. The time you have to go under the fountain varies, for the enjoyments of the kids. Well, all of the sudden the big kidSigrid was under the umbrellaJ


Then there was the ‘Firs Fountain’, which looked like trees spraying water,

And the ‘Great Orangery’ fountain. I guess, in the old times they didn’t have any water restrictions J


Then we hopped onto the hydrofoil and on our way back we passed our ferry.

The boat dropped us off in the center of St. Petersburg from where we walked to the ‘Peter and Paul Fortress’. On our way we passed plenty of building which we would like to visit, but two days are not really enough to see them all.


As planned we passed the sailboat replica, which houses multiple shops, a fitness center and a restaurant. The small canon was just in front of the replica.


Before we entered the frotress, we passed a place where people were throwing sticks at some piles of smaller wood. As it turns out it is a sport here. Well, there was a description, all in russian, but it looks like that there are different formations of small wood pices that has to be washed away with the thrown stick (I guess)


Here a closer look at the fortress wall.

In the fortress there were plenty of art exhibited.


Unfortunatelly the history exhibition was closed when we arrived there, so we just took a picture of the figuriens in front.

Here is Sigrid holding the chathedral tower J and the cathedral in full view.


Here Sigrid found some more art J



Below is a scematic of the whole fortress, which is quite big.

And at night we had a clear sky with a beautiful moon, I couldn’t resist to take a picture of it.

Below are multiple pictures from St. Petersburg at sunset.


At our way home, we passed the ‘Palace Square’ and we noticed as well that St.Petersburg has plenty of small channels lining the city.


And we passed the Hermitage museum.Well, either we do that tomorrow and nothing else or we have to skip it.

Arround 10PM we hopped on the transfer to the ferry and got on board without any problems. What a beautful day.

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Date: 25 – 29/08/2017
From/To: Kautokeino – Helsinki
Distance: 1535 Km
Total Distance: 14046 Km
Weather: Sunny, Cold, Rain
Road: Paved

We sat out the rain in Kautokeino for a day and were contemplating to wait even a bit longer but checking the forecast we realised that the temperature would drop dramatically. The temperature was predicted to be close to freezing -2 degrees until lunch time the day after , so we decided to leave.


A the start of our ride the temperature dropped to four degrees for a couple of hours.

Here a quick shot from our border crossing.

Here we had a short stop at the petrol station, with some warm coffee. Not long after we passed the Arctic circle, this time on the street.


The campground that we earmarked for our stay was completely booked, they had a meeting of Norwegian motorcycle riders and only some ‘Luxury’ cabins were available, which was really outside of our price range. So we had a short talk with a couple of riders before we continued to the next camp ground, which was in woopwoop. Here we found a fantastic cabin, with its own sauna, and a marvellous view from the balcony.


We liked so much that we stayed an extra day. The next day we started early. When we were riding in the back streets, a nice windy road through beautiful forest, I was day dreaming, well, until a guy with a yellow vest jumped on the road and waved his arms franticly. It was a copper and I had to blow. At this point I thought that’s it, but after the result was negative I was invited to sit in the police car. The officer told me that I was speeding. I must have overlooked a 40km/h sign, doing, well let’s say double that. He said that with my excessive speed I would lose my driver licence L, he doesn’t like to do it, so he recorded the speed where I wouldn’t lose my license, but I got a fine. He did ask a couple of questions, one was my monthly income???? As it turned out, the fine for speeding in a 40 zone, regardless how much, is 240Euro, or 18 day sets of your income. So my income was not high enough, payed just 240Euro and so did Sigrid L. Apparently the highest fine in FineLand was 103.000 Euro, so 240 Euro are not too bad. Here you can see the nice copper which jumped in my way and on the right hand side, Sigrid being processed J


Close to Helsinki we got onto a highway where you could legally drive 120km/h J. We arrived at our booked apartment in Helsinki. We parked the bikes so we could see them from the balcony.


Here is the sign on the parking lot.

To make things worse, in the morning we had a parking ticket, 60Euro/person. First we thougth it was because the parking inspector couldn’t see the parking disk, after tranlating the fine, we found out that parking for motorcycles was not allowed here, only cars and trucks (bummer). These were the most expensive days during our trip.
Anyway, we went with the public transport to Helsinki. First we stopped at the Helsinki Cathdral, which was impressive, but it was quite crouded as well



So we were headding for the side streets where it was less crouded. During the walk we found a seal eating a fish. Sigrid is trying to get a fish, which didn’t work. So she tried it again with the next seal.


Below are some nice pictures from Helsinki

When reading the map, a local approached us and gave us a tip to go to one hotel, use the elevator to go to the top level, then walk another level and there is a coffee. So we did. The view from there was great. We saw the roof with small glass pyramids on it.


Here is Sigrid leaving the coffee.

Some more sots from some sculpures and some faces at the house entrance.


We hopped onto the ferry to have a look at the Fortress of Suomenlinna. This is a fortess that was used from the Swedish and the Russians, depending who was occupying this island at the time.

First we visited a small island connected via a bridge. There was the marine accademy located, not much to see except two old cannons and a sculpture.


When we walked to the southern end of the main island, we came across an Norwegian submarine from the second world war. Certainly we were keen to have a look at it. In this tiny boater were twenty man, with maximum 16 bunks.


From here we continued to the southern tip, where the defence walls and cannons were. Sigrid is waiting to ride a cannon ball trying to imitate Münchhausen.

On the left a picture from one defence section and on the right, the Kings Gate.


On the ferry on our way back we found a pool in the middle of the habour, it was one of the public pools and saunas in Helsinki.

Before returning home we had a look at the Uspenski Cathedral which was nice to look at from the outside but closed. After walking back to the Central station (picture on the right) we caught our bus home.


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Date: 21 – 25/08/2017
From/To: Tromso – Kautokeino
Distance: 546 Km
Total Distance: 12511 Km
Weather: Sunny, Cold, Rain
Road: Paved

Now the last push to the North Cape was on. Not to push it too hard we would split it in two days. The first day had two ferry rides and it started fine. After the first ferry the clouds came in and it started to drizzle. This continued while waiting for the second ferry. To amuse us we looked around and we found Santa Claus in the woods. On the picture on the right Sigrid holds him in the palm of her hands.


Finally the ferry arrives, it was still drizzling, so we were happy when we could board.

And here are the pictures from the ferry just before we arrive. On the left where we were coming from, on the right were we were going. We were quite happy about the sunshine.

We arrived on our half way mark and got a cabin with a grass roof.


The next day I thought I give our boots some TLC.

We noticed that the temperature started to drop quite a bit, we were now riding by 8 degrees, which felt much colder when the wind was blowing strong. Below is a picture of a small island on our way.

We booked a cabin, that Micha (a friend of ours and a Norwegian travel veteran) suggested. The location was just perfect and so was the sunset.


The next day we would walk to the most nothern point of the European mainland, which is not the place with where the globe and the visitor center is. The real point is reachable by a 18km return walk. We thought we do the walk first and then ride to the visitor center and take the mandatory pictures. Here a nice view from a fjord on our way to the car park.

Afer we parked the bikes on the car park, a group of rendears passed bye.


Since it was raining the last couple of days we followed a slippery path J

On our way we meet Jim and Ruth, a Candian couple. We attempted together to find the least muddy path.

And finally we arrived at the most northern point. The point itself is not very impressive, just some grey cement blocks stacked on top of each other. On the right hand you see the view onto the visitor center.


While we enjoyed the view we saw some whales. As usual I had difficulties to take a shot at the right time J

And here just a couple of scenic shots. Sigrid is fetching some water from the creek


The view back to the most northern point and some reindeer walking along.


A big puddle to cross and the road to the visitor center.


And here we are, at the car park of the visitor centre and the mandatory picture of us on the globe.


We made some new friends J

And as a bonus we had a magnificient sunset at the North Cape. We were lucky, the whole day was without rain, just some clouds to set the scene at sunset.


During our ferry rides we met up a couple of times with Oliver. He was travelling in a camper van on the way to Northcape and we met him there at the evening.

What a beautiful day, we made it to the North Cape on a nice day. No strong winds, clouds or rain. So we celebrated with some bubbly at night. The days were still long, but the temperature started to get a bit low so we would make our way south a quickly as possible.

When we packed our bikes the next morning, we got some visitorsJ

On the way we found some fish drying racks, where the fish is hang to dry for some time to preserve it.

When we arrived at our accomodation we looked at the weater forecast and found that it would be quite windy an heavy rain tomorrow, so we decided to stay put for a day. Our host told us that there would be an Sami wedding in the church nearby, and that we should have a look. So we did. Very interesing was the the ceremony was held in two languages, Sami and Norwegian


Here you can see the entrance of the camp ground, there are still some puddles from the last rain.

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Date: 17 – 20/08/2017
From/To: Bodo – Tromso
Distance: 580 Km
Total Distance: 11965 Km
Weather: Sunny, Cold, Rain
Road: Paved

From our accommodation it was not far to the ferry, so we arrived on a gorgeous day at the ferry. We meet some other motorcycle riders, one from France who travels to Iraq beginning next year. The ferry crossing was easy. Arriving at the Lofoten I understood why people were raving about the Mountain Ranges.


Here are the French motorcycle riders, they were on a tighter schedule then we were J

From the ferry it was a short ride to the southern point of the Lofoten. Unfortunately the clouds started to come in, so the picture isn’t as impressive as it would be in sunshine.

On the other hand, some clouds got caught in the mountains and created some spectacular views.


At night we arrived at a campground and they had a free hot tab. It was the first time that I saw such a construct. It is a big tab (enough for six people) with an oven in the water, and you start the fire in the oven which heats the water.


The next day was earmarked for the wiking museum in Borg in Lofoten. They reconstructed the largest long house found in Scandinavia. The picture below show the visitor center, with Sigrid using the free wifi for updating the blog J. At the end of the hall was a huge wood oven that would look even more impressive when the fire is lit.


Below is a picture of the long house. On the left the reconstruction, on the right the poles from the original one. The house is divided into multiple rooms, and in the days were lots of people and animals in it, particular during the winter.


These are two wood carvings, one is from Thor the other is from Odin


This is a typcial way to dry the fish and to store it. On the right hand, Sigrid is thinking about remodeling the kitchen at home J


On the left, the reason why Sigrid is always right, on the right, me pretending to be tough


Part of the ticked was a free sail boat ride on a viking ship. It was a replica of a viking boat, just a bit smaller then the original. We were quite surprised how fast the boat was even without too much wind. We spend the whole day in the museum, so the next day we leave the lofoten and visit the Islands of Andoya and Senja


On our way to the next ferry, we did ride the ‘Kleivodden’ scenic route. Below ae some pictures from it.


When we were waiting for the ferry, we walked arround and visited an old light house. The view with the clouds was just great.


 

Here the ferry just arrived and we are ready for boarding. Good thing in Norway, bikes first J

When the ferry left, we could see the clouds coming in but when we arrived on the other side, there was sunshine without any clouds.


Here we did the Senja tourist route. We stopped on a nice overhanging view point.


Some more landscape shots


The bikes waiting for the last ferry of the day J

On the ferry we had to make our way to the pay station, and to encourage the people to be honest, we found the following poster.

On the ferry we saw some nice cloud fomations. The right one looked like a dragon head, well at least for me.


At night we arrived in Tromso, which had an amazing tunnel labyrint. We counted 12 roads and at least 3 round abouts. Needless to say that the GPS wasn’t of any help here. At the end we manage to find the right exit and arrived happy at the camp ground.

 

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Date: 11 – 16/08/2017
From/To: Oddvar & Elfrida house – Bodo
Distance: 837 Km
Total Distance: 11385 Km
Weather: Sunny, Cold, Rain
Road: Paved

The next morning we had breakfast and a walk around their house. It is part of a recently house development and is reachable by only one road. Anyway, here is another attempt to use the phone remote control for my camera.

 

Odvar mentioned as well that just around the corner from their house there is Keikos grave, so we stopped there to have a look. There was even a street sign, that made it easier to find. Keiko was a Orka from the ‘Free Willy’ movie. After a the movie a foundation was founded to set Keiko free again. That wasn’t complely succesful and Keiko died in 2003. A ‘Norwegian’ tradition is to add a stone to the grave, so we did.


We continued torwards the ‘National Tourist Route Kystriksveien’ or the costal highway which goes from Steinkjer to Bodø, is 650 km long and includes six ferries. At the end of the day, we looked for accomodation after the first ferry, since it had rainded again and the weather should become worse for the night and the next day. There we met Leo; a Bulgarian motorcycle rider. We talked and then decided to have a coffee together before he continue.

Than we settled in our accomodation and dried our wet gear.

When we were sitting on the balcony we saw a fox just running around on the camp ground.

So we didn’t move the next day, and this was good choice. The next day was just perfect for riding.

We had to wait for an hour for our second ferry, so we walked around and found a nice exhibion, how people lived in the past here.

This ferry ride would take more than an hour and it would cross the nothern artic circle.

So I got the GPS out to see when we were crossing it. There was no need, since the captain announced it and there was a sculpture on the shore.


The scenery on the ferry was fantastic.


Back on land we passed a a glacier ending in a lake.


At the end of the day we managed to get all five ferries and found some nice accomodation in ‘Saltstrauam’. Saltstrauam is a small straight with one of the strongest tidal currents in the world. The tidal table showed high tight close to sunset, so we walked there and had a look at it. The sunset was funtastic, but we couldn’t se too much from the whirlpool, it was too dark.


The next day we gave it another go. Below are some pictures from the surrounding area.


On the pole is a small light house, which we climbed up to have a better view.


And here is a picture of whirl pool J.

 

Tomorrow we will hop onto the ferry to the lofoten.

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Date: 10/08/2017
From/To: Afarnes – Oddvar & Elfrida house
Distance: 204 Km
Total Distance: 10548 Km
Weather: Sunny, Cold, Heavy Rain
Road: Paved

We started early using a ferry to get to the start of the Atlantic road. The Atlantic road is an 8.3 kilometre long section of County Road 64 and connects small islands by eight bridges—the most prominent being the Storseisundet Bridge. But first we were surprised by the Bolsøy Bridge, which was quite impressive but was not part of the Atlantic road.

We continued to the start of the Atlantic road, when we saw the black clouds coming in. And it didn’t take long before it started to rain heavily. So it became handy when we passed a car park with benches and tables with a grass roof. So we got out our lunch and hot coffee out and stopped for a break.

 


Well the heavy rain stopped but we could see another cloud band coming in, so we took a short nap before we continued.

And without rain, here it was the Storseisundet Bridge. We were riding this bridge a couple of times to get some nice pictures and movie clips. Cars in the background or in front can be really annoying J. We were really lucky, the whole time no rain.


After we wore out the bridge – back and forth, it was time for a treat, so we went into the fency coffee shop. When we had our coffee, there were these black clouds again L. So we hopped on our bikes and took off.


I would say we were either too slow or too fast, but we got into heavy rain again. We had to use a ferry to get to Oddvar & Elfrida house. We met Oddvar & Elfrida in a hotel in Denmark, the morning when we embarked the Iceland ferry. We talked a bit and they invited us to their house when we would pass through Norway. So we took them up on that offer and contacted them 2 months later and they were happy to meet us. The address was hard to find, so Oddvar picked us up from a carpark with his motorcycle. It was still raining, so we really appreciated it that he picked us up. When we arrived at their house, our boots and gloves were completely soaked.


Elfrida and Ottvar made us feel right at home. The fire was going and It is soo nice to sit dry in a warm house, particularely when its heavily raining outside. Elfrida cooked a typical Norwegian dinner for us, Kippfisk, which is dried and salted cod, very delicious.

We had a great evening talking about Oddvar & Elfrida’s motorcycle adventures and about what it means to live in Norway.

