what makes Alla tick

We are now on a nice cruise ship heading for Riga.

 

After 3 says with a salad for me I needed some non food food and we went to Max (the local burger joint) for exactly what I expected, round and ok burger, not more, but I had a craving, but if you can skip Max, skip Max.

 

We took a train, then a bus to the ship and carried are bags in. it is so different then American cruise ships, no security!! Not even a passport check, so nice, we just self checked ourselves and went in.

Since we spent last night in nature, n nights ago in the car, and a night before in nature as well and many nights with time showers (4-6 minutes each) , a shower is luxury!!, I already took 2 this evening and plan for 3 more just because I can, from now on no more tenting, it’s harder to tent in cities and its cheaper most place we go from now on, but perhaps we will tent again.

 

Today we saw something unusual on alla’s back that looked like a tiny tree branch, after a close examination we found it was a tick, a small one borrowing in, so we took the tick out and found another. This is one more reason why we may not be tenting any more, but that is what happens when you spend an hour in the bush squatting for blueberries, nature’s revenge.

In the ship after eating cheap mostly we splurged and went to the buffet and we pigged out like starving pigs in a pig sty buffet.

 

Back to Flam

 

On the next day we took the car to Visgody, then took the bus to Aurlandsen to start our hike. It started in a nice valley with a lake and green hills, then followed a river with many flowers. At one point the trail split and we took the high trail, the harder one and climbed up through narrow high brush to a small peak where we took some playful photos of amazing waterfalls and regular us. From there we started walking down for 5-6 hours the valley was long and the descend difficult but all in the views of waterfalls and high mountains. I don’t know if you know but alla has a fear of bridges (tall ones especially)  and here we had to walk over several rivers on top of serious waterfall, the kind you don’t survive (“I will survive” is played now by the cruise band). At first she wouldn’t cross, but got some courage and slowly went to the other side. We crossed several bridges on this hike and others all the way to jumping over the bridge to the rive a few days ago. I guess this is the best way to overcome a fear, tackle it head on, she did and it feels great, now all we have to do is find a tall bridge to drive over. We kept walking passing tiny cheese making farms and reached the end with tired feet and knees but satisfied from a very beautiful hike. After the hike we left Flam , passed gudvangen again and drove in a very nice green mountain pass with awesome views passed Voss to town of Vik.

 

At Vik we stopped for a major nature stop and during this stop I spoke to the owner of the restaurant we pulled over by. She was sweeping up and berating her husband. She said Norwegians are the worst (they dropped food on the floor and walked on it). This was after closing time and the place was empty. But has amazing views of Vick and the fjords so I took some shots. We continued to Vick and Alla splurged on a salmon burger at a somewhat fancy place and I had a chicken burger at the gas station (surprisingly ok). Then we drove to Vangese for the car ferry crossing. We checked the prices on the bulitin boards and noticed we are about to get wallet raped, but not much choice. On the ferry we found we had to pay 101 instead of 800 (kronars.. 16$ instead of 128$) for a 20 minutes cross, so we pleased, we decided to skip balestrand as we originally planned (needed two more ferry crossings) and drove towards solvorn, we stayed the night in another camp with timed showers. The next day we reached the glacier, it was our 1^st day of rain (we had amazing weather till then) and we were late for the last tour, so we walked up to the glacier but did not go on it (that day) , that was our most wasted day of the trip, but we spent time to make sure such a day does not return.

 

That is it , I  think we are all caught up

 

Now I am busy booking my Riga hostel, we already know where to go to see Riga in 2 days, then off to Tallinn, st Petersburg and Helsinki, or perhaps our plans will changes J

 

Cheers from the music lounge on the ship Romantika