L'Avventurra

Our time in Oslo was a bit of a bust. We found the city uninspiring and unaffordable. But all those taxes do produce a number of wonderful underused cultural institutions around the city which are mostly free. Look at those great programs!

We were lucky enough to catch a screening of Antonioni's L'Avventurra. Previously I had only seen Blow-Up, of which I am not a fan. But by this film I was captivated.
Monica Vitti has a breathtakingly beautiful presence on the island on-screen.She is the perfect balance to the rocky landscape. The entire film had a beautiful quality I can't yet describe - something I could get lost in.

Bergen

This is Bergen! Norway's second biggest city and city of culture. This town may seem small, but I think it has everything you could ever need. We were here for three days and loved every minute.

We discovered that Bergen is filled with awesome functionalist buildings from the 1930s. Like this one, the Sundt department store designed by Per Grieg. Beautiful.

Also home to the greatest telephone boxes I have ever seen.

Bergen is also famous for its well-preserved collection of old buildings by the wharf, or Bryggen. It's like a miniature wooden city filled with bridges and secret passages, where nothing is truly straight.

Lovely cafés spill their antique mismatched chairs onto the sidewalk.

We wandered into a very red brick Church on top of a hill. We could not have anticipated the lovely surprise inside.

Humble but beautiful details are what make this Church one of my favourites.

Like the spectacular wooden ceