Norway - Part 4

Bergen to Trondheim

Upon sailing out of Bergen during early evening on our ship, Polarlys, we immediately became aware of the ship's gentle rocking and swaying. My stomach was already frothy from hours on lurching buses, so I found this motion slightly sickening. Once in bed, with eyes closed, I tried to imagine being rocked like a baby. This helped some, but instead of a soft lullaby, I heard gurgling plumbing as the ship swayed.

By the time we finished our substantial breakfast buffet the next morning we had sailed into the Hjorundfjord. There we climbed onto a small tender boat and got delivered ashore at the tiny village of Urke. Here's our ship and the Hjorundfjord as seen from our landing point at Urke.

Click on the next image to enlarge the panoramic view.

We boarded a bus and took a tour from Urke into a glacial valley called, Norangsdalen. The next few hours were one of the unexpected, wonderful surprises of our trip. The glacial valley looked grim on this rainy, overcast day.
Click on the next image to enlarge a panoramic view down the valley.

Our elderly guide slowly told stories of life in the valley in a charming accent while our younger bus driver often chuckled at the guide's quirky expressions. It's amazing to think people actually made a living by farming here over the course of centuries. They moved cattle up the valley in summer and "milk maids" lived in these huts to tend the cows on "summer farms". The women would bring milk down the valley by walking the buckets down in what must have been backbreaking labor.

On our way back out of the valley we stopped at a small place called, Oye, to have lunch at the fabulous Union Hotel seen below.

Lunch was a very delicious lamb and vegetable soup accompanied by a lightly sugared, buttered pancake. The food was wonderful, but the hotel itself was an almost perfectly preserved remnant of life in 1891! As I explored different rooms and floors of the hotel I seemed to have entered a time machine and emerged in the late 1800's!

Imagine relaxing in a dimly lit room like the one below on a rainy afternoon in 1891.

A number of famous people have stayed at this hotel, and their names are inscribed on the doors of their rooms. Roald Amundsen had a room beneath this stairway.

Follow C down this hallway to the sitting area at the end.

Pass rooms where Karen Blixen and Arthur Conan Doyle stayed.

At the end of the hallway is a place to sit and listen to a Victrola!

Imagine the impossibly old-fashioned, tinny music emerging from records played on this thing!

My grandparents had a Victrola just like this in the house I lived in until I was 6 years old. I remember cranking up its spring-driven motor. I still have some records they played on this device, and they do sound impossibly old-fashioned and tinny.

This was Kaiser Wilhelm's Room.

I wonder if A. C. Doyle might have wandered past this mounted moose and settled in the quiet library nook to read.

The Union Hotel was one of the loveliest places we visited on the entire tour.

We climbed back on our bus, drove back to the dock at Urke, and were ferried out to our ship to resume sailing north. That evening, from the ship, I saw the first dramatic auroral display described in a previous blog.

The next day we arrived in Trondheim, the third largest Norwegian City. Our energetic, dimpled guide took us on a walking tour. The damp modern streets were nearly empty on this overcast Saturday morning.

On our way to the Trondheim Nidaros Cathedral we passed some older wooden buildings, a medieval church, and a pretty shop.

We paused for obligatory photos before the massive cathedral facade. The cathedral was built between the years 1070 to 1300, and is the world's northern most medieval cathedral.

Adjacent to the cathedral was the archbishop's palace, some parts dating from the 1160's. The whole area had a medieval feel to it.

Click on the next panoramic view from near the archbishop's palace to enlarge it.

Our cheerful, relentless guide next marched us to a colorful area of old wharves and warehouses. Click on the next panoramic image to enlarge it.

The streets in the Bakklandet neighborhood behind the wharves were lined with cafes and colorful wooden houses. The cafes were inviting, but there was no time to stop. There was no auto traffic. On a warm, sunny day it might have been nice to sip some tea at an outside table, but not so much this day in the cold drizzle.

This sign says: Keep calm ... enjoy Bakklandet.

Lots of people ride bikes in Norway, and, from what I could see, weather doesn't stop them. Commuting cyclists wore waterproof rain gear and just got on with the task. It helps that even in remote towns there are miles of beautiful paved bike paths running parallel to the main highways.

One unique and fascinating thing we saw in Trondheim was the Bicycle Lift transport device located at the base of a long, steep hill in the Bakklandet neighborhood. As we approached the Bicycle Lift a guy on a bike was getting set to use it. He had his well-behaved dog on a leash and had been riding with the dog trotting in parallel beside him. While the dog waited patiently, the guy somehow hooked his right foot into a wedge-shaped "pusher" located in a grooved track. The grooved track ran all the way up the hill in a curb between the street and the sidewalk. The wedge-shaped "pusher" is, apparently, attached to a cable that pulls it, and the attached biker, up the hill! I curse myself for not getting any good pictures of the system in operation. By the time I fumbled around searching for my camera, the guy was already 80 percent up the hill and disappearing in the distance. You can try enlarging the second picture below which contains some English instructions (on the left) for using the device. By the way, it's free!

We boarded our ship again and left Trondheim. During the evening the ship moved away from protected coastal waters for a while and we felt significant motion. The ship's elevators between decks were shut down because the motion was so violent. Feeling slightly sick, we retreated to our beds and closed our eyes. Later, I made an attempt to observe an auroral display through clouds from the rocking deck, but soon gave up and returned to bed as I described in a previous post. We sailed on toward Bodo, our next destination.