Friday night it snowed a little over an inch on Snoqualmie Ridge. I went to work and Kim stayed home to take pictures of the beautiful white stuff before it melted (pictures, um, forthcoming…).

Well, Saturday night, it snowed again, this time a little more than two inches. Kim went to work, and I took a morning walk around the neighborhood, taking pictures in the snow.

By the time I got to the Deep Creek Trail, the sun had come out and started melting the snow in the treetops above me. Snowballs and ice chips rained from the canopy as I strolled back home. Very cool.

After work today, I drove one exit up I-90 to Snoqualmie Point Park (it was closed for the evening, but I snuck in…. shhh, don’t tell) to get some photos of Mt. Si at sunset. Once again, I forgot my tripod adapter, so it’s not particularly sharp. But I have a feeling it’s just the first of many such opportunities we’ll have over the coming years.

Yeah, the commute really sucks. But it’s pretty cool to live in such beautiful country.

Last weekend I went to Victoria with my aunt Lynn, Lynn’s fiancé Mark, my grandfather, and my grandfather’s poodle Chico (Ryan had to work so couldn’t come with us). They picked me up Friday right after work and we spent the night in Port Angeles before hopping a ferry to Victoria on Saturday morning. We spent a little time exploring the downtown sights, but the highlight of the trip for me was our visit to The Butchart Gardens. Even in the rain (they provided complimentary umbrellas), the gardens were gorgeous. See the Sunken Garden below:

We spent Saturday night in a hotel in Sidney and Sunday morning we were up early for the whole purpose of the trip: the Royal Victoria Marathon! This was Mark’s 71st marathon, but Lynn, Grampa and I only ran the 8K race (Chico opted to stay in the car).

It threatened to rain all this morning, but as you can see, when Lynn and Grampa were finishing up the 8K it was too warm for hats and coats and instead they needed visors and sunglasses. Four hours later, though, when Mark was finishing up his marathon, we weren’t so lucky. Only the most devoted fans were waiting at the finish line to cheer those marathon runners home!

My official time on the 8K was 50:18. The best thing about this time is that there’s lots of room for improvement. Also on the bright side, both the male and female winners of the half marathon were over the age of 40. This means that Ryan and I have plenty of time to get into shape!

We took the Flytoget from Oslo to Gardemoen Airport and boarded our IcelandAir flight to Reykjavík. We were very excited. Iceland! I had the window seat on the plane, and I took the picture below as we flew over the island’s wild southeast coast. This is probably the first part of Iceland the original Viking settlers laid eyes on centuries ago. The large sheet of ice is the Vatnajökull glacier, the largest in Europe, and the barely-visible oval lake between it and the coast in the right-middle of the photo is Jökulsárlón (“glacier lagoon”), which we’ll visit in two days and was probably the highlight of the entire trip. This was a great chance to see the incredible Icelandic landscape spread out beneath us.

We landed at Keflavík International Airport and boarded a bus to the capital 30 miles to the northeast. It was a sunny day with scattered high clouds and a cold, biting wind. The landscape between Keflavík and Reykjavík was mainly a flat expanse of brown lava, with brown hills in the hazy distance; a rather disappointing introduction to this place I’d always heard was so very green. We had to transfer to a van to get us to our hotel in the center of the “party” district of Reykjavík.

After we settled in to our new Icelandic surroundings, we decided to walk a couple of blocks up the hill to the iconic Hallgrímskirkja (Hallgrímur’s Church), the most famous building in Iceland. The church is named for Hallgrímur Pétursson, 17th-century Icelandic priest and poet. Below is a photo of the church, beautiful in its stoic and cement starkness, and in the foreground a statue of Leifur Eiriksson posed on a foundation shaped like a ship’s prow. The statue was a gift from the U.S. in 1930, commemorating the 1,000th anniversary of Iceland’s parliament (Althing). Beautiful architecture.

And another picture of Hallgrímskirkja, from an angle, and with some colorful flowers. Constructed 1945-1986.

We went inside and took the elevator to the observation deck at the top (above the clock face in the pictures). Narrow windows encircled the entire observation deck, so we could see the city from every angle around us. It was extremely windy and cold at this height, and I had to stop taking pictures to warm my hands and face quickly before moving onto the next window and angle. Below is my favorite photo from here of Reykjavík, looking west to the coast; our hotel is somewhere to the right side of the main street. Population of the Reykjavík area is 150-200,000 Icelanders. What an adorable European city.

And this is the view inside Hallgrímskirkja, below. Note the 25-ton, 5,275-pipe church organ in the front. I always feel stupid and somewhat sacreligious taking pictures in intimate holy places such as this, as if I’m not respecting the sanctity of the site with my camera lazily swinging around my neck. But what am I to do? I really love photographing churches and cathedrals! Sheepishly I look around, compose the picture in my mind, look around some more, then pull out my camera and snap a photo while God isn’t looking, and turn around and walk away as if nothing ever happened…

We left Hallgrímskirkja and meandered along residential streets until we reached the green shores of Tjörnin, a famous pond in central Reykjavík famous for its waterfowl that flock there in the summer. We ducked into City Hall and saw a visually interesting relief map of Iceland, dozens of feet wide in the main lobby. Below is the map section featuring Höfn and the coastline near the area seen from the airplane (above). The elevations were exaggerated by a factor of three on the map, but it still gives you a sense of the wild coast we were heading toward.

We continued our walk through windy Reykjavík and reached the sculpture below, the Sólfor Suncraft, whose design was based on an old Viking war ship. The wind was really blowing by the time we got here, so we didn’t stay too long despite the wonderful views. Tomorrow we would leave Reykjavík for our trip around the island.

More pictures here (Ryan) and here (Kim).

It was Sunday morning, and central Oslo was quiet as we took a walk around after breakfast. Below is the Stortinget, home of Norway’s Parliament.

And this is the Nationaltheater, just a couple of blocks away from our hotel. The statue on the right is of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, native Norwegian poet, novelist, and playwright, who won the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature.

We took a ferry from the Oslo waterfront across the harbor to the Bygdøy peninsula, home of several of Oslo’s most famous tourist attractions. Our first stop here was the Vikingskiphuset (Viking Ship Museum). The photo below is Kim standing underneath the Oseberg ship, the first of three on display at the museum.

The plaque by the Oseberg ship explains:

“The Oseberg ship was found in a large burial mound on the Oseberg farm, in Vestfold, and excavated in 1904. The ship was built sometime between 815-820 AD, but was later used as a grave ship for a woman of high rank who died in 834 AD. The woman had been placed in a wooden burial chamber on the aft deck of the ship.

“The burial mound was constructed of layers of turf which preserved both the ship, and its rich contents of wooden objects, leather and textiles. The burial mound was plundered by grave robbers in ancient times – probably the reason why no jewellery or gold or silver objects were found in the grave.

“The 22 meter long ship was built of oak. The number of oar holes indicates that the ship was rowed by a crew of 30 men. The ship had no seats, and the oarsmen probably sat on their own wooden ship’s chests. The oars could be drawn in when the square sail was raised. The steering rudder was placed on the right aft side of the ship – the starboard side. The Oseburg ship is less solidly constructed than the Gokstad ship – only the upper two rows of side planking extend above the water line. It was probably a royal pleasure craft used for short journeys in calm waters.”

The museum also displayed relics found in the burial chambers on the ships. There were hand tools, tattered millennium-old textiles, and even an open-air horse-drawn carriage (minus the horses); but the most visually intriguing pieces to me were the ornamental animal heads, below.

After looking around the three ships and various relics, it was time to escape the crowds of the ship museum and wander a couple of blocks over to the Norsk Folkemuseum (Norwegian Folk Museum), an open-air museum devoted to the life and times of ordinary Norwegians. One of our first stops was a beautiful stave church, below.

The Folkemuseum featured many varieties of sod-roof houses, constructed to increase insulation during the cold winters. How cute!

Another sod-roof home, this time a more modern 1845 farmhouse (below).

And along with the authentic sod-roof houses, there were backyard farms for livestock. Cows and goats, and below, four dirty little pigs digging their noses into the fetid mud. As city-slicker American tourists, we took pictures of these pigs for ten minutes as they acted like, total pigs.

At the end of our trip to the museum, we watched a group of kids folk dancing and having a good ol’ time. Below, they were doing a dance where two boys vied for the affections of a girl; the girl danced with one boy, who would brag and strut in front of the other downtrodden boy, until the girl changed her mind, and switched partners.

