Midnight Sun 2012: Warming the Arctic Chill

ARRIVAL in OSLO (Saturday, July 7)

It's smooth sailing - no traffic at all to the airport - plus an on time departure and we are off to a great start. At the gate while waiting to board, we see a two-year old standing on a window sill about 5 feet off the ground watching the planes. Mom is clearly aware and clearly unconcerned. This must be how Parkour runners grow up.

We arrive very tired in Oslo, but it's easy to head straight into the Centrum via the Flytoget train despite current construction that has shut down the Oslo central train station for a month. They've got it covered with shuttle bus service that efficiently fills in the gap and we walk a few blocks to our hotel, the Thon Panorama.

Our hotel is a "Thon Junior" and the guy at the front desk tells us that he's wearing a sombrero because they specialize in catering to young guests. We wonder whether we'll be sharing a floor with a Norwegian cub scout troop, but it turns out to be nothing like that. There's a second buffet table at breakfast at about half-height, and there's a ping pong table in the lobby. Otherwise it's a standard-issue Thon hotel. There are families with kids, but it's not Chuck-e-cheese. Ty Pennington was also name dropped during check-in. He had been on Norwegian Design Tour and may have even stayed at our hotel.

Our room has a kitchenette. This comes in handy for weary jet-lagged travellers who want to take a nap without fear of waking up and missing dinner. We stay awake long enough to make a trek to the super market, return to the room and go soundly to sleep. We wake up surprisingly refreshed, shower, and cook some pasta (after googling for the stove manual to figure out how to operate it).

It's 9pm. It's still daylight (gray and overcast, but daylight!). We head out to the opera house. It's a very cool 2008 building. Normally, the big attraction is the roof, but today there's a TV talk-show being recorded harbor-side in the front courtyard. One of the Jackson clan reminisces in English about The Michael. There's another guy on the couch with him. We watch for a few minutes and then go inside.

The "wave wall" is like an organic, wooden Guggenheim. Very cool. We even get a decent photo. Most of the posters are for a production that's coming in September, so we don't pay much attention. But we notice that there's a "dance inspired by ping pong" coming at the end of July which we just might be able to catch. We'll see.

The roof is very cool and probably couldn't exist in the USA with our liability laws. There are steep slopes randomly intersected with long diagonal, variable-height "steps". There is no bright yellow tape or "friction tape" to mar the aesthetics. If it makes you nervous, there's a marble stairway, deftly hidden below the deck level on one side. It's only dangerous if you don't pay attention (or if you are on a skateboard!). There are signs forbidding skateboarding. We do *not* see large numbers of surly teens on skateboards, but there is one kid with his parents. He never gets up to excessive speed, and he seems in less danger (and less a danger to others) than the photographers who are blindly stepping forward and back to perfectly frame their shot. There are some aluminum panels with random bumps and balls. It looks very much like Stephen Holl (as does the lobby opposite the "wave wall". All in all, we really enjoy our hour at the Opera House and find our first Norwegian geocache.

It's still light at 10:30pm. So we walk through the center of town. Lynn finds an earth cache near the cathedral. It involves finding the Nordmarkitt Lions and learning about the quartz content of granite. It's beginning to get dark. We walk a ways further, through a park, and alongside some fountains and ponds and head back to the hotel past the grounds of the Akershus Fortress. To bed around 1:30am. It's finally dark out!

OSLO (Sunday, July 8)

Sunday begins with a buffet spread that has everything one could want in a breakfast: 3 kinds of eggs, bacon, sausage, meatballs, and that's just the warm area. There are lots of cold meats, with pickled herring, cheeses, including a brown kind I didn't care for, some good dark bread, croissants, waffles, cereals, fruits, yogurts, juice, coffee, plenty.

After breakfast we walked to the ferry for Bygdøy with a brief side trip to get money from an ATM and arrived just in time for a ferry departure. We see some ducks from the boat, but we can't identify them. They could be female mallards (boring). John sees a black-headed gull, which we later get a very close look at near the food cart outside Kon-Tiki museum. We ultimately add quite a few birds to the Salmon Bird List during this vacation. Pretty easy when the life list is as short as ours!

After a 15 min boat ride to the Bygdøy peninsula followed by a short walk, we get to the Viking Ship Museum early. The museum was pleasantly empty with just a handful of folks from the morning ferries. A couple of tour buses arrived as we were finishing up, and the place filled up fast. The Viking Ship Museum has three Viking ships recovered from burial mounds in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The oldest known Scandinavian ship, The Oseberg Ship built about 820 AD is front and center in the inviting museum space. The ships are in remarkably good condition. Why doesn't wood rot here? Were they in a peat bog? Anyway, they are very broad and shallow. They don't look at all like ocean-going vessels. Some signage by the Gokstad Ship indicates that the Oseberg wasn't really a robust sailing vessel, whereas the Gokstad which was a little deeper and had wooden covers for the oar-locks, was definitely used at sea before being buried with a chieftain. The Vikings used a lot of iron nails to hold everything together. We take plenty of pictures, including some shots of the "mast fish".

Next stop is the Kon-Tiki museum. We have some familiarity with Thor Heyerdahl's hi-jinks from reading we did before visiting Easter Island a couple of years ago. We begin with Ra II (Ra 1 sank off Barbados). Ra 1 was built by Chadian boat-builders using techniques that work on Lake Chad. Ra II was built by Aymara Indians from Bolivia (near Lake Titicaca) using South American techniques. For whatever reason (luck, a bit more experience) the second Ra reed boat was less prone to water-logging, and able to finish its journey. Photos show it in a bit of a shambles by the end of the voyage. It's been spruced up for display at the museum.

