Great Scandinavian Road Trip: Day 4: Jax gets lost in a fjord

Today started out by finishing off a few museums in Bergen that closed before I could get to them yesterday. They gave a good idea of what Bergen used to look like and what life would have been like in the Hanseatic times.

From there I went to Stalheim, because I heard there was a decent view there.


The next stop was Hopperstad stave church, but a couple of things surprised me about the drive there. First was the road construction. Because of some major works, the road I needed was closed for half of every hour. I had just missed the closing, so I had to sit for half an hour. When they started letting cars through again, I was under the impression that they had stopped work and were letting one direction go at a time through the construction. That turned out to be wrong on both counts. About halfway into the work zone I had to stop and wait for a big truck to be loaded with rocks. At the same point, I could see all the cars coming from the other direction were waiting too. So for some reason they thought it would be a good idea to let two way traffic go through a one lane dirt road surrounded by construction machines that weren't going to wait for them to pass. Interesting. The second surprising thing I came across was this

I didn't expect this high snowy plateau that I came across. It was really scenic and at the end of the section you came to this

At the bottom of which was this

Hopperstad stave church, unfortunately covered in scaffolding. Smaller than the church in Heddal, it is still a pretty amazing piece of wood construction.

From there, I had to make it to my hotel in time for check-in and the fixed dinner time. I was short on time and to get there I had to take a ferry to the other side of the fjord. Of course, I get on the wrong ferry that goes to a different branch of the fjord. It's a powerless feeling when you realize that you've gotten two city names mixed up and gone the wrong direction by boat. So I had to turn around at the other side and take yet another ferry to get me back to where I wanted to be. Somehow, I made it with just a few minutes to spare before dinner at the hotel. The hotel itself is old and really nice. The owner told me about how her grandfather built the hotel back in 1891 and some of the history. She was also nice enough to bump me up to a better room with a view of the fjord.

Not so bad, eh?


Of course, the rest of the pictures can be found here.