Norway 2014

Ashley and I had the opportunity to go to Norway by ourselves for a week at the end of our Europe trip. Ashley's friend Kristine, who was an exchange student with a family in our ward back in Arizona who got really close with Ashley and her friend group, let us come stay with her and her family for a week! Norway was cool because we actually got to stay with a Norwegian family and really experience the culture there first hand.

We stayed at their home in Porsgrunn for a couple days and then drove to their cabin, spent a day there, then drove to Bergen, then Oslo and then flew back to Prague. I don't have the greatest memory, so I'm just going to upload some of our pictures now and try to remember what we did. :)

Oh yes, I remember now.. a couple hours after we got there, Kristine said she wanted to take us to the "beach" before the sun went down, so we went to what looked to us like a cold lake, but it really was ocean water.. It's called a fjord and Norway is known for them. We saw hundreds of Fjords on our trip. :)

This is Kristine's house in Porsgrunn! 

It's very windy in Norway. :)

There are SO MANY WATERFALLS in Norway. On our drive from one city to the next, I think we counted like 110 or something. It was so cool

I love this picture. This was when we took a boat across a Fjord to get to Bergen

Another beautiful waterfall on our drive

The next 5 photos are all Bergen- this was my favorite place in Norway that we went. It was such a beautiful city. My favorite part was all the huge ships!

See the huge ship coming in? We took a tram up the mountain to this gorgeous view of the city.

This is such a cool picture Ash took. All those little houses are actually gift shops and stores!

This is at a beautiful park in Oslo

These next 4 photos are in Oslo, Norway. We walked around the city, went to the castle, went to a cool park with tons of statues, and then the Oslo opera house (we went really late though so we didn't take any pictures, but it was really neat)

Ashley's carrying ballet shoes that she bought at the opera house (they had tons of used ballet shoes from people who actually performed there!)

This is the castle where the king and queen live. It doesn't look like any of the castles we saw in Prague or Germany because it looks more modern.. It reminded us of the house in the movie "What a Girl Wants" haha 

Beautiful Fjord. Fun fact: the Disney movie Frozen was made about Norway. They talk about Fjords, wear bunads, sing Norwegian songs, have trolls (which are famous in Norway for some reason), etc. 

The leaves in Europe are really pretty.

This is a bunad! It's a traditional Norwegian dress and everyone in Norway gets one when they are around age 14 . It's part of their religion there. They're baptized into their church when they are only 3 months old, then they don't go to church again except once a year on Christmas and then when they are 14, they get to decide if they want to stay in the church or not, and if they choose to stay, they get one of these personalized bunad dresses and have a big celebration! Each dress is so unique and different.

So yeah! That was our Norway trip! It was a great experience and I'm so glad we got to add another beautiful country to our trip! Thanks Ausens for showing us your beautiful country!! 

September 28, 2014--Day 16--Sunday: Leaving Interlaken, & Geneva

For our last full day in Europe, we drove to Geneva, stopping at the Switzerland temple on the way. That's all we have pictures of from that day, and we were so exhausted that there's really not much else to report about that day. We mostly just wandered around Geneva for a while and hung out at the hotel. Then the next morning Mom, Dad, and I went home while Sarah and Ashley went on to Norway. Sarah will have to blog about Norway for you, because they had a great time.

September 27, 2014--Day 15--Saturday: Brienz and Grindelwald

Today we saw Dad's Number One Favorite Place in the World.

But first, we went to Brienz. We slept in a little bit, got a good hotel breakfast, then drove to the train station. The hotel owner gave us grew passes on all public transportation, so we took one to a town around the other side of the lake. Brienz.

It was just the kind of place we'd hoped to find--a quiet little hillside town with next to no tourists and lots to see. There was just one main street parallel to the waterfront, and it had coats of arms on flags hanging over it every few yards.

The main thing to see in Brienz was the great woodworking museum and shops. Dude, if you ever want cash, just learn how to carve things out of wood. Everything was so expensive. Even the tiniest little unpainted trinkets were like $30. Polished and painted palm-sized music boxes were around $200 each. There was this one eagle statue the size of a real eagle priced at $54,000!

So yeah, we didn't buy anything in Brienz. But we had fun looking at it all. Then we went to nearly the end of the road to a cute little church on a hilltop, and we ate lunch overlooking the lake.

We decided we wanted to take a cruise boat back to Interlaken, and it was scheduled to leave at 12:40, so we started booking it back to the other end of Brienz to catch it. But there were swans, and Ashley is as obsessed with swans as Ludwig was, so she had to stop and take a thousand photos. Then we later passed these cool fountains that you had to pump yourself, and then the pieces moved as the water pooled up, so we wasted a little time there. We had to jog the final stretch to the boat, but we made it there in time to buy tickets and board.

That boat ride back was sooo nice. We were all so tucked out from our weeks of fun that a boat ride in the sun on a crystal blue lake in Switzerland was the perfect way to relax and unwind. It took over an hour to get back, and we just sat there watching little Swiss towns pass by and seagulls fly overhead. So soothing and picturesque and perfect.

That was our rest break for the day, and then we were dropped off back by the train station. We found the car, and then it was straight on to Grindelwald.

I now understand why it's Dad's all-time favorite place. It's such a charming little town surrounded by huge, beautiful grey mountains. Dad says it was four times more touristy than when he was here 20 years ago, but it still was magnificent. Look it up, because I'm seriously feeling so unoriginal with my adjectives, and my descriptions won't do it any justice. But basically if Dad could pick one place to retire, I think that would be it. It has everything he loves except easy access to Jackson.

We stayed there for several hours, shopping mostly. It was our last chance to get Switzerland souvenirs, so we took advantage of the many tourist shops.

Since that was pretty much our last day and the sun was setting perfectly on the valley, Dad insisted on finding the perfect panorama view. It took us up tiny farm paths on steep hills, and at one point some farmers had to move a cow-blocking rope for us to drive past, but eventually we found the perfect place to look out at Grindelwald and eat dinner.

After Dad had his fill of the view, we drove back home to the hotel. We knew we needed to get up early for church the next day, but we stayed up to watch Netflix instead. It was nice to just relax and watch movies.