Thor Heyerdahl is quite the character. He must have been incredibly charismatic to successfully get funding and volunteers for such quixotic endeavors. While he certainly showed that Africans could have made the journey to the new world, and earlier showed that Americans could have made the journey to Polynesia, he never really came close to showing that they did. But so what? He went on an adventure! He brought cameras, and a gift for storytelling. He wove a story of international cooperation (during the height of the cold war) and of environmental degradation (when it was still a relatively new idea) into a classic man vs. nature and man vs. man (those stick-in-the-mud academics who said it was impossible). Those messages were worth getting out, even if the ostensible rationale for the trips was proved wrong.

Between the Ra II and Kon-Tiki exhibits there's a brief early biography of Thor, where we follow him and his wife to Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas. Here as a honeymoon trip, they lived off the land for a year in the 1930s. About 10 panels show them collecting specimens, meeting with local tribesmen, and seeming successful in idyllic surroundings. Toward the end of the display, we read something about beer and the couple being driven from their home, living in a cave, and sending out distress signals so they could be rescued by a passing ship. There's definitely a story there. I wonder if it's ever been told. Yes, there is a book.

The Kon-Tiki looks way less sea-worthy than the Viking ships. I doubt that it satisfies the Viking motto: "A ship that has to be bailed 3 times in 2 days is fit for any type of sea voyage". We need to see the 1951 academy award winning documentary.

We just miss a ferry as we step out of the Kon-Tiki Museum, and decide to pay a visit to the Polarship Fram Museum. In the end, this is probably the best museum visit of the morning. The museum is built around a big, BIG, ship, called, you guessed it, The Fram. The surrounding museum building is 3 levels and has walkways around all sides of the ship with exhibits lining the walls. One can also go in and wander inside the boat, also about 3 levels deep.

The organization of the museum was a bit confusing. The "start" seems to be in one corner up on the third floor. Though "start" is only relevant for looking at the displays in some sort of chronological order. We wandered around going backwards and forwards in time and exploring the internals of the boat before discovering the "start" and then viewing things in order from there on.

The first captain of the Fram was Fridtjof Nansen. Nansen was multi-talented, a scientist, explorer, champion skier and ice skater, and practical dresser when it came to cold climates. He had an inspiring motto, "The west coast or death" which is a bit more serious than the Salmon motto, no luden in scalas. It seemed to work for him. His back-story is much like Heyerdahl's. Nansen had a theory about how the arctic ice flowed west-to-east. The scientific community scoffed. So he had a super-strong ship built, plunged it into the ice north of the Bering strait, and sat it out for 3 years. Eventually, the ship made it out and returned to Tromsø. Nansen got bored half-way and struck out for the pole. His watch failed, so he couldn't get a latitude, and he turned back before making the pole. He set up camp on one of the Russian arctic islands, where he accidentally ran into an English explorer who gave him a lift home. It helps to be lucky!

Next, Roald Amundsen takes the helm of the Fram with plans to go to the North Pole. But Cook and Peary each get there first. So Amundsen secretly(!!) decides to go to the South pole instead. He brushes off questions like "Why are you taking dogs. You can get them in Russia" and "Why are you building this really sturdy hut?". He doesn't tell the crew they're going to the South pole until they leave from Spain. I guess they notice the ship hung a left instead of a right. Does anybody else know? It's not clear when the news gets back. Does Scott know that there's a race to the South pole? As we know, Amundsen wins the race. Scott reaches the pole second, dies on the return journey, and became an iconic British hero. A corner of the Fram Museum is devoted to the Robert Scott story.

This time when we left a museum, we were perfectly timed for the next ferry. We take the boat back and grab a small lunch at a harbor side cafe. Lynn orders cafe au lait, which comes in a soup bowl. We pass a street performer trying to drum up an audience and loiter for a bit as he desperately tries to get others to stop.

Next stop, the modern art museum, where there's an exhibition of the kind of geometric art that always appeals to us. It's called, The Space of Shape-Time. Perhaps this theme will be a successor to Not Quite as Big Bamboo. Lynn suggests doing it in the yard rather than indoors, which seems feasible. One of these days, we'll actually do that.

Other exhibits include a Spirograph-style crawling-men-with-guns, with plotting pens under them contraption which is pretty cool. We're also struck by the juxtaposition of the ornate old building and the modern white-box style of gallery. The hallways are a very textured brick with occasional marble flourishes. The galleries are all-white. One of the downstairs galleries has gold plated marble columns, paintings on the ceiling and general 19th century opulence, but holds geometric steel and enamel paint sculpture. I'm not really sure the juxtaposition "works". Was the building some kind of bank or mint in a previous life? The coat check room looked like a vault.

We eat dinner at Cafe Skansen. John orders classic Norwegian style shrimp with lemon, dill and mayonnaise. A ginormous plate of unshelled shrimp comes. He asks the waitress who demonstrates the traditional way to eat them. Spread mayo on bread. Remove head, tail and shell and pile shrimps on bread. Add lemon juice to taste. Eat. They're very tasty, but quite a bit of work. Lynn finishes her cat fish and sits patiently while John slowly works his way through the shrimp.

IN TRANSIT (Monday, July 9)

We get up at about 3:30am, partly from jet-lag, partly because the sun is up. It's very bright (gray, but bright).

We spend this day on various trains and buses as we make our way to Ålesund. It begins with a 7:37am departure from Oslo by train to Dombås. The train is spacious and comfortable and five hours slip by as we watch a very green landscape of rolling hills, pastoral scenes with farmhouses and cows, pine forests, and rushing rapids pass by. And this is not yet the "scenic" train. Trampolines seem to be a prominent fixture in people's yards, more common than swing sets or slides.

In Dombås, we disembark, cross to the opposite platform, and board the Rauma Railway for a scenic 1.5 hour journey. The Raumabanen is an engineering marvel with fancy into-the-rock switchback turnarounds. You go in one end of a tunnel and when you come out, the river is now on the other side of the train. Sheer mountain precipices and little waterfalls dot the landscape. In addition, we are passing by the River Rauma - a famous salmon river! The only downside is we're a bit too tired to fully appreciate how pretty it is.

We arrive in Andalsnes at 1:57pm and catch a 2:00pm bus that takes us to our final destination, Ålesund. Ålesund is a pretty sea side town and a good jumping off point for visiting fjord country. We have mixed feelings about our accommodation at the Hotel Quality Waterfront. It tries to be ultra-modern which translates to uncomfortable.

We visit our first World Heritage Site of the trip - Geirangerfjord, which is listed with Naerøyford as part of the West Norwegian Fjords World Heritage Area. We board the Hurtigruten Ship, Richard With, for a 4 hour cruise and join the crowds scrambling for seats in the panorama lounge. See the route the ferry takes from Ålesund through the Storfjord and Synnylvsfjord before passing through World Heritage Geirangerfjord and stopping in the small village of Geiranger.

There are low clouds for the whole trip. We pass down increasingly narrow channels. The view out the windows is nice, but lacks grandeur. Some of the sights along the way include the pizza factory of the town of Stranda and a quarry that produces a lot of olivine which has a high specific weight and is used for insulation. Boredom sets in after a couple of hours, and we can't imagine taking a cruise that lasted for days.

Fortunately, John takes a walk outside and is immediately struck by the grandeur. We move to the rear deck without a roof to block the view. Now it is clear why this is a must see destination. Even with the low clouds it's very impressive. There are lots of shear cliffs and waterfalls, some tiny and some real cataracts, some are hundreds of meters high. It's all green (vegetation) gray (granite) and blue (water).

We arrive at the Geiranger Quay and take a LONG time to get off the ship. Passengers are loaded into a smaller tenders and ferried to the dock in small groups. Our planned 4.5 hour walk is cut to about 3 hours and we study the aerial map at the visitor center to figure out which walks are likely doable in that time frame and pick out a set of trails to follow that will lead to Mt. Vesterås.

We find a trail leading away from a bend in the road. This must be the start. We follow. It sure looks like it is going through people's back yards. There is a gate. Does it lead to someone's yard? Not quite. There's a wire fence separating the trail from the back yard. We come to a field. The aerial photo showed the trail following the outline of a field. We're in a field near a farmhouse with no sign of a trail. Lynn announces we are lost.

But we are not lost. We're following the map perfectly, even though it doesn't look like very many others have come this way. We lack the courage of our convictions, though, and leave the farmer's field for a road, which takes us past the very nice Union Hotel (think Falling Water), and the UNESCO information center. After a hundred yards or so, we finally see the kind of well-signed trail-markers that we were expecting. We head toward some that are marked as blue (easy), and range from 2.2 to 4km. We figure we can get to 2.2km, and still have an easy walk back in time for the bus that will return us to Ålesund.

We're now hiking a slightly muddy, occasionally steep uphill trail. We see a couple of birds (one we identify later as a European robin). We cross some streams/waterfalls including Mork and Mindy Falls. And we go up up up. Eventually, we pass through a gate ("Please close the gate behind you") and encounter some pretty deep mud. We can see a lookout point some distance above us, but it's pretty clear that we're going to slip and fall at least once on the way there and cover ourselves in mud for the rest of the day. We have terrific views from where we are - heading up another 50 vertical feet isn't going to make that much difference. So we take a few more photos and start back. The way back is easier than we feared (sometimes going down a slippery slope is slower than going up). We stop in at the UNESCO center, and thumb through a book on Geiranger's wildlife, where we identify the European robin and one of the wagtails.

We're back in town with a few minutes to spare. The bus is a few minutes late. The same Chinese threesome that we've been seeing since Dombås is on the bus with us. The bus trip back to Ålesund turns into a sequence of bus, ferry, bus, change bus for the final stretch into town. At some point, we lose the Chinese threesome -- we couldn't have left them back at the bus change point, could we??

We're very hungry, and it's getting late. Lynn has the bright idea to stop at the fish and chips kiosk at the head of the canal near the bus station and on the way to our hotel. We have a really excellent fish and chips. Food in Norway is expensive, but at least it has been uniformly excellent. $35 is a lot to pay for fish and chips (for 2), but at least it's really tasty!

ALESUND (Wednesday, July 11)

We plan for a very long day. After we check out of our hotel, we have no accommodation until after midnight when we get on the Hurtigruten Coastal Ferry to Bergen. Our first stop is the 62^o Nord office, where we reserve the last two spots on the 2pm bird safari boat. We got very lucky here because if it had been full, or if the weather had been bad, we would have been disappointed.