We hopped back on the harbor ferry to the Oslo waterfront. Below is a view of the Rådhuset (City Hall) from the waterfront. There was a greater quasi-Socialist vibe about Oslo than anywhere else I’d been. The City Hall, the house of the workers and citizens, was the most prominent and central building in Oslo, square and brick, adorned with statues commemorating the working man’s spirit and honest toil; and the central church was rather small and nondescript, smaller than many neighborhood chapels we saw in England.

We ate a late lunch/early dinner at Pascal’s, and then took a tour of the Norges Hjemmefrontmuseum (Norwegian Resistance Museum) in nearby Akershus Fortress, with interesting exhibits about life under Nazi rule and Norwegians’ attempts to subvert the occupation. We only had 30 minutes inside the museum before closing time, so we sped through it faster than I’d wanted to, and then exited into another downpour. It was time to go back to the hotel. We had a flight to Iceland to look forward to tomorrow!

More pictures here (Ryan) and here (Kim).

We woke up early and enjoyed our last hearty breakfast at the Balestrand Hotel. Unfortunately, I’d failed to read the fine print on my expressboat timetable, and didn’t see that the boat I was expecting to take back to Flåm in fact didn’t run today. This meant that we’d have to take the later morning boat instead, and therefore miss the early afternoon train back to Oslo. Our hotelier graciously talked things over with the NSB people over the phone, and got us transferred to the later train to Oslo. Since we had extra time before the next boat, we wandered around Balestrand in the morning drizzle, and found a couple of old Viking burial mounds included in our guidebook, and a nearby statue of King Bele given to the town by Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II.

We finally boarded our late morning expressboat back to Flåm. As we approached the entrance to the Aurlandsfjord, our expressboat came alongside another ferry. This is a floating transfer point listed in guidebooks as “Midfjord,” where passengers can simply change boats in the middle of the fjord so they can get where they’re going without having to go all the way back to Flåm.

Everyone onboard rushed up to the deck to watch the two boats get cozy and a couple of tourists walk across a ramp. Nothing exciting looking back on it, but at the time it seemed nothing less than a marvel of human innovation.

We continued on our way, met another ferry for a Midfjord transfer, and swooped by a pretty waterfall for another close look. Looking at the simple schedule on the side of the boat below, you can get a sense of how few times a day some of these boats run, and therefore how important scheduling snafus can become.

We arrived back in Flåm, ate an overpriced lunch, and took the first Flåmsbana train we could. We’d been lucky enough to get better seats on this one, by a window that actually slid down so we didn’t have to take pictures through greasy fingerprints. Below is the Flåm Valley from the window of the Flåmsbana on our way up.

The scenery along the route was beyond description. The picture below is more beautiful green mountainside from the window of the click-clackety Flåmsbana.

We disembarked at the Myrdal station, where we had to wait more than an hour for the Bergen-Oslo train. Below is a shot of the grand old Flåmsbana train departing Myrdal on its way back down the mountain.

A long wait at Myrdal meant some walking-around time for Kim and I. Below is a view of the Myrdal station from the end of the platform. Notice how, this close to the Arctic, a gain of just 2800 feet in elevation nearly broke us out above the treeline. It was cold and began to drizzle again, so we hid inside the station and I bought a tourist-trap book on Nærøyfjord to whittle away the time.

It was late afternoon by the time we boarded the train to Oslo, and it started to rain hard outside as evening approached. Luckily the weather cleared by the time we got off in Oslo in the dark and walked from the Nationaltheatre Station to our hotel. It was a long day of travel and I was looking forward to a good night’s sleep and a lazy day in Bygdøy tomorrow.

More pictures here (Ryan) and here (Kim).

I woke up at 2 a.m. the next morning and took the picture below from our balcony. The previous day was the longest day of the year, and even though the sun had already officially set at this latitude below the arctic circle, the “night” at 2 a.m. was still not much darker than a blue-tinted twilight.

Our goal today was the Nærøyfjord, recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site — a natural or cultural site worthy of preservation for the common heritage of humanity. Lofty praise indeed. There’s no direct boat route to the Nærøyfjord from Balestrand, so we had to take the expressboat all the way back along the Sognefjord to Flåm. Between Balestrand and Leikanger, we passed this beautiful waterfall (below) named Kvinafossen that ducks under a highway bridge before emptying into the Sognefjord.

Just south of the mountain Beitelen, we could see the farm of Stigen high above us to the south. Its white farmhouse is perched on a ledge of the cliffs above the fjord, and its green pastures are interspersed with the exposed rock of the mountainside. A book on the Nærøyfjord that we bought in Myrdal featured a wonderful photograph taken from the kitchen of the white farmhouse of Stigen: Blue and white ceramic plates, with potatoes and pork chops set on an old wooden table, and looking out the square kitchen window is a view of the fjord, seemingly and almost dizzyingly straight below.

And now a wide view of Stigen so you can see how high it is on the mountainside. The Stigen farm is the white dot on top of the ledge on the left.

Our boat took us back to the docks at Aurland, where I got a nice picture of this quaint town with a breathtaking waterfall in the background. It is remarkable how much natural beauty there is here, visible from nowhere more exotic than the middle of town.

The boat took us eventually back to Flåm, where we simply stayed onboard as it picked up new passengers and turned around. We stopped again at Aurland (for the second of four times this day) and headed back out of the Aurlandsfjord, eventually making a left turn by the green shoulders of Beitelen and getting a tantalizing glimpse of the beauty of the Nærøyfjord (below).

Our first stop along the Nærøyfjord was a multi-tiered waterfall near the entrance to the narrow fjord. Surprisingly, the boat headed straight for it, the pilot slowly guiding the bow up to the bottom of the waterfall. Those of us who weren’t too proud to act like goofy tourists ran up to the front of the boat to feel the genuine Norwegian waterfall spray on our faces.

We left the waterfall and continued down the Nærøyfjord. There were almost too many waterfalls to count. The fjord really is quite narrow (only 250 meters wide at its narrowest point), with sheer rock mountainsides rising on both sides, covered with tenacious green vegetation wherever the rock gave it something to hang on to. A beautiful example (below) was the little “town” of Styvi (permanent population: 2), with verdant hillsides and crashing waterfalls all around.

A game that Kim and I played on our cruise along the Nærøyfjord was “which waterfall is your favorite?” With so many unbelievable choices, it was difficult to choose. What’s your type? Narrow, high, and ribbonlike, or wide and tumbling? Crashing over exposed cliff, or plunging between deep forested ravines? When we passed the one below, we both claimed a winner. It’s not the highest, but with its tiers of cascades, wide stream, a plunge throwing up mist, surrounded by forests, moss-covered rocks, and a clear green meadow by the shore… It’s simply hard to beat that one. I feel envious for the native Nærøyfjorder who can picnic here (by kayak, of course) on a warm and sunny day, and hike up to the rocks in the mist between the falls.

These steep mountainsides, with glaciers on the high plateau above, often yielded wild avalanches that crashed down the cliffs into the fjord below in the spring. Largely because of this, electricity and telephone services were provided not by landlines, but by underwater cables snaking along the bottom of the fjord. Another reminder that, despite the beauty of these hidden outposts of humanity, it still was difficult back in the old days to carve a civilized society out of the unforgiving rocks and ice; and how the narrow fjord itself served as the only lifeline between these nearby, but still isolated, villages.

Below is the town of Bakka (permanent population: 13), the narrowest point of the fjord.

This white church in Bakka was built in 1859. Before then, residents of Nærøyfjord lacked easy access to Christian services, and baptisms and weddings had to be carried at the church in distant Undredal, and funerals in even more distant Aurland.

Your success counting the waterfalls on the Nærøyfjord largely depends upon your definition of “waterfall” (What if it branches? What if it’s merely a trickle?), and your ability to turn your head quickly left and right and left and right again (while madly taking pictures, of course).

More waterfalls.

We reached the head of the fjord at Gudvangen and turned around again, this time putting the camera down more and relaxing in a deck chair looking up at the magnificent view.

As we passed Beitelen again, turning right into the Aurlandsfjord, the weather turned foul, and we can see rain ahead.

We passed the small village of Undredal as the rain hit, and I took a picture from the boat at the height of the downpour. Then, it’s back to Aurland and Flåm, and then turn around to Aurland and finally to Balestrand again. It was our last night in Balestrand, and we fell asleep with the sound of rain outside.

More pictures here (Ryan) and here (Kim)!

I woke up early and was welcomed by this view of the Sognefjord from our balcony. What a great way to start your day.

We took a walk down to central Balestrand, stopping en route to take pictures of the beautiful and historic Kviknes Hotel, one of the most famous destination hotels in Europe (we stayed down the street in the less historic, but probably friendlier Balestrand Hotel, whose exterior probably isn’t worth a picture, but whose smiles and service certainly was worth a big ‘Thank You’). Meanwhile the Kviknes Hotel, originally purchased by the Kvikne family in 1877, has seen various movie stars, artists, prime ministers, and kings pass through its doors over the years. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany stayed here quite often, and donated several local monuments to Balestrand and nearby Vangsnes.

