Heading to Norway!

In honor of our 40th year of life and our 20th year as a couple, we decided to plan something big: NORWAY!!!! It's been a lifelong dream of John's to visit Norway, and when I learned that my blood ancestry also trickles from Norwegian waters, we just had to plan a vacation in the Motherland! I cannot believe the days are even upon us! All the planning and dreaming and saving and learning Norwegian...finally here. On Monday, we leave for the land that I've now come to think of as Asgard itself. The harsh and beautiful world of the Jotunheim, the North Sea, the Aurora Borealis and the land of the midnight sun, and so many incredible fjords that even pictures make you think you could jet off into them!

We start off in Oslo, where we will be staying at Cochs Pensjonat. There are tons of museums, the grand opera house whose roof is a destination in itself! We hope to catch some walking tours, visit the Viking Ship Museum, the Akershus Castle & Fortress, the Norsk Folksmuseum (check out this panoramic shot of their Stave Church), a tour of the Parliament, and maybe even The Hold Steady, a Minneapolis band! We're excited to try the Pølse med lompe (sausage in potato flat bread, sort of like lefse, here's a photo), although eating is so expensive there that we may just live on mead, as the god Odin did! As home brewers, we'd like to try some Norwegian beer, called øl (pronounced uul). They brew a special kind of beer there for the winter holidays, Jule (Yule), and that will be our first order of brewing business upon our return, brewing up our own version of juløl, as its called.

From Oslo, we take one of the most spectacular train rides on the planet to the little village of Balestrand, situated on the magnificent Sognefjord. There we will be staying at the Balestrand Hotel, and we are told to expect a little green Volkswagen to fetch us! It will be all about the scenery here, and we plan on walking and photographing to our heart's delight! We are hoping to catch a tour of one of the original remaining stave church's while we are there. We'd love to take one of the glacier walks, but we may run out of time as some of these destinations take a whole day to get there and back. When having to choose, we figured seeing one of the last remaining original stave churches, which are pretty unique to Norwegian culture and heritage (hand carved everything by our ancestors!) or a glacier...well, we had to go for the Norwegian thing and check out the beautiful wooden structures. We will have to settle for catching glimpses of the glaciers from the sea!

From Balestrand, we then take a ferry boat to Bergen! We are thrilled to have booked the apartment unit (and splurged mightily for it!) in the raved about, much sought-after, totally pimped-up lodging of the To Søstre Guesthouse. This guesthouse gets some of the best reviews we've ever read on Trip Advisor, so we are very excited to check it out. As it will be our last stop, we thought we'd splurge a little. We are firm believers in spending money on memories and unique experiences, not simply on stuff. All I can say is: SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE!