Leaving Africa and heading to Europe does signal the beginning of the end of our year of wonder. We were looking forward to seeing the fjords of Norway but also originally had plans to meet another YA in Norway. Unfortunately plans changed again, but this time with further advance notice so that we could make adjustments to where in Norway we were going to visit allowing us more time in the fjord lands area. It took us more than half the trip to really engage the kids on planning, but for this part, Annika did almost all the research on places to see and things to do and even helped look for places to stay. In many ways Norway reminded us a lot of parts of Canada and New Zealand but still had its own unique European twist to the rugged yet beautiful landscape. We were often wowed by the beautiful creation around us and would gladly come again.
Preikestolen
Preikestolen, referred to as Pulpit Rock in English, is one of the most famous hikes in Norway and is the primary reason we arrived in Stavanger which is the closet airport. It is a 600m rock cliff face that overlooks the Lysefjorden fjord and has a nice flat square top set out from the rest of the cliff.
Walking the woods, bogs, lakes and granite rocks felt a lot like hikes along the Canadian shield. It was a popular spot and quite busy.
The hike to the fjord had stunning views of the valleys and waterfalls.
First full views of the fjord were stunning and got better as we got closer to Pulpit Rock.
The three pictures above are actually taken from a good rock face/look out point just before the famous Pulpit Rock. We could see Pulpit Rock from here, along with the long line to get pictures at the one particular spot and we decided we didn’t need to stand in that line to get a good picture of us and the fjord!
The picture below on the left is of the rock we took our family pictures on. The picture below on the right is of Pulpit Rock.
A great view from Pulpit Rock while eating our picnic lunch. The rock point in the right picture is actually the famous Pulpit Rock photo site – Julia quick took a photo between people taking their turn there!
The line up for the tip.
The tip facing the other direction didn’t have much of a line.
Looking over the true edge (with a healthy respect for heights, I opted to take the picture) and having a bit of fun with the not quite true edge.
Driving from Stavanger to Bergen
We didn’t spend a lot of time in Stavanger itself as it was raining the day we arrived. It did have a nice little village feel to it though and driving the surrounding areas reminded us a lot of the cottage area in Eastern Ontario and the Thousand Island region with all the waterways and cottages. The big differences though were that most of the water was salt water and in a lot of places the required infrastructure were ferries and tunnels. The ferries were used to cross the larger waterways, and tunnels to get past the mountains and hills that butt up against the fjords. For our time in Norway we took 4 ferries and about 50 tunnels.