Before the boat trip, we have time to hike up Aksla hill, a viewpoint overlooking the town. It's 418 steps to the top, so it's a nice little exercise for the legs. About half way up, we stop for a geocache at a landing where a family is sitting (man and woman, baby and dog). The woman unobtrusively wanders off about 10 steps up and then comes back. After they leave, Lynn unobtrusively wanders about 10 steps up and finds the cache. We think the family may have been geocaching, but we weren't certain at this point.

When we reach the top, we find another geocache at a great view point and sit near it. The man from the same family comes skulking along, checking each of the fence posts. No doubts remain that he is looking for the cache. We also spot the bright yellow GPS he is carrying. We decide not to cause him stress by sitting and playing dumb, so Lynn calls out "It's over here". He seems taken aback, but quickly figures out that we're also geocachers. They're from Frankfurt, and are on holiday in Norway. The dog has not learned how to sniff out caches.

We arrive 2 minutes before the instructed, "please arrive at 1:45 for a 2pm departure" and we're the last to arrive for the boat safari. Suiting up is complicated. First, we don a heavy duty, floatation suit. Then a life vest, gloves, hat and goggles. It seems like overkill, but then it's clear that we're riding in an open Rigid Inflatable Boat (RIB) which gets up to 38 knots, and careens along pretty violently. We have seats, but we're advised to stand to take the impact shocks in our legs rather than our backs and behinds. Hang on tight. The seas are pretty calm today, but it's not hard to imagine getting tossed out.

It becomes clear that this is an "adventure outing", with some birds, seals and lighthouses as secondary attractions. That's fine. It's definitely an E-ticket ride. The boat crashes along, occasionally taking long zero-G free falls, ending with a resounding crack as we hit the bottom of a swell. Using your legs to absorb the shock is hard work! The outbound trip is broken up by a couple of stops (at Alnes, to see the small, twee village and lighthouse) and at "Seal Island": to see two kinds of seals (one was a harbor seal. What was the other?), and a few birds. The way back is a straight shot, but to give everyone's legs a break, Christian (our driver) stops for a couple of breaks.

The bird island of Runde is very cool. The only disappointment is that we don't have any expert birders along to id the birds. Christian, our boat driver, does identify Northern Gannets, kittiwakes, puffins, razor bills, and shakes (aka shags). We also get good looks at a sea eagle, lots of guillemots and (we think) a couple of oyster catchers. We later identify a tern and common murre from our photographs.

We spend about 15 minutes drifting by the rocks. We also take a few minutes sitting over some buried treasure (island legend told the story of a shipwreck, but nobody knew if it was real until some treasure hunters pulled up millions of dollars in gold and silver in the 1970s. The rocks are covered in fog from about 50 meters up. Christian assures us that the rocks go up to about 300m above sea level. The sky and water are definitely full of birds. Different rock faces seem to be dominated by different types of birds. On one rock, though, there are several black birds with one white one. Apparently they're there every day. The white one thinks he's one of the others.

When we get back, the Ålesund Boat Festival is in full swing. There's a band playing in the square, and the place is crowded. We have the bright idea to make a reservation for dinner at 7:30pm at the same place we ate a couple of nights ago. It was very good, and surprisingly, Lynn orders the same thing again and a) it's very different from last time and b) even better. I have the lamb cutlets, which are excellent. The warm chocolate fondant is also excellent. Lynn wasn't going to have any, but I think I got only a tiny bit more than half!

We killed some time walking around town ( see map) before and again after dinner (it's light till very late!). We were very pleased to see the "ski jump" in action. We saw the platform being built when we arrived a couple of days ago, and it was finally getting some action tonight. Brrrrrr, one gets cold just watching the guys ski down and plunge into the cold water. We also walk to the other side of the canal and find a cache near the prison. The prison is decorated by a mural depicting the town before, during, and in ruins after the great fire of 1904. The fourth panel shows Ålesund as the current art nouveau town.

We head out to wait for our ship arriving at 11:45pm, which is the nominal arrival time. Surprisingly, there is absolutely nothing to make waiting pleasant. No waiting room. No TV monitor with an estimated arrival time. No benches. And very little cover from the weather which has become a light drizzle. Other people waiting have smart phones, and it's clear there are no apps or on-line info either. John gets the binoculars out and sees the ship coming when its about 15 minutes out. We begin the "hurry up and wait" mentality required for cruise travel.

The Hurtigruten ship, Kong Harald, pulls almost straight into the dock, and at the last minute takes a Blues Brothers style four-point turn and stops perfectly parallel, within inches of the dock. I doubt I could park a car more precisely.

We get on board around 12:45am. Organizing our cabin is very quick. We go upstairs and look out from the panorama deck for a little while (we had late coffee). We also learn, much to our disappointment, that we have to vacate our room tomorrow morning at 10am. We thought we'd have the room till 2pm (or close to it). We had been looking forward to catching up on some sleep after breakfast, but now we have to be out of the room after breakfast.

Around 2am there's a loud screeching noise as the ship docks somewhere en route. Apparently there's a fair amount of hydraulic machine activity at every port, and we visit several ports overnight between Ålesund and Bergen.

BERGEN (July 13-14)

We spend a couple of relaxing days taking in the sights of Bergen beginning with a 90 minute tour offered by the Bryggen Museum. While we wait for the walking tour to commence we visit the upper floors of the museum. The third floor has an odd exhibition tucked away in one corner. It's odd only in the sense that the style of modern art on display jars with the overall historical theme of the rest of the museum. The collection here includes the latest from 89-year old Laurie Grundt who evidently called up the museum and said, "I have some art for you guys to display". The museum responded with "we don't have much space now". Laurie replied, "I don't care I want it shown immediately". So here it is now, displayed off in a corner on the upper floor.

Much of the rest of the third floor was devoted to St. Sunniva, Norway's only female saint. Legend has it that Sunniva, in order to flee from a heathen king that wanted to marry her, set sail with no supplies, survived the sea voyage, and took refuge in a cave on the island of Selja during the 10th century. She and her followers then died in a rock slide that blocked the cave. Her pursuers could not find her, and thus she was saved from marriage. A happy ending, I guess. The story continues with her body being found undecomposed years later, and various miracles said to have happened for pilgrims praying on the island. Or maybe this whole story was made up. The museum texts looked positively on the written history of the time being "fluid" as copiers of books would add stuff to clarify a moral or delete text deemed too confusing.

The first floor displays were extensively about the tenements of old Bryggen and the Hanseatic League. Bryggen has been declared a World Heritage Site and includes the remains of the old wharfside buildings that have been the center of the city for centuries. The Hanseatic league of merchants opened an import/export office there in 1360 and dominated the area for the next 400 years. The Hansa come across as real whack jobs. If they were a religious order it would make more sense, but these guys seemed to setup something akin to a monastic order and undergo 400 years of all male celibacy strictly for economic purposes.

The foundations of the oldest buildings in Bergen, from the 12th century, are located on their original site and the museum is built up around and displays other findings from archaeological excavations. The Bryggen museum displays are very interesting and include some cute items from daily life like the runic carved message boards circa 1400. One of the messages read, "Gyda says you're to go home". Gyda sounds like a nagging spouse, but the Hansa had an all male hierarchy. Was Gyda a merchant, journeyman, or one of the apprentices. One wonders if someone got this message from Gyda on a daily basis. Our favorite thing in the museum was the big sign as you walk in that read, "Shiver My Timbers". Some translator just couldn't believe it should read "shiver me timbers" for the English audience.

Our tour commenced promptly at noon and we revisited part of the first floor of the Bryggen Museum and learned about the many fires that wiped out the timber construction of the city time and time again. The next stop on the tour is the medieval Hanseatic Assembly rooms. Our guide described the antics that went on reminiscent of fraternity boys with elaborate hazing rituals and a strict hierarchy all in service of the cod fish trade. The tour finished at the Hanseatic Museum.

After a meal break that included coffee and apple cake, we struck out with additional museum visits. The Leprosy Museum closed at 3pm (our guidebook listed it as open til 4pm) and the Contemporary Art Museum was closed for renovation until next February. The nearby Grieg Hall looked interesting, also closed. On to plan C and we walk to the Nordnes peninsula and stroll around the pleasant, narrow streets. An earthcache takes us by a really pretty layered wall near the old sardine factory that is now an arts center. No art appears to be happening today. Another geocache gets us to climb the hill to Fredriksberg Fortress which is not mentioned in any of our guidebooks.

Church bells go off for at least 5 mins around 5 o'clock. We head back toward our hotel. We head out again later in search of dinner, and after a long loop around town end up at a restaurant near our hotel. It's an excellent meal. Along the way we spotted the same street performer, Paul, we had seen a few days ago in Oslo. He has a much bigger audience today.

On our next day in Bergen, we visit the Leprosy Museum in the morning. There's not really much to see. We're surprised our guidebook gave the place rave reviews. Leprosy was apparently a big problem in Norway and between 1850 and 1900 Bergen had the largest concentraion of leprosy patients in Europe. The city's oldest leprosy hospital, St. George, has been turned into museum and does a fine job of telling the history of leprosy research in the area. A major figure was Norwegian physician Armauer Hansen who discovered the leprosy bacillus in Bergen in 1873. We learn the life history of Dr. Hansen who comes across as a bit of a crackpot who experimented on people, sometimes without their knowledge. The leprosy archives are part of UNESCO's Memory of the World Programme.

Our ticket for the Leprosy Museum offers us reduced admission to the Skole (School) Museum and we opt for a quick visit. We are the only visitors and have the place to ourselves. The exhibits in the museum largely fail to arouse much interest. The place consists primarily of large posters describing the history of education in Norway. While interesting, one could glean more from reading a book on the subject, and physical objects on display are few and far between. There is also a separate wing dedicated to the 18th century author Ludvig Holberg, the school's most famous alumnus. We found this section more interesting, and the highpoint was an animated exhibit made to look like a large book. A dancing "man" served as a mouse pointer on the touch sensitive pages. We were so enthralled with it that we took a movie ( see the movie).

We weren't expecting crowds when we saved the Fløibanen funicular railway trip for our last day in Bergen. No lines had been visible as we frequently walked past the station in the last two days, but this morning there were a million people in line. Saturday must draw out the crowds. The line moves quickly and we soon make our way into a funicular car and are whisked to the top of Fløyen Hill where we set off on trails through a pine forest seeking the peace and quiet of nature and leave the crowds behind. We spot some birds and take in the views. We find a couple of geocaches including one in a small hut on Torr Mountain and one at a Fløibanen station on the walk downhill. Do we go This way or That Way?

