hello, hello to the US of A! the past couple of months have been quite a whirlwind...but in such a good way! i spent about two weeks at home after our guatemala trip before jetting off to norway. this european trip was a bit spontaneous, as my friend & i only made the final decision to go in early june. but, to say the least, it was one of the best & most beautiful experiences of my life. as students, we made the trip as cheap as possible (although norway is most definitely not the cheapest country ever...) but still got to see and experience so very much.
since it was a pretty lengthy trip (3 weeks) i don't want to document everything we did & saw & overload you with excessive amounts of photos, but instead want to outline it & focus on our cities here & on our hikes in a separate post.
our first two cities were oslo & bergen, where we explored the towns by foot. we really just wandered around but stumbled upon so many amazing things, both within the city centers and among the outskirts of town. we stayed in some pretty awesome airbnb's (cheap, cheap!) that allowed us to cook meals at home, which we loooooved :). we took the fantastic oslo-bergen train & were amazed by the beauty...and were a bit excited to see some summertime snow!
^^ oslo street view from our cute airbnb. ^^
^^ the architecture was beautiful. ^^
^^ the views from our 7 hour oslo - bergen train ride. absolutely stunning. and...snow! ^^
^^ dinna dinna! we had so much fun cooking together. ^^
^^ a beautiful stroll through bergen & a little snack stop on a chilly day. ^^
^^ city center. ^^
^^ bryggen in bergen: the cutest & quaintest strip of old buildings. ^^
^^ stave church & a bit of exploration with P. ^^
we then moved onto odda for two nights, solely to be near our trolltunga hike (which i'll talk more in depth about in my next post). the scenery outside our hostel was, again, breathtaking. i'm sure i will be constantly saying that :) but, seriously, photos cannot capture the true essence of it all.
^^ yup, our hostel view. ^^
^^ another snack stop with my dutchie while waiting for our departing odda train. ^^
^^ bye bye for now odda. ^^
we then headed to stavanger, where we spent half of our 5 days in the city & half hiking. there was also one particularly rainy day where we stayed mostly indoors, but when we did venture out we had some fun running through the storm :) when we weren't hiking both preikestolen & kjeragbolten (next post), we spent a lot of time exploring the city center. we also had to grab meals in town as we didn't have a kitchen here.
^^ on the ferry. ^^
^^ more colored houses & geo-park graffiti. ^^
we got the chance to return to oslo as it was the city we were flying out of. only two nights, but we were able to explore a different section of the city than before...so, awesome neighborhoods and the neatest museums and parks (picnics!).
^^ how cool is this area?! ^^
thanks for having us, norway! you were absolutely breathtaking & we had the best of times exploring you. P & I will forever cherish the memories of our time here.
xoxo,
mary grace.
