Welcome to Olden!

Olden is a village situated the mouth of the Oldeelva River in the Oldedalen valley along the Nordfjord in Norway. About 500 people live in this village, which is only 3/4km in size.

When we arrived at this port I was immediately struck by how picturesque the place was. Here we were on top of a river, surrounded by steep, tall, green hills and typical Norwegian architecture. It truly is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to and this memory will stay with me for a long time. Unfortunately the photos don't do it justice - blame the photographer ugh!

View from the top of the ship. The village centre is situated in the top third of the image. Notice how the ship docks right at the side of the road.

Closer view of the village centre.

We took a trip at this port because, when we looked at the port on Google Earth at home, it was clear that there wasn't really much here. We did enjoy our trip (which was essentially just a sightseeing tour) but to be honest, we really could have made a full day out of just plodding about looking at the buildings and taking photos etc.

The trip that we took was a cruise down Oldavatnet Lake on a small boat. It was a nice trip (though cold on the lake) but the best bit was the drive through the small villages on the way to the lake. We passed some beautiful places like these...

Opposite side of the fjord

Oldavatnet Lake

From the lake we could see a glacier (Briksadalsbreen), which is essentially a "finger" of a much larger glacier and was really quite amazing. The glacier looked quite small, but this is the middle of summer here and apparently the size of the glacier depends on not just the temperature but the amount of rain too. Apparently, the season has been a little drier here than usual.

Briksadalsbreen (glacier)

After the lake trip we drove back through the outskirts of Olden before arriving at the village centre where the shops are (not many I hasten to add!). The centre was beautiful and had a cute little church which was built in 1759.

Towards the village centre

Old village church

Sailing back out past Olden we past some other pretty towns, like this one here...

Cute town which we passed on the way back through the fjord.

And of course we took a couple of pics of ourselves - the trouble with couples holidays though is that you always come back with a ton of pics of you both separately! The first one is me (obviously) and the second one was Andy which was taken outside at....midnight!

A rare image - it's not often that this gal posts pics of herself - especially not of her body!

Andy - outside at midnight!

Ok, that's your whistle stop tour of Olden. Next stop...Trondheim.

Next port of call....Bergen

Our next port of call was Bergen. Bergen is located on the south west coast of Norway and (we were told) is the second largest city in Norway. In 1217 it even replaced Trondheim as the country's capital - the capital now is Oslo - and has been since 1299 according to our tour guide.

Bergen - photo captured from the viewing platform at the top of the funicular railway

Around 1100 the city became important for the trade of dried cod which came from the north Norwegian coast. Later on (in about the 14th/15th century) it became an important trade center for the whole of Norway, with much of the trade being carried out from the old quayside (Bryggen), which is still there today. On the day that we went to the Bryggen there was a huge market going on with people trading much more than dried fish :)

We started our trip at the city park where out shuttle bus dropped us off. The park has a large (man made?) lake with a fountain and is really pretty. There was lots of seating around so we vegged out for a bit a just took in the view.

Bergen's city park

After that we went to the old Bryggen and walked/sat around there for a while doing my favourite activity "people-watching". It was fun to see what the locals were doing and what they were eating etc...basically grabbing a snap shot of their life.  This is what the Bryggen looks like today...

The Bryggen (old quayside) at Bergen

I even managed to sneak a pic of hubs - I do have pics of me too but they're in hubby's camera

We spent some time here looking around the old quayside and then made our way to the funicular railway. This railway (called the Fløibanen) runs up the Fløyen mountain and provides the best views of the whole of the Bergen region. The view from the viewing platform (320m above sea level) is absolutely stunning and is used in many of the tourist brochures that you will see around. The first picture that I added to this post was taken from up there. The cost was 70Kr each (which is about £7.50 or US$11) for a return trip and the railway cars leave every 10-15 minutes carrying about 40 passengers at a time - the cars and station have good access too and there was good provision for wheelchair users. This is a must see if you go to Bergen!

After that we just had a nosey around town and came across one of these (sheesh they get everywhere I tell you!). I loved how the building blends into the other historic buildings around it, much like they did with the McD's in York (England).

Mc D's.....you must never be more than a couple of miles from one. We didn't go in by the way.

We only got a few hours in Bergen but it was enough to get a good idea about what the place looked like and what people do here. The trip out of Bergen takes you back through the fjord (if you're on a ship!) and gives you some more spectacular views. I just loved the colourful buildings here.

Further up the fjord

That was pretty much our visit to Bergen, check back in a few days for tales of our next port of call...Olden. Olden was my (joint) favourite port of call :)

Back from Norway

Thanks to everyone to emailed me wishing me a great trip to Norway. We had a fabulous time and some wonderful weather. Who would believe that you could get sunburnt in the Arctic Circle? It was about 12-13 degrees (Celsius) most of the time we were away but the sun must have been very strong! I'll know for next time...

I'm really tired right now - have spent much of the afternoon paying bills and doing chores. Have also managed to come back with a (hopefully mild) recurrence of the health problems I had over Christmas. What a bummer...wasn't the best end to the holiday really. Am watching and waiting to see what develops and am hopeful that I won't need more surgery. If I do disappear of the radar for a few days in the next couple of weeks, you know where I'll be LOL.

I'll share some pics of the ports of call with you later, but wanted to just share a few of the ship and our journey out of England first.

I don't know what this building is called but we passed it on the way out of England and I thought it looked pretty.

I've passed these old forts from WWII in the English Channel before when I was working on the Isle of White and I thought they were interesting. I'm surprised they're still there really - for one thing they're a bit macabre and another thing, surely they're a risk to shipping?

Call us cheap but we always go for a cheap inside cabin. Our opinion has always been that it's just not worth splashing out for the amount of time that you spend in your cabin. However on this trip I must admit we did wish we'd splurged and gone for a balcony because there were lots of times we could have used it (normally you don't cruise so close to land so it's not worth it IMO, but we were SO close to the land that it would have been so much better of we had).  Actually we did originally debate getting a balcony but when we saw that it was more than twice the cost, we decided to go on 2 cheaper cruises instead - one was last October to the Canaries and then this was the second.

Loved this little pool at the back of the ship but it got really busy so we went to the main pool which was actually much quieter.

This was one of the main pools on the ship. I loved the sculpture at the end of the pool...

Check out the lovely texture of the sculpture.

Ok, well join me on my next stop (hopefully tomorrow) which is Bergen - Norway's second largest city...and a beautiful one at that!