No way... we're in Norway!

14 August 2017 - 25 August 2017

A significant birthday for Scott made the perfect excuse for the Gilmour family to all meet up in Norway for a hiking trip together. We flew into Bergen from our various corners of the world and arrived at a beautiful hotel near the historic Bryggen part of town. The first highlight (after catching up with the family) was the breakfast - walking into the huge breakfast room was overwhelming. Imagine every type of breakfast from any corner of the world and it was probably there. We wandered around stunned for the first ten minutes before diving in and eating far too much. 

Sufficiently fuelled up we headed into town to join the free walking tour and then had a great hike up to the top of Ulriken, one of the seven mountains surrounding Bergen. Other than our flight in this was our first real taste of Norwegian scenery. In each direction you were seeing a variation of mountain ranges and sea views, all mixed in with fjords. It was stunning.

 

But why have a photo of Norwegian scenery when you can have a photo of Mark instead

The real reason for our trip to Norway was hiking so after another massive breakfast we met up with the tour guides who would be taking us around Norway. What followed was nine days wandering through the beautiful Norwegian scenery. The tour company we used had organised a great itinerary with a good mixture of hikes. We would be transported to a fabulous hotel and each day go on a hike in the area near the hotel before heading back to enjoy the local hospitality. 

 

The kids on tour in Norway.

The first hotel we stayed at on the hiking trip, the Walaker Hotel, is the oldest hotel in Norway and has been managed by the same family for nine generations. Each evening at the hotel there was a four course dinner, with ingredients sourced from the local area - including reindeer! The very enthusiastic owner gave a talk about the history of the hotel and surrounding area. It completely blows your mind as a New Zealander when he just casually mentions the Viking swords that they found on the property when they were doing renovations. 

We hiked up to the hut at the Flatbre glacier. It was warm enough for sunbathing while we had lunch up at the hut.  The views were just amazing. We were able to see right out over the fjord for miles. And the glacier was the most incredible colour of blue. The boys decided to do an extra hike to a rocky outcrop with a viewpoint in the middle of the glacier. The hiking was perfectly complemented with the blueberries and raspberries on the side of the track that we all gorged ourselves on.

Ian at a lake en-route.

And Mark at the glacier

After three nights at the Walaker hotel we had a bit of a walk on the Old Kings road and stopped off at a stave church at Borgund which was built around 1180.  Our next stop was a viewing platform. Its hard to describe how amazing this was. The platform is 650 metres above the fjord and hangs 30 metres above the mountain. It was all glass and the views were huge. Our destination was the town of Flam, which translates as "the little place between steep mountains". What an appropriate name!

We had dinner down at the water front and spent a considerable period of time mocking the couple who were trying to capture the perfect photo of them and the fjord on the end of a little pier.  

In fairness, it was a nice spot for doing just that... 

The first hike from Flam was one of the favourites. We were wandering through more beautiful scenery, and historic old farms. As we reached the old farms there were cute little houses which were dug into the mountain and had grass on their roofs, so they were hidden away into the hills. So hidden that Mark just casually walked up a hill that turned out to be the roof of a building. 

Rüfgrassen in Flam

The scenery just got better and better as we walked. It was constantly changing and there were waterfalls everywhere. Overcome with the beauty of it all Mark jumped into the river for a (very brief) swim. He carefully waited until the track was clear to strip off and jump in, only to have a group of elderly women wander around the track and get the best view of their day. 

The rest of you will have to be content with this picture of a waterfall instead.

Norway: full of beautiful waterfalls and gorgeous women.

And underground roundabouts!

From the beautiful scenery of one day the following day we were subjected to some real Norwegian weather. Foggy and cold and unable to see much. We were all grateful that the hike for that day was scheduled to be quite a short one. In the afternoon we had a bit of a field trip to go and visit the town located at the narrowest fjord. 

And then we stumbled across an outdoor wear photo shoot.

The final hotel we headed to was in the most beautiful location yet. The views were unbelievable and seemed to carry on forever. We were right on the waterfront of the fjord. There was a great pool which went from the indoors then with a lazy river turned into an outdoor pool. Some of us were brave enough to jump into the fjord for a swim. And Bridget was brave enough to push Mary into the fjord for a swim.

Over the past couple of days there had been various discussions about the hiking programme being amended so we could do the hike to Trolltunga. The main guide wasn't keen to go but the other guide was. The discussions culminated with a fairly robust discussion about the options and the logistics involved to make it all work. In the end the group split in half with Ian, Leeyan, Annie and Mark deciding to get up and out the door at 5.30am to avoid the crowds at Trolltunga.

[M- Not content with being up nice and early, Ian and I decided to run the 11km from the carpark to the tongue. It was actually a beautiful, if hilly, route to get out there, although *way* more crowded than anything else we had done in Norway. Despite the psychological boost of constantly overtaking people, it was a struggle piece of cake to keep up with Ian and all of his ultramarathon training, so it was a relief no big deal when the actual tongue of rock finally appeared. For anyone else considering, It took us about 2:15 to get there, arriving at 0900 there were already half a dozen people in the queue (all campers), and it really started getting crowded about 1030. Early is definitely the way to go, if not camping overnight nearer the site.

It was pretty entertaining catching my breath at the vantage point where all the iconic photos are taken from. Some people had some reasonably creative poses, including the three naked guys just before the girls arrived. At one stage a couple brought their dog out with them. It ran up to the edge to a generalised chorus of of dismay from the peanut gallery, looked down the hundreds of metre drop, and promptly scarpered back to safety with its tail between its legs. -M]

Mark & Annie at Trolltunga

Ian standing on a little rock outcropping above a waterfall Mark spotted from afar. Another one of those places that photos just don't do justice to.

The rest of us, Bridget, Scott, Mary and I went for a walk that was closer to the hotel and didn't require a 5.30am start. As is becoming a bit of a theme the views were awesome again. The fjord, the mountains and waterfalls! 

And our own little Trolltunga!

For our final hike the guides outdid themselves. The track was fairly vertical and had lots of ropes and wooden ladders to get us up to the Kjeasen farm at the top of the hill. Mary was being subjected to a whole lot of advice from everyone - then she ditched her walking poles and ended up hooning up the hill. In between watching our step there were the usual dramatic views!

Zoom!

We made our way back to Bergen for the final dinner together. The following day Annie and Bridget had to return to New Zealand to go back to work. The rest of us kids were flying with Scott and Mary to Naples, Italy where we were going to have another week together hiking in the Amalfi Coast.

Going Dutch...

9 August 2017 - 13 August 2017

Once we got to Amsterdam we continued our theme of oh man we really have spent so much time together anybody else please hang out with us... Hayley had been in town for a work conference and we gate crashed her and Ryan's trip after she had finished at her conference. A couple of days later Sarah and Andrew joined us all for the weekend. 

As we no longer had the van we were able to stay right in the middle of the city. It was great being able to wander around the central city in the evenings. But the best way to get around Amsterdam is on bikes! Mark had been looking forward to the opportunity of exploring the city by bike so he would be able to start insufferably blathering on about how great the Amsterdam cycle infrastructure is compared to Auckland's paucity of bike paths every time the topic came up back home.

For the first day or so we were in full on tourist mode and went for a canal cruise around the city one evening. We got to see the city sights from the water and learnt a bit of the history of the area. This was great as we had done zero research about what we might find in Amsterdam. 

Not just drugs and hookers, apparently.

We hired bicycles for a couple of days and with the help of a handy bicycle route map we headed out of the central city to explore the rural surrounds. We all got off to a great start and were happily zooming along the great paths that are all over the city.

Cycling along on top of a dyke. Only a windmill could make this more Dutch.

Unfortunately shortly after this happy photo my front tyre went flat. The guy we rented the bikes from was pretty disinterested, we could bring the bike back for a replacement, but we were right across town from the store. Not to worry - our handy cycle map has plenty of bike repair shops marked on it. With the help of the bike map and google we headed to the bike repair shop. The sign in Dutch was dutifully translated - closed as we are away for summer holidays. Not to worry - we are in Amsterdam where there are so many bikes that there is a handy app for flat tyres - just put in your location and someone arrives to repair the flat tyre for you. Error - you are too far from the central city for us to come and help you. Back to the bike map to try and find another repair shop. It was the fifth shop we tried before we found one that both existed and was open. 

We had to travel a reasonable distance to be able to get the bike to each of these putative bike shops. With limited tools and no bungee cords Mark ended up attaching my bike to the tray on the front of his bike with the two bike locks that we had. This provided a fairly unstable load that swung about as he pedalled. 

[M- also, it was a heavy great steel bike, so I was effectively adding a huge extra mass attached to my forks and centred well out in front of the steering axis, that also had a pretty big moment of inertia. Thanks to just having done my 4th year project on a similar topic, I had a reasonable theoretical, understanding of exactly why this made riding—let alone steering—incredibly difficult and unstable. This was a great comfort to me as I careened wildly back and forth across the road in front of angry Dutchmen,  and repeatedly crashed into bushes and the occasional lamp post. -M]

With my front inner tube replaced we continued merrily on our way for a while. Then - oh no not again - thankfully we had done a big loop around the area the bike repair shop was in so it didn't seem like too much of a mission to get the bike back to the store. I started the task of pushing the bike back towards the store. 

Then a bird shat on me. Fairly extensively.

By this point we figured there was some kind of higher being suggesting we really shouldn't do this bike ride.

Very gracefully pushing the bike through the mall towards the bike repair shop... again

A repair job on the new inner tube and we were away. We decided on a shorter scenic loop which was really great once we were finally able to get going.

All smiles after our day of bike adventures

Sarah and Andrew arrived late on Friday night so we all caught up on Saturday morning and jumped on the train to Utrecht, about a half hour train ride away. We braved the heights and climbed up the Dom tower of Utrecht - only 465 steps to the top. On a clear day you are meant to be able to see back to Amsterdam. 

Friends!

Once we had exhausted Utrecht's delights we headed back to Amsterdam for the evening to sample more of the city's delights. The following day after a traditional Dutch breakfast of massive pancakes we flew to Bergen to meet up with Mark's family for a Gilmour family hiking trip in Norway.