I’m going to break our trip to Norway into four posts. So keep watching for them. This first one will be about the first couple of days. I won’t go into a lot of detail about all of the exciting breakdowns and issues we had since I covered that in the last post.
On our first night, we stayed in Oslo at the Anker Hotel. I got the most sleep on the plane, so I explored the area a little. The others were wiped out, so we got burgers for supper and they stayed in the room. Next to the hotel was a nice park that ran all along a stream. It was relaxing to walk there before it got dark and I headed to the hotel.
Our stay included breakfast and they had one of the nicest and largest breakfast buffets I have seen. It was a great way to start the day!
We had a lot of driving to do that day so we headed across the country. I’d read about the wood stave churches in Norway and I wanted to some of them. We were driving along admiring the scenery when all of a sudden, there was a wood stave church right by our road. We stopped and paid a small fee to go in and we got some great pictures.
The sign by the church said there were only 28 of the churches remaining. It had great woodworking and designs inside and out. The guide told us which parts of the church were original and which parts were replaced. I think it was originally built in the 1300s.
The next day we went into Stavanger and went down by the docks. It had neat shops there and looked very Scandanavian. It was very picturesque and pleasant for spending a few hours. When we left Stavanger, we went through a tunnel that went under the Fjord. It was over 11 kilometers long. They love tunnels in Norway. The longest one we were in was 25 kilometers. Almost 15 miles!
After that, we dropped Marty and Hattie off at a coffee shop while Stoller, Sabrina, and I went to hike to the top of Pulpit Rock. Pulpit rock is a large, relatively flat rock that has 1000-foot drop-offs all around it. We thought it would take just a little while. If you went without stopping to rest, it is 2 hours up and 2 hours back. It took us 3 hours to get up it.
The hike was beautiful all of the way! The views were amazing. I don’t mind climbing a ladder, but just looking out over the rock made my knees a little weak. I never got closer than 10 feet from the edge. I guess I’m just chicken.
If you like to hike, this is definitely a great hike to do. We saw entire families doing the hike. It’s very popular. Just allow enough time. It was around 9:00 when we got back. Then we ate supper and had a 3 or 4-hour drive to our cabin for the night. Time for an energy drink!
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