Week 82 – ‘Teslas, tunnels & potato salad’

​Our 2nd week on the road, and we’re now getting fully immersed into the Norwegian way of life. Which, surely for any non-Norwegian tourist must involve avoiding spending money at any opportunity. This country really is ridiculous when it comes to the price of things (except potato salad it would seem). At one point, I naively thought that a 6 pack of beer was c.£3.50/$5 which I thought, ‘finally, something in Norway that is cheap’. No. $30 for the 6 pack. Crazy Norway. Crazy.
 
As such, we have avoided RV parks, and general street parking (as the towns/cities require parking tickets for pretty much any street that is a resident’s permit street). $30 for a patch of grass is a cost we can’t justify.
 
But anyway, this is what we expected, and in no way detracts from the beautiful country this is, and the honest & charming Norwegian folk.
 
The week started on a bit of a dampener as we were near Pulpit Rock - the famous edge of the cliff rock jutting out thing - that we wanted to hike up to, but the weather was just not playing ball. We were thinking about waiting it out for a couple more days, but looking at the weather report, and our sanity at being held hostage in Mike for another couple of days, we decided that it was not meant to be, and we should head to Bergen instead. Luckily we did as we heard from some people that there were 3 rescues that day from people getting stranded up there, in the dangerous conditions.
 
So, the drive to Bergen involved lots of rain, a few ferries and endless tunnels. Man, these people must have spent a fortune building tunnels (there is one that is 26km long!). Just outside of Bergen we stopped off at the Grieg museum. Turns out his grandparents came over from Scotland, so basically he was British. The museum & his house weren’t really much to shout about unfortunately – very little information actually on the composer, and his house was pretty small, so we swept through the 3 rooms in about 10 minutes (pretending to look impressed, and feeling bad for ploughing through it so quickly)
 
Bergen itself was a cool little city. Nice cobbled streets, quite arty, a great vista up the funicular, the TubaKuba house thing, the old Bryggen area (means wharf) and a surprisingly interesting museum about their period under Nazi occupation. We managed to find a perfect spot to park for a couple of nights near the tram line, and next to a supermarket, so we were pretty sorted.
 
After Bergen we drove for a couple of days to Geirangerfjord  - the famous fjord that has a constant flow of cruise ships parked up. It really was stunning, and even though the hike up & down, to get the best view, took 3 hours, it was probably worth it.
 
Overall, even though we might be shortening our time in Norway (weather, distance, expense, etc) it really is a beautiful country and when I am a millionaire hopefully I will be back & can drive around in a Tesla electric powered RV…