We start this day cruising the Geiranger Fjord at 5am. Karen has ordered room service, so she's in the room watching the scenery as she gets ready. Pat and Brian go to breakfast.
Brian's been up a while getting pictures out on deck. We have a tour this morning called Mt Dalsnibba and Eagle Road. Our ship is at anchor this morning so we take a tender boat to get to shore.
Our guide is doing his first tour of this year. He is from Portugal and is mostly a kayak tour guide. This is his second season here in Geiranger. He does a great job.
We learn it now takes three machines 10 days to clear snow from the road to Mt Dalsnibba. They used to do it by hand and it took weeks. It is still closed. Bummer.
So we are going above the snow line to about 800 meters up to Djupvadshytta, a hotel restaurant that was closed. There's a lake here, it's under the snow of course. I think it's on the other side of the hotel, but we can't tell. We have a half hour stop in the high banks of snow with fog. You couldn't see much except the lodge and the street and the snow banks. (Waste of time stopping; should have just turned around and spent more time at an actual view point). Almost like white out conditions because of the fog getting lower and lower.
When Pat was doing research about Geiranger he came upon this road going to this farmer's barn loft. He just thought it was cool.
Next we went to Flydal View Point. This is a very famous view point. It's on all the Norway Fjord posters.
This chair was placed here in honor of Queen Sonja in 2003 because she promoted the area so often.
There were several places you could take amazing pictures here. We should have had more time. Another great view point rushed (the hop on hop off buses go here. We could have done it that way. We didn't know.
Next we travel the winding road, Eagle Bend.
It is a 600 meters (1,900') high view point.
The view point here has a view back to town, as well as around the bend of the fjord. 15 minutes here is enough time. Beautiful views. Eagles Bend road is sometimes used by Volvo to test their cars.
After our tour we walked to the corner and had lunch at the Geiranger Bakery. Just a quick ham and cheese sub sandwich. But what's THIS?We are in Norway at a bakery. Is that school bread? Well, they pronounce it differently, but it's school bread. Of course, we got it. The sandwich was just so so. But the school bread was delicious!!!
After we have lunch we walked the stairs next to the waterfall to the Norsk Fjordsenter (Norwegian Fjord Center), taking pictures.
The Center is a museum so we do our thing. It starts with mock ups of a post office, souvenir shop, house, barn and into a rocking boat. Saw a movie but it was just pictures of the area.
The basement had a cool movie about all electric cars driving the roads we drove today. And one segment showed a lot of cars driving the Knoten, a road that does a 300 degree turn over the top of itself to gain elevation on the road.
When we finish here, Brian meets us outside in the sunshine. It is a gorgeous day, sunny and warm. Brian is in a tank top and shorts for his hike today.
We walk back into town along the waterfall stairs together and then shop the stores starting with the chocolate shop our guide told us about. Across from the dock we find a store with an upstairs and discounted Dale of Norway items.
We take the Tender back to the ship at 4:10.
As we sailed out of Geiranger we passed the Seven Sisters Waterfall.
We eat a couple of pizzas out on the deck during sail away, then go into the Lido restaurant for some more food.
Later Karen does a quick walk through of the gift shops. I do mean quick. They said they put out some new Norway stuff. They've had a lot of Baltic items because that's where they cruised last week. They have one rack of sweaters and a couple of tables. She finds nothing. Then Pat and Karen do really bad at trivia.
We stopped at the show. We leave after two songs because Karen would rather do the view out our window. Definitely a better choice.
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