Here (below) is central Balestrand, with the beautiful glacier-capped mountain in the background. It made me want to live there permanently (at least in the summers).

Below is a pretty shot of a cute red building on the Kviknes Hotel grounds.

And a look at “uptown” Balestrand from the Kviknes grounds, which juts out into the fjord a bit.

We had so far enjoyed a brilliantly sunny trip, but this morning was the first with encroaching clouds. We purchased tickets from the local TI (tourist information center) for the day-long glacier tours in Fjærlandsfjord (not as cool as it sounds, but still pretty nice). We hopped on the ferry, found some seats on the back of the top deck, closed our jackets in the wind, and enjoyed the view. We cruised out of Balestrand, past a little lighthouse on the point near Dragsvík, and turned the corner up the scenic Fjærlandsfjord.

The scenery almost couldn’t be described with words (something I could say again and again on this trip). Steep forested hills rose on both sides of the ever-narrowing fjord, countless waterfalls crashing and tumbling down through the timbered slopes.

Once in a while we passed isolated cabins on the shoreline, whose sole source of ingress must surely have been by boat. When we passed one particular cabin (below) tucked between the thick forest and a small green yard, surrounded on each side by cascading white waterfalls, Kim and I remarked that it was the most perfect place to live in the world.

And as we progressed further up the Fjærlandsfjord, I caught this fantastic picture of the green mountains shining in the patchy sunshine, reflected nearly perfectly in the water.

The ferry eventually reached Mundal, the small town at the head of the Fjærlandsfjord. Here we disembarked and hopped on a tour bus that took us to the Norwegian Glacier Museum (Norsk Bremuseum) up the road in Fjærland. Here we watched a short movie about the massive Jostadalsbreen glacier that sits atop the mountains north of the Sognefjord, and is the largest glacier in continental Europe (we will see the largest glacier in non-continental Europe when we drive by Vatnajökull in Iceland later in the trip). The museum also has all kind of hands-on experiments that let you play with glacier ice in your hands to demonstrate several interesting properties (such as squeezing high-pressure ice through a spaghetti-maker, and a model of how glacier sediment falls out of water during winters and summers). We bought some postcards (if you received a postcard from Norway from us, it came from here), ate a really quick (!) lunch, and caught the bus as it left for the first glacier.

The first stop (above) was Supphellebreen (“breen” is Norwegian for glacier; i.e., Supphelle Glacier), up the road from Fjærland. The tour bus stopped and unloaded its largely foreign and camera-burdened occupants for 15-20 minutes of frantic picture-taking and “oooh”ing and “aaah”ing at the hanging glacier at the top of the mountain above and the snowfield at the bottom of the cliff.

Back in the bus, we turned to the other side of the valley and took the road up to Bøyabreen. Here, the hanging mountain-top glacier was more impressive, and at its base was a pretty little glacier lake (Brevatnet, “glacier lake”), surrounded on three sides by high cliffs and more dancing waterfalls.

Kim had looked absolutely happy all day long as we passed by cliffs and glaciers and waterfalls and cute little cabins by the water. I had brought the engagement ring with me all trip long, in a ring box at the bottom of my camera bag (which went with me e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e). It wasn’t entirely a surprise — she’d picked out the ring a few months before, after all. But she didn’t know exactly when, or where, the question would come.

And, neither did I. I wanted to do it while on vacation, but also wanted to wait for whatever time was right — the setting, the mood, the scenery, everything befitting a day we’d remember forever. So when I saw the beauty of Bøyabreen and Brevatnet, and the smile on her face as we lazily watched the water dripping from the cliffs above, I thought this would be as perfect a day as any.

After ten or fifteen minutes, the tour group that had flocked to the edge of Brevatnet had disappeared, likely to the lodge/restaurant near the parking lot. With the crowd thinned out, we walked along the edge of the lake through tangles of high grass and low brush, until we found a fairly secluded area by the lake (about in the center of the picture above). I reached into my camera bag when Kim’s back was turned, and brought out the ring box, and opened it, and when she turned around…. well, I asked her. I was nervous and my mouth was dry and I was probably stuttering a little bit. Not because I was unsure of her answer, but just because… well, how often do you get to do this? I’m nervous at anything I haven’t practiced at, and this was no exception. She said, yes. And yes, again. I didn’t get down on one knee like I thought I would do, because it didn’t feel right in the moment; instead I gave her a great big hug and a smile.

“And they lived happily ever after…”

Well, how does one segue from the happiest moment of one’s life, back to a travelogue of one’s Scandinavian vacation? No better way than just jump back into it. We spent as long as we could gazing up at the beautiful world around us until we were forced to get back on the bus for the journey back to Mundal. Once there, we had more than an hour to wait for the ferry, so we wandered around the tiny town.

Mundal is known as Book Town, as the residents are famously well-read and the town is littered with second-hand book shops featuring Norwegian- and English-language tomes. We took a quick look inside a couple of shops but decided not to buy. The town seemed deserted except for the tourists. The book stores were filled only with browsing shoppers, and the sales seemed to often be conducted on the honor system (pick up a book, place some kroner in the box, thank you have a nice day).

Kim and I instead found a nice park and sat on a bench in the rare sunshine and took (gasp!) even more pictures of this pretty little town, the green hills across the fjord, and the ferry finally arriving at the dock.

And the pictures continue. This (below) is the Mundal Valley from the ferry as we’re leaving.

And this (below) a tiny town called Berge on the eastern side of the Fjærlandsfjord.

The ferry ride back to Balestrand gave us one final look at the wonders of the Fjærlandsfjord, and its forests and waterfalls and fjord-side towns. It had been a long day, and one we plan to remember as long as we can. We settled down into our hotel room in Balestrand and slept soundly. An end to a wonderful day.

More pictures here (Ryan) and here (Kim)!

We woke up early and had a delicious buffet breakfast at our hotel. After ending the first day with such a lousy dinner, it was great to chow on all-you-can-eat belgian waffles with blackberry and strawberry preserves, smoked sausages, scrambled eggs, melon wedges, meatballs, and fresh bread… Yumm. That was when I was glad we were staying at a business-class chain hotel, and that we’d have three more nights there before we went back to the states.

We left the hotel and took Karl Johans Gate to Oslo S, and got some nice pictures of empty downtown Oslo on a sleepy morning. The train ride to Myrdal was about 4-5 hours long, and we enjoyed the scenery of green Norway as it rolled past our window. Our Rick Steves guidebook referred to this railway (the Bergensbana) as “simply the most spectacular train ride in northern Europe.”

Green fields eventually turned into forests, which thinned out as we got higher, and we broke out above the tree line at the 4,266-foot apex of the trip, where the landscape was covered in snow and short grasses, and raging meltwater streams cascaded down the hillsides. The hamlet of Finse (pictured above) was where the Hoth scenes from The Empire Strikes Back were filmed (in winter, of course). Mere minutes later, after a couple long tunnels, we disembarked at the Myrdal train station (below) and waited for our ride on the famous Flåmsbana (The Flåm railway).

The Flåmsbana is advertised not just as a way to get to the town of fjord-side town of Flåm, but as a tourist attraction itself. The 60-year old rail line drops the 2800 feet from Myrdal to sea level at Flåm in 12 miles, and 55 minutes. It travels through 20 tunnels, and twists and turns past many beautiful waterfalls as it descends first one side of the Flåmsdalen gorge, and then crosses to the other.

The Flåmsbana stops at many small stations on the way down, but its most famous stop is at a waterfall named Kjosfossen. This voluminous waterfall is right off the line, and as the train stops, everybody gets out and walks onto a wooden platform beneath the falls to snap pictures and soak in the spray. As a special tourist delight, the train company even hires a dancer to perform amid the mist and ruins of an old building by the falls, as the tourists snap away (me included), and enchanting music plays in the background. With the music over, everyone gets back on the train and enjoys the view on the rest of the trip. Gleefully, I take a picture out the left side of the train, then spot another amazing waterfall on the right side, and hurry over to take a picture of it too. Imagine the waterfall below, but repeated over and over and over again on the descent to Flåm.

The Flåmsbana ends at the small village of Flåm, with less than a thousand inhabitants, on the shore of the arm of the Aurlandsfjord. Every time we came through Flåm, at least one mighty cruise ship was anchored off the dock, absolutely dwarfing the small town. Here we bought cheeseburgers for lunch (ridiculously expensive) and waited less than an hour for our expressboat down the Sognefjord.

Our expressboat zoomed down the fjord, stopping first at the small town of Aurland. We passed the beautiful Nærøyfjord on the left, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that we’d tour later in the trip. The fjord slowly widened as it joined other arms, and then became known as the Sognefjord, the longest fjord in Norway. The rocky mountain cliffs and the shimmering blue waters were amazing in the sunshine. We stopped again at Leikanger, and finished our cruise at the beautiful little town of Balestrand.

Balestrand, population 1500, has views of Sognefjord to the east and south, views of the short Esefjord to the north, and a magnificent glacier-topped mountain to the west. We caught a ride from our hotelier, who gave us a tour of the central area of town from the dock, and then drove us the half-mile to our hotel. Once there, we relaxed for a while and Kim struggled to brush her hair that had gotten tangled during the windy expressboat ride.

We went “downtown” for an evening stroll, and went inside the colorful St. Olaf’s church, a tiny Anglican church built in 1897. We ate lunch at Gekkens Cafe (our entire cuisine in touristy Norway seemed to consist of hamburgers and french fries), and then took an after-dinner walk along the Esefjord for a great look at the mountains and the marina.

As I sat back on our balcony and absorbed the beautiful view of the mighty fjord we’d come down that day, it was impossible not to smile at what a lucky place we’d be spending the next three nights.

More pictures here (Ryan) and here (Kim)!

Alright, alright. It’s finally time to write about our summer vacation to Norway and Iceland.

We took a Continental flight with a layover in Newark, and landed in mid-morning of the next day in Gardemoen airport northeast of Oslo. We rode the Flytoget (the Fly Train) through a landscape of lovely rolling green hills and cute villages. We arrived in Oslo and disembarked at the Oslo Sentralstasjon (Central Station, also known as Oslo S). Oslo S forms the eastern anchor of “downtown” Oslo, which stretches from Oslo S, along the pedestrian boulevard of Karl Johans Gate, to the royal palace in the west. Oslo, which is about the size of Seattle, lacks the modern downtownness of glass skyscrapers and flashing retail (visit the modern wharfside neighborhood of Aker Brygge for that). Its central area is pedestrian friendly, very walkable, with beautiful historic buildings (the royal palace, the national theater, the national church, and the parliament building), parks, and statues seemingly on every street. Our hotel, the Thon Hotel Cecil, was in a central location between the palace and Oslo S, only two blocks off of Karl Johans Gate.

After settling in for a nice rest in our hotel room (after a full day of sitting on planes), we decided to venture out into the sunshine and see what we could of Oslo. Our first stop was the royal palace, or Slottet. Norway’s palace seemed to be very reminiscent of London’s Buckingham Palace, which we’d seen last year, but more austere and on a smaller scale. In fact, we arrived in time to watch Oslo’s changing of the guard, with an onlooking crowd a small percentage of that which we’d been part of in England. From the palace, we had a great view back along Karl Johans Gate behind us.

We next walked west from the palace toward Frogner Park. It is home to the Vigeland Sculpture Park, one of the great tourist attractions in Oslo, a 75-acre project that Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland worked on for nearly twenty years until his death in 1943. The first sculptures we come across adorn “The Bridge,” with nude bronzes of various human figures placed evenly on each side of the bridge. The sculptures depict basic human emotions and relationships. The most famous of these is Sinnataggen, the crying baby. Another is a woman holding up the tangled strands of her hair. Another is a man seeming to “fend off” babies with his arms and legs.

After The Bridge, we came to The Fountain, surrounded on all sides by more sculptures depicting various stages of human life. My favorite was a young baby sitting in a tree of life. There’s enough art in the park to occupy one’s attention for hours on end.

Next up was The Monolith, probably the most famous work in Vigeland Park. It’s a 52-foot tall stone carving, composed of entwined and nude human figures, that took three stone carvers 14 years to complete.

Some figures push on others to climb higher, others are trampled upon, descending in pain or hopelessness, others lend the unfortunate a helping hand. Some are young, some old; some healthy, others sick. Perhaps the most memorable piece of art I’ve ever seen.

We stopped at the Frogner Park cafe and ate a really forgettable meal, disproving the maxim that hunger is the best sauce. It was time to head back to the hotel and, since we had 8 a.m. train reservations the next day, to sleep a long restful sleep and knock the jetlag out of us.

More pictures here (Ryan) and here (Kim)!