June 23, 2016- Traveling Through Central Norway to Geiranger

What a day!  We left Flam at 11:00 a.m. And arrived at our final destination at 10:00 p.m.  Navigation said it was a 4 1/2 hour drive. We were going to make 2 scheduled stops to see stave churches, so we figured we would have a shorter travel day. Boy were we mistaken. We're not even sure where all that time went and why it took so long- but anyway, here's how the day unfolded...

Let me start by saying the sun was shining this morning and it was beautiful sitting on our porch.

 We hit a local bakery in Aurland on our way to the Borgund Stave Church. Sweet buns and sandwiches. (The sandwiches didn't make the picture, sorry, but they were delicious!) 

Stave churches are named after the construction technique. They have huge wood poles called staves that support them. These churches are made totally of wood, rather than stone or brick. At one time there were over 1000 of these churches in Norway. Today there are only 28 left. We are going to visit two of them on our way to Geiranger. 

Our first stop is at the Borgund Stave Church. It dates back to 1180 and is the best preserved of the stave churches. 90% of the interior wood is original. Unbelievable!  

Our second stave church was in Kauplanger.  While it wasn't as fancy on the outside, it was more ornate on the inside. This church is still in use today. 

So now is when we somehow entered a time warp. We kept driving and driving but never reached our destination. We went over mountains, through valleys, through tunnels, and had to use 4 ferries to get across various fjords. We finally arrived in Hellesylt to take one last ferry down the fjord to Geiranger.  

We followed the signage and pulled up in lane 1 for the ferry. But weird, there's no other cars waiting. We go across the street to a gas station to ask what to do. It's here we find out that the last ferry left at 7:00 p.m.  It was 7:10!  Ok, so what now?  The kid at the gas station was super helpful and showed us a route to take that could still get us to where we were going. It would take about 2 hours and involved 2 ferries. He double checked the time schedules and we would have no trouble getting there. Mike reconfirmed our hotel reservations and the guy there even said what a beautiful drive it would be and to enjoy it. So, after a quick dinner, pizza that was just marginal, we hit the road again. Our issue now is arriving at the ferry docks and having to wait 30 or so minutes for the next scheduled ferry. So I guess to be fair, that took up extra time we had not accounted for. In the end, we arrived at the Grande Fjord Hotel at around 10:00. Sunset isn't until 11:27 here, so it was still light out and we were able to sit on the balcony, relax, enjoy the view with cups of cappuccino. 

A view down into Geiranger on the drive down the mountain. 

Can't wait to explore more tomorrow!