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Date: 09/08/2017
From/To: Hornindal – Afarnes
Distance: 242 Km
Total Distance: 10344 Km
Weather: Cold, Cloudy, Sunny
Road: Gravel, Paved

Here is the accommodation on the farm, it looks even better in sunshine.


We started early to ride the Gamle-Strynefjellsvegen, the Dalsnibba, Geiranger and the Tollstiegen. Not a long distance but beautiful roads, partially single lane gravel, partially hairpins up and down. When we came to the first lake, we saw some fog just on the top of the lake. It looked fantastic.


Then we climbed up for the Gamle-Strynefjellsvegen scenic route. The road was partially single lane with hairpins, we were happy that nobody came the other way J. And here we got even more snow close to the road. And this close to the end of summer, imagine what it looks like here in winter.


The next road is the Nibbevegen which leads to the top of the Dalsnibba. When we reached the bottom, the weather looked good, so we decided to pay the toll and climb the road.

Arriving at the top we had sunshine for 5 minutes, then the clouds came in and the view was gone. Sine we had time, we waited for 20 minutes.


The clouds were gone again by this time and we had again a great view. Then we started to decend and stop a the Geiranger view point. Here you can look down the Geiranger fjord. The cruize liner in the background gives a bit of perspective on how high this really is.


Then we decended to Geiranger and climb out the other side. Here you can see the fjord from another direction.


On the side of the view point is a small waterfall running over glas pannels.

When we took a break, we stumbled across the ‘Gudbrandsjuvet’, another waterfall with stunning viewpoints.


And last but not least, we made it to the ‘Trollstiegen’. It took a bit of walking before we got this shot below, but it was worth it.

This was really an amazing day. I think that was the day with the most scenic views so far. Tomorrow we have another highlight, the ‘Atlantic Road’.

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Date: 08/08/2017
From/To: Høyheimsvik – Hornindal
Distance: 353 Km
Total Distance: 10102 Km
Weather: Cold, Drizzling, Cloudy, Sunny
Road: Paved

Today we planned to ride the ‘Snognefjell’ scenic route. I was hoping to have still some snow laying around, but not too muchJ. So we started early in the morning, had beautiful weather, some clouds hanging in the mountains.


And then we went up, and up, and there was really still some snow around. On the right picutre you can see the road coming up.


Our first stop was at a prisma showing where particular mountains are. You line up a name with the two glass panels and the look down on them and you see the mountain. Well, most of the mountain peaks where hiding in clouds.

The mountains around were amazing and so are the roads. The road on the left was an exception, most of the time there were some nice twisty roads. But here I found still some snow close to the road.


There was another view point with a square granit picture frame J. The snow peaks at the back are the highest glaciers in Norway, there is skyseason the whole year.


On our way down we met a familiar number plate, a car from Tasmania. So we met Fritz and Ursula, we talked about their travel and how they got the car to Europa. Anyway, they suggested a nice bakery in the next town. Apparently people from the entire surrounding would buy from there. So we decided to check itout.

So we did, the shop was easy to locate, look for the longest queue outside of a shop. So we bought some bread and some desert and had a coffee. And we meet Fritz and Ursurla again. We had a nice long break before we departed and were headding to Geiranger. I had the idea that we could camp there for a couple of days and do tours from there.


Well, after we decended to Geiranger in a throng of tour busses, caravans and cars , arriving at the campground, we learned that there were no cabins left and only 1 camp site (I would say it was only one half of a camp side as crowded as it looked). There is a second campground in Geiranger, on the opposite site. Seeing no reason why this campground should have cabins or camp sites left I saw the ferry comming in-And in a quick decision we opted to get ‘outathere’. We took the ferry to Hellesylt, which was on our to do list anyway. The evening was nice and we had a great trip throught the fjord. A cruizeliner was leaving as well, and when he turned we saw all of the sudden a rainbow. What a wunderfull view.


When we arrived in Hellesylt, there was a small waterfall just ouside of the ferry stop. We took some pictures before we hurried to get going as we saw some dark clouds coming torwards us.

So we hopped onto the bikes, and got caught in the rain L but shortly after Sigrid found a great accommodation on the way, a nice cabin on a farm.