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Other entries in Geirangerfjord

Hurtigruten Day 1 in Geirangerfjord

The Famed Norwegian Coast!

I had a much needed long rest in my cute little interior cabin and rose just in time to get breakfast and gaze out the window for a great view of Alesund, a largish city right on the ocean edge of the Geiranger fjord. Other passengers were motivated and got off the ship to explore the town, but I enjoyed my view with a cup of tea from the observation deck. Luckily the boat returned to Alesund later that night.

Quick pause here to describe the Hurtigruten- it's a great norwegian phenomenon. For more than one hundred years the Hurtigruten has been plying the waters along the Norwegian coast, bringing supplies and providing transport to the communities from Bergen (south) to Kirkenses (far north). Every day of the week a ship leaves Bergen and Kirkenes, taking 6 days to reach the other end of the route. The Hurtigruten fleet has grown to at least 8 ships, with several new cruiseship-style boats. I was lucky enough to get one of the newest, the Finnmark, built in 2003. This boat is like the love boat- a walk around deck, a sun bathing deck on the roof, a warm salt water pool flanked by two hot tubs- rivals the Hong Kong Intercontinental Hotel for the hottubs with the best view in the world! Also a workout room, which I took full advantage of, being deprived of a gym for almost 4 months. Plus, the view from the stairmaster was of the back of the ship, slowly sailing away from towering coniferous fjord walls topped with snow caps, a ribbon of churned up turquoise water marking the places we'd been. I met some fun people on board, mostly older couples of many different nationalities, norwegian, swedish, french, german, american, italian. And a few younger people from Seattle, of all places!

So we silently departed from the dock at Alesund and made our way through towards the Geiranger fjord, passing narrow channels, farmsteads hanging by a string on the steep mountain sides. Lillian, my friend from Floro, told me that the families living here had to tie their children to trees to make sure they didn't fall down the cliffsides! We steamed by a few industrial communities tucked away in the stunning wilderness and several famous waterfalls with names like the Seven Sisters and one in which the water fell down the bare rock leaving a perfect outline of a liquor bottle. There is a legend that the spirit of the bottle waterfall fell in love with one of the seven sisters but his love was refused and he fell into constant drunkeness and is commemorated in the shape of a bottle in his waterfall.

At the head of the fjord lies the town of Geiranger. We stopped there for a while to let off passengers headed on an excursion. The rest of us peered up at the town rising up the cliffs in front of us, cars taking the switchbacks down cautiously, the headwaters of the fjord gushing headlong down through the town, and the seagulls staring down at us as curiously as we stared back at them.

The rest of the day we back tracked through the fjord and stopped once again at Alesund. This time I stepped off the ship and went for a quick stroll around the quaint but quite empty town. Typical colorful norwegian wooden warehouses lined the canal and kids drove boats in and out of the harbor.

We set sail again and headed north to Molde, a musical town of the north. We were treated to a performance by a middleschool band from Molde and watched the snowcapped peaks in the distance turn pink as the sun got lower in the sky, resisting its brief dive beneath the horizon at this northern latitude.

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