We woke up early on August 13th
to start our drive north. It was going to be our longest drive of our trip. The
drive itself was going to be approximately 7 ½ hours with multiple ferry rides
along the way and stopping to see the sites. When asked if we wanted to take
the ferries or go inland there was no question in my mind, I wanted to drive
along the coast and experience the ferries and see the beauty of this part of
Norway… and I don’t regret that decision for a minute.
Today we drove from Stavanger to Sunnfjord
with an extra-long stop in Berger. If you have ever looked at a map of Norway, we
were alongside of water almost the entire drive. I was in heaven looking at all
the views an imagining life in Norway.
It is crazy to think that people chose to leave this place and travel to
the United States. To leave such beauty… it makes you wonder what was going on with
the economy and way of life that they felt they needed to go somewhere else for
a better life.
Of course, the drive gave me lots of
time to think… to praise God for all that He has blessed me with and to try not
to allow the worries of what is to come ruin my time in Norway. It was a
constant battle but looking at the beauty around me is what grounded me.
We finally arrived in Bergen… it is
the second largest city in Norway (1st is Oslo) and located amongst all
the Fjords on the coast. When we arrived, Matthew realized that he had left his
cane at one of the stops where we tried to charge the batteries on the car… it
was another one of our failed attempts. I’m not sure how many times we attempted
to do it, but we failed every time. We tried various apps to pay with,
different charging stations, various cords in the car, nothing we did worked…
so we finally gave up and just paid for the gas and praised God that we didn’t
have a car that only ran off electricity, or we would have been up a creek. Anyways, Matthew lost his cane, and we didn’t
know what we were going to do. I looked up and low-and-behold, we parked right
next to a pharmacy. So, I walked in the store in hopes of finding a cane. There
was no section that had canes, so we asked them where we could find a cane, and
they told us to hold on and went into the back and came out with a set of canes
(almost like crutches). They offered Matthew both of them, but he said he only
needed the one… then we found out it was free. After he realized how nice it
was and the quality, we wished he had taken them both. Anyways, he now has an
amazing cane from Norway, with a pick that goes down for walking in ice and
snow 😊God sure did provide… the
second cane was even better than the first one he provided.
After Matthew got his cane, we toured
around Bergen. I loved all the buildings in Bergen. They were so unique. We
spent a couple hours touring the area, ate lunch, and tried local foods and
just enjoyed being out of the car before continuing on with the drive.
Cloudberry & Brunost
Taste of Norway
We arrived in Sunnfjord earlier than
expected after the long drive and stop in Bergen. We found the condo, which was
very nice… the only drawback was the crazy staircase to get to it… it was a
little risky for Matthew, so we were very careful about how often he went
up/down the stairs. My parents helped me with the luggage, and we had Matthew
stay put. We did go out for dinner that evening but otherwise, spent the evening
relaxing in the condo.
was very different than ours...!
We had so much left over... we ate pizza for breakfast!
On August 14, we had a short 4-hour
drive from Sunnfjord to Alesund. This was the area that my father’s grandmother
came from (Spjelkavik Family). We were excited that we were able to go to both
locations that his grandparents came from.
The drive to Alesund was an easy
drive, with another ferry ride of course. We ran across lots of animals… thankfully
we didn’t hit any. We arrived in Alesund early, so we tried to get ahold of our
Airbnb. While waiting for them to respond we parked next to a cool building. Thankfully,
they finally responded and let us come to their house early. It was the
downstairs portion of their house, and we had access to the laundry room, a
couple bedrooms and a living room. The couple that lived there were very nice
and we enjoyed sharing why we were in the area with them.
Wonder if there is a connection...?
After unloading the car, we rested for
a bit, started some laundry, and then headed out to tour the area. We wanted to
see everything we could during the day. We were able to use our coupons from
our previous Airbnb and have lunch at Egon. The food was once again absolutely
delicious and free was even better. I am so glad for maps… it was so much
easier to find the different areas. We found lots of Spjelkavik street signs. The
map said there was a church on one of the streets but when we got there, it was
nothing to write home about. We then found another building that was named
after Spjelkavik… and using Google translate, we were able to find out that it
was the local high school. How cool is that? A high school named after our
ancestors. We then found another Spjelkavik Church and low-and-behold, that
unique building we parked next too earlier… turned out to be the same building.
There was a cemetery right next to it so we walked around to see if we could
find any graves sites of our relatives. We attempted to use google to have a
conversation with an elderly couple that were also there visiting.
Next, we drove over to the city of
Alesund, to visit the tourist sites, buy some more souvenirs and just see the sites.
We didn’t spend a ton of time in Alesund
but it was enough time to enjoy the area. Afterwards, we went to the grocery
store and just bought food for dinner and snacks and headed back to the Airbnb
for the night. We relaxed, did laundry, and hung out watching television
together.
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