Dear All,

I've been trvelling in Norway for 2 weeks.  The 2-week feels like double of the time because the sun seems never set in Norway.  Even in the south of Norway, the sky is bright in the midnight.  It was so funny that we needed to put on the sunglasses and hat to block the sun when we were having "dinner" outdoor.
 
It was great to travel with Rita and Christine.  We had wonderful time together and had gone through lots of unbelievable problems here.  Not sure if I can made it without them.  Let me tell you what happened but be patient because it's a long story.

Fisrt, we met the strike of big tranportation companies.  Lots of service on ferry lines in the fiord area (Fjord1) and the coastal steamter (Hurtigruten) were stopped.  Our plan was to take the NORWAY IN A NUTSHELL which is a package combined train, ferry and bus between Oslo and Bergen.  However, the ferry part was on strike, and we had to take the ROYAL FJORD TOUR instead.  In this case, we missed the part of Flam - Voss - Bergen and spent too much time on the boat in the Sognefjord.  

Beside this, the overnight steamer we planned to take from Bergen to Alesund and continuing to Geiranger was on strike, too.  We had to change to a bus route to get to Geiranger which forced us to cut down the time in Bergen and spent a night in Stryn.  It was a pity that we could only spend a few hours in Bergen.  Bergen is a lovely city, but we only had time to see the fish market.  

Later when we were in Geiranger, our taxi driver told us there is often a stike in May because it's time to negociate the salary of the coming year.  But this time it lasted quite long, 11 days.  We happened to catch the last 5 days.  So, May is not a good timing to travel in Norway.

When we arrived Stryn after 7 hours bus, the tourist information of Stryn was closed already, and the YH Stryn wasn't running yet.  There is no other accommdation info on my Lonely Planet book.  Luckily, the YH Stryn helped out.  She recommended Vesla Pension near the bus station.  The room was small and cost us Kr 700 per room.  But can't ask too much under this situation.

The next day, we followed the instrution of bus info in Bergen and went to Grotli to catch a local connecting bus to Geiranger.  The scenery on the way was so beautiful.  We saw lots of snow and frozen lakes.  But, Grotli is in the middle of nowhere.  There were only one hotel standing by the road and no connecting bus in this season.  The bus starts from the mid-June and not from Grotli but another town nearby.  So, the hotel helped us to call a taxi which cost us Kr 500 per car.  Not a bad deal for a 45 minutes trip.  Usually it costs more, but the taxi offered a cheaper price because the bus wasn't running.  This is another reason of not traveling in Norway in May.  Many bus routes are not running yet, and sometime the road is closed because of snow.  Therefore, after considering the price and time consuming, we took the same taxi to Dalsnibba (Kr 1000 per car), a view point of Geiranger, and to Andalsnes through the Golden Route (Kr 520 per persion).  It's quite a luxury trip in Geiranger since we took the taxi so many times, but it's worth.  And our taxi driver is a very nice person.  He not only took us around but also be our tour guide without extra charge.

These are what happened in the fiord area.  Later, we had other problems like room booking lost in Stavanger and car rental problem in Alta.  I think most of the troubles that could happen in a trip have occured in last 2 weeks.  But all the problems were solved and turned out to be better than the original plan because we got lots of helps from the friendly Norwegians.  

Now, Cristine and Rita are back to Oslo and ready to go home.  I fly to Tromso and heading to Loften Islands later.  Hope I'll see the midnight sun to make up for the disappointment in Nordcap.

Best regards,

Judy 
in Tromso

PS: Thanks Christine for reminding me. How can I forget the amazing flight cancellation of Norwegian Airline. It's about ten minutes after we checked in and passed the X-ray gate. When we started to look for the boarding gate and found that our flight showed "cancelled". How could this happen! We just checked in a cancelled flight! So we turned back to the check-in counter and knew it was cancelled for mechanic problem. Then we had to wait for the next flight to Stavanger for 2 hours.


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