We have our best dinner yet at Spisekroken.

NORWAY IN A NUTSHELL (Sunday, July 15)

We had a long day (roughly 12 hours) in transit between Bergen and Oslo following the classic Norway in a Nutshell route: train to Voss, bus to Gudavang, ferry through the Naerøyford , Flåmsbana railway to Myrdal, then a final train to Oslo. There are quicker ways to get between Bergen and Oslo, but this is one of the more scenic routes.

The first segment is the local train from Bergen to Voss. It is not classified as scenic, but it's extremely scenic nonetheless. The train hugs the waterline around various lakes and rivers and then hugs the shoreline around some fjords.

Next up, is a bus journey down the steepest road in Norway, Stalheimskleiva. This comes as a pleasant surprise as we twist and make hairpin turns through spectacular scenery. Lots of stupid photos are taken out the bus windows, and I'm glad we sat near the front. The Norway in a Nutshell route is popular this time of year, and several buses form a conga line heading down the steep switchbacks. The turns are very tight. About an hour later we arrive in Gudvangen in time to catch the 11:30am ferry.

Next follows a 2 hour cruise through the Naerøyford , the narrowest fjord in the world and part of the West Norwegian Fjords World Heritage Site. At its narrowest point, just north of Gudvangen, the fjord is only about 800 feet (250 m) wide. The walls of the fjord range from about 3,000 feet (900 m) to nearly a mile high (1,500 m). We learn more by visiting this earthcache during the journey.

It was raining lightly as we boarded the boat, and we jostled for seats inside, but soon abandoned them for spots outside on what subsequently turned out to be a warm, sunny day. Seagulls followed the boat as we traverse terrain that looks like someone flooded Yosemite Valley, steep walls, deep blue water, waterfalls in every direction. There is an occasional herd of goats and a few farmhouses at impossible locations along the cliff side.

The fjord cruise ended in Flåm and we had a couple of hours to enjoy the town before embarking on the 12 mile train ride connecting Flåm and Myrdal. This is another e-ticket ride through magnificent mountain scenery as the trains spirals its way through tunnel after tunnel, 20 tunnels in all, three miles worth of tunnels. It is one of the world's steepest railway lines operating on normal gauge. It's not a cogwheel train and only being held to the tracks by steel wheels! What on earth possessed the engineers who designed this route. It's possible to rent bikes in Myrdal and ride downhill back to Flåm and really take in the scenery at a a slower pace, but we don't learn this until it's too late to alter our onward plans. Flåm also looked like a pleasant place to stop overnight to break up this journey.

From Myrdal onwards we're back to a regular train for a 5 hour trip back to Oslo. It's still scenic and we get above the tree line for a while and appear to be in Tibet. There's still plenty of snow and glaciers in the distance. When we arrive in Oslo, the sun is out! It's about 10pm and the sky is on fire with bright oranges and pinks.

TROMSØ (Monday, July 16)

Lynn's birthday. Did John forget? No. Would he have forgotten if he hadn't been reminded a day or two ago? Who knows!

We fly to Tromsø and are finally north of the Arctic circle. A sports team gets a big round of applause in the baggage claim area. They have interviews with the local newspaper, cheerleaders, etc. We have no idea who they are or what they play.

We rent a car and drive into town. Aha! That straight line on the map is a tunnel! And there's a traffic circle IN the tunnel underground! And, a second one! A far cry from "do not change lanes in tunnel" that we're used to back home.

The sky is bright, but the sun is hidden behind clouds. It stays that way through midnight. Thus, we have midnight sunshine rather than midnight sun. It's still cool to have it not get dark for over a week, and Lynn points out that it will continue to be her birthDAY until the sun sets.

We walk around town and visit the Polarmuseet. It has lots of "stuff" and much more room inside than we expected. There is a lot of detail about early adventurers. Most sound a bit crazy. Some were luckier than others. There is a sample polar bear trap with a large stuffed polar bear. It is brutally simple. Tie blubber to a string tied to the trigger of a shotgun. Wait for the bear to pull the trigger and shoot itself in the head.

We made a reservation and ate dinner at Emmas. Our second best meal so far in Norway. We both have the reindeer, which is excellent. We return to our room which has a great view out over the water facing the Arctic Cathedral. We see some arctic terns, and possibly a glaucus gull from our window.

ROAD to ALTA (Tuesday, July 17)

It's a long drive to Alta. We leave town across the bridge, rather than the tunnel with traffic circles. Tromsø is on an island, so now we're on the mainland. The road hugs the edges of the fjords, serpentine, and therefore takes a long time to go a short crow-flies distance.

Our first thought, as we leave the immediate city confines of Tromsø is that there are a lot of houses out here. A few of them look like summer homes (big decks are a giveaway), but many look like full-time residences. They also look remarkably "suburban". They don't look like they're built for severe weather. I was expecting stone barns and heavy timber A-frames with few windows and enormous chimneys. Instead, they're ranch houses with trampolines in the front yard (trampolines are as ubiquitous as basketball nets in the US). The cars are also not the winter-hardened Land cruiser with the "arctic package" (reindeer-bars, search lights, winch on the back for the tight spots). They're not even all Subarus and Volvos and other all-wheel drive vehicles. Our rental Toyota Diesel Auris is not out of place. As the brochures all say, "Alta has a mild climate, thanks to the effects of the gulf stream".

We quickly do our first geocache in the far north. It's at a waterfall and easy to find. There is a family there, also for the geocache.

Next we stop for a geocache along the Breivik River, the largest salmon river in Troms. We follow a dirt road by car all the way to the end. We assume that we are here all alone, but 5 minutes later another car drives up and a guy gets out, sorts out his fishing gear and heads down toward the river. We hear a lot of birds, but don't identify any of them.

Next on the itinerary: a car ferry to the Lyngen peninsula followed by a drive across the peninsula through the Lyngen Alps where we get on another ferry that deposits us in Olderdalen. We miss the first ferry by seconds, but it's only a 40 minute wait. We notice our car has more bird shit on it than all the others combined.

We get back on the E6 and head north from Olderdalen and detour to our favorite stop of the day, Spåkenes kystfort (another geocache find). This is the remains of a WWII era fortification at the top of a hill, overlooking the mouth of the Lyngen fjord and the Norwegian Sea. There are lots of old concrete bunkers and a little graffiti. Some of the large concrete blocks are in a big jumble. Were they just left this way after the last bombing raid? The guns have been removed, but everything else looks like it's been left alone. We watch some birds with a very characteristic flight pattern. Burst-of flapping, followed by a long parabolic glide... repeat. We try for some pictures, but don't manage a certain identification.

The drive continues up and over some headland/peninsulas, where we see our first reindeer, there will be many more of those in the next few days. We keep driving. There's not much traffic. The road feels a lot like US1 in California except there are more residences along the E6 than along Rt1. But otherwise, the up-and-down, follow the-contour of the coast, occasionally-up-over-a-headland, edge-of-the-world feel is very reminiscent of Rt1. California may have slightly better weather (though the last time we were on Rt1, I think it was gray and overcast just like it is now!).

We pass some glaciers on the other side of a fjord. And waterfalls are a dime-a-dozen. It's beautiful in a wild and forbidding kind of way. The clouds and fog make it seem dark and dangerous. It would be spectacular in good weather, but we're not that lucky. We also see a lot rings for farming salmon.

We pass through numerous little towns, none of them appeared on Google maps when we planned this trip in advance. They are all nicely sign-posted, with a reduced speed limit. We also pass a couple of construction sites (a major bridge work and a major tunnel). Norway is clearly spending their oil money on infrastructure. There's no way that the number of cars or the number of residents justifies this level of investment. Also, the road is in amazingly good shape. No potholes, or asphalt patches. Very few places where it appears that the sea may be "winning" (as it does on Rt1).

We arrive in Alta, hungry after a long drive at 10pm. "Luckily", Pepe's Pizza is open till 11. We order a medium, but when it comes, the waitress explains that they didn't have any mediums, so they made us a large. It's too much food, and we overeat.

TROMSØ (July 22-24)

We bid farewell to Finland and drive back to Tromsø. We stop for a quick look at a waterfall. Then we stop again thinking that we have a lemming spotting. We jump out of the car, and get a couple of photos. Unfortunately, it's not a lemming. It's a squirrel. We have several fine photos of a dead squirrel!

On to Tromsø. It's a long drive. Especially the part behind a caravan on a narrow road that never quite has enough of a view to allow for passing. And it goes around a loooong thin fjord. Eventually, we get by, and make our way to Tromsø.

On the way into town we visit the Tromsø University Museum, which is much more extensive than we expected. It has lots of info about geology, stave churches, archaeology, northern lights, Sami culture, etc. There's some kind of treasure hunt involving QR codes, but we don't have a smart phone. Our favorite item was the 3,000-year old chewing gum from Melkoya, complete with tooth marks.

We have one of the best meals of the trip with dinner at Fiskekompaniet. We were seated at the "chefs table" which is by a window into the kitchen. Here we watch the very cheerful crew of three prepare meals for about 6 tables. The Japanese guy is in charge. The blond woman does the desserts. The younger guy shucks something. They are all seem to be having a remarkably good time at work. The food is delicious. Lynn has the whale, which is excellent. I have the menu of the day, which was wonderful. The Jerusalem artichokes steal the show, though. The crab soup is a close contender. Dessert (which doesn't even feature chocolate!) was also excellent.

The Arctic Cathedral, which we can see across the water from our hotel window advertises midnatsol concerts nightly at 11:30pm. This is our last night in town with a car, so we decide to drive over and arrive at 11:15pm. Much to our surprise the concert is already in progress. We are asked to be quiet, let in, and take seats near the back. The place is packed, and we seem to be the only people who thought the program would begin at 11:30pm. We do check all advertising we have encountered back at the hotel, in our guidebook, and on-line later and they all advertise the nightly at 11:30pm time. Subsequently, we learn that this was a special concert/memorial on the anniversary of the Breivik attacks in Norway, (Concert Program).

Monday morning we get up early to feed the parking meter at 8am, which gives us until 10am to eat a leisurely breakfast. John needs his morning dose of pickled herring. After breakfast, we drive to the Tromsø Arctic-Alpine Botanic Garden, the world's northernmost botanic garden. The garden has some astonishingly blue hybrids, the large blue poppy, Meconopsis lingholm. They've planted them in all the geographic areas, and they feature them on all their literature. Everyone working is also amazingly cheerful. Burning out weeds, or poisoning them, or cooking up waffles in the cafe -- it's a cheerful bunch. It's a beautiful day, and we explore the gardens and the gneiss rocks on the nearby geology walk.

We have one more day in Tromsø, but no need of a car in the city so we drive to the airport, return the car, and take the bus back to town. All very quick and easy. Much easier than finding parking for the rental car, had we chosen to keep it for another day.

We spend some of the afternoon looking for caches in Tromsø. John is not impressed with the caching scene in Tromsø. We search in filthy corners along the docks, under rocks in the crack between buildings. We also fail to find some, which just causes us to walk around more. Lynn decides that we're on a quest for a milestone, which means we can't just give up. We do stumble into an excellent cafe, Aunegarden, and see some interesting sculpture near one of the caches we can't find.

On Tuesday, after checking out of the hotel we take a longish walk trying to find a way out to a little spit of land to get a better look at the arctic tern resting place we have been looking at for days from our hotel window. We don't find a way to get there without walking through an operating industrial dry dock and instead take a hike up near a viewpoint over the city and then walk downhill to visit the Polstjerna.

The Polstjerna is an historic sealing ship in a glass house. We probably would not have visited had we not bought a combo museum ticket that included it in the price. We stopped in thinking we would spend a few minutes checking it out, and ended up spending a couple of hours. The excellent audio guide added a lot to the visit with interesting tid bits read aloud from the ship's logs as well as general background history of the sealing ship. It had just the right amount of "foley artist" work - coughing when talking about the close quarters of the men, clinking of pots and pans in the galley, etc.

Visitors were allowed to climb around extensively inside, but some of the passages were pretty narrow and difficult to navigate. Downstairs, under the boat were additional exhibits in a traditional museum environment. Included was film footage from Roald Amundsen's South Pole expedition (1910-1912). The film is included in UNESCO international register Memory of the World.

Now starving, we returned to the excellent cafe we discovered yesterday for lunch. We had 3 more hours to kill before our departure for the airport and opted to visit the Polaria, a much hyped Tromsø attraction, with an admission price double many of the other attractions in town.

The Polaria was a huge disappointment. It's not clear what it is trying to be - part science museum, part aquarium, part modern multimedia extravaganza. It fails at all. The "panoramic movies" aren't that impressive certainly a far cry from IMAX or Omnimax. There was one short film, an informational flick explaining the Northern lights. Everyone in the audience seemed to be talking at once through this, probably translating the English narration. The other film showed pretty pictures of Svalbard with no narration or explanation of what we were seeing. Yes, Svalbard looks worth visiting, but the film wasn't up to what I might expect from a National Geographic episode at home on TV.

Outside the theatre, the Polaria is mainly devoted to a small aquarium built around a large seal tank with a few bearded seals. The seal tank was nicely done and had viewing platforms on several levels including odd underwater bubble viewing domes. The rest of the museum had a few uninspired exhibits about global warming and environmental topics. There were some odds and ends tucked away in various corners including a strange vortex of water trying to be a science museum exhibit. There was also a cutesy permafrost simulation that had visitors walk across some bouncy pebbles.

We would have enjoyed spending some time in the upstairs cafe, but it closed around 4:30pm despite the place being open till 7pm. We were still able to sit at a table and put together some jigsaw puzzles intended for children. Amazingly all the pieces of the puzzle were present and accounted for! We were still killing time before our evening flight and it was rainy and cold outside.

We catch an 8:05pm plane to Trondheim. Living in the US we've forgotten what a pleasure airplane travel can be. You take a bus to the airport (10 min), go through security (5 minutes), let the cheerful guy at baggage check show you how to properly attach a baggage tag (1 minute), print boarding pass (1 minute). Buy a chocolate bar (1 minute). Voila! You're ready to board the plane. The small Wideroe propeller plane whisked us to Trondheim in less than 2 hours.

TRONDHEIM to RØROS (Wednesday, July 25)

We arrived late last night and spent the night at the VERY trendy Raddison Blu airport hotel. The on-TV advertisement actually makes us want to see the wine cellar at the UK airport hotel or the aquarium in the lobby of the Berlin hotel. The overnight stay at the airport made it convenient to pick up our rental car in the morning. We reserved a tiny economy car, but instead we were given a Nissan Qashqai with a sun roof, built in GPS and 6 gears. It kept insisting that we should up-shift, but otherwise was a comfortable car.

In Trondheim, we visited the Ringve Musical Museum and took the informative, well done tour. The guide would actually stop and play instruments for us as we toured the rooms. There were some hair samples framed on one wall. Is it the composer Liszt's own hair, or hair from his poodle, named Liszt? We may never know. The collection also included an interesting piano invented by Paul von Janko with six rows of keys.

We drove to Røros passing by the Gaula River, possibly the best salmon river in Norway. We stopped at a nice view of a waterfall and a guy standing there points out that there are salmon jumping. Wow! They sure are. We even get a few pictures.

Onward to the World Heritage City of Røros and a comfortable room at the Røros Hotel. We walk into town, have a nice dinner and take an evening stroll around town. Røros is a lovely, quaint old town and the light is wonderful tonight at 9:00 pm.

They're holding the dress rehearsal for the annual big historical rock opera, Elden, with cannons, horses, choirs, etc. It is staged on the slag heap on the edge of town and we almost walk onto the set from the back. We are stopped by a very friendly security woman. She directs us down to the most photographed historical street, and apologizes that we can't wander across the set tonight. We head back to the room, cross the cemetery and find a milestone geocache next to the church.