Geiranger Fjord

July 3

About a third of the 6 or 7 hours we drove today was along Mjosa lake which is Norway’s largest lake, as well as one of the deepest lakes in Norway and Europe. Its maximum depth is 449 meters or about 1475 feet. At the furthest part north of this lake, we drove through Lillehammer which hosted the Olympics in 94. As you’ll see over the next few days in the fjords, we did three things during the day: drive, jump out to explore, and take ferries.

Our first stop of the day, at Mjosa lake:

A lot of the houses have grass roofs. I’m not sure what the point is – insulation? Disguise? Decoration? Something funny for tourists to take pictures of?

Our second stop of the day, overlooking the Geiranger Fjord:

That ferry in the background is the one we were rushing to try to get on!

After doing switchbacks down the mountain for what seemed like forever…

…we finally got down to the docks at Geiranger, pulled up to the ferry, pulled right onto the ship and they took off. Perfect timing!! We are ferry experts!

So the fjords are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Two things to mention:

1. These pictures are gorgeous and do absolutely no justice to what we actually saw.

2. I’m not going to bother mentioning how beautiful, massive, expansive, breathtaking, awesome they all are. I don’t have the proper words to describe them. I’m just going to show you the pictures and tell you that they are incredible.

First things first: the snack shop. They sell Geiranger beer on the boat, so…

And here is Liam geeked about the fact that I spelled out his name on his hotdog in mustard:

Now onto the main event:

These waterfalls are called the Seven Sisters. Legend goes that they are kept on their side of the fjord, dancing playfully down the mountain.

While across the fjord, unable to reach his love, the Suitor Waterfall is depressed and drowns his sorrow in a bottle of wine. Can you see the bottle in the falls?

When we got off the ferry, we had just a short drive to the town of Stranda where we were staying for the night. The airbnb overlooked the harbor and was beautiful!

Michael cooked us dinner and we watched the Colombia v. England World Cup match (which is why the niños wore their jerseys all day). It was a great match with Colombia tying in stoppage time. Although Colombia lost in shoot outs, it was a blast watching with our Colombians!