The glaciers: an epic journey

The day before we left Ortnevik, we decided to go check out the largest glacier in Europe, located near the village of Fjaerland. Because of the fjords, you can't just drive anywhere and to make the trip worth our while, we had to be on the ferry out of Ortnevik by 6:30am. The day started out on a very mature note (cue Beavis and Butthead laughter):


The first ferry was peaceful and quite. We landed at Nordeide and then drove 45 minutes to Belstrade, where we caught another ferry to Fjaerland. This second ferry was filled to the brim with Americans, who were taking a bus tour of Scandinavia. We chatted with a couple from Detroit who, at first thought we were Norwegian (??????) and then said, "Oh, we thought you spoke English really well." Jim abandoned me after a few minutes of idle chat and I eventually wandered out to spend time on the deck with him. Here is Jim on the deck of the ferry from Belstrade to Fjaerland (on the Fjaerlandfjorden).


Finally we made it to Fjaerland, where we we were met by a bus, complete with a surly bus driver who said nothing but "be back at 11:45" and such. There was a marked difference in attitude in this tourist town. The locals weren't so charmed with out of town visitors (and I can totally understand why, based on our busload of tourists). We were shuttled to the VERY exciting Glacier Museum, where we were met with more less than enthusiastic Norwegians and we watched a titillating movie about the glaciers, which got our hopes up big time.


We also found some much needed coffee at the glacier museum:


And Jim made some new friends:



We were on the bus early, having been alloted WAY too much time to explore the glacier museum...and we headed up the mountain to see the glacier! We were so excited after the movie, thinking we were going to get to walk on it and see some incredible views....hmmm....


I think I actually said, "That's it?" Basically it was just a mountain with a big pile of snow that kind of looked blue on the top and then some dirtier looking ice down below, followed by a very blue lake. It was pretty, but it wasn't spectacular and the movie we had seen was so hyped that we expected a lot more. Plus, our busmates were REALLY started to grate on our nerves by this point.

We went up further and saw the glacier from a different angle. It was cold.


Then our bus headed BACK to the glacier museum, at which point we decided we had had enough of the whole bus situation and decided to walk the rest of the way into town. The town is also an antique book town, so there were lots of small book stores with old books in them. Sadly, our busmates were also in them. Jim took some beautiful pictures of the town.





And then we sat around for a while, freezing and waiting for the ferry to come back, which it finally did. I immediately went to sleep (hooray for earplugs!)and was refreshed for our trip back home, which was not straightforward. We didn't get back in time to catch the last ferry back to Ortnevik, so we had to drive two hours from Belstrade to Lavic, where we caught a bigger ferry to Oppendal. Then we drove another hour and a half back to Ortnevik by car. There were some goats and sheep in the roads and the tunnels and we saw a fox.


Fourteen and a half hours after we left the cabin, we finally returned. I'm not going to say it wasn't worth it, because we saw a lot of beautiful things...but it was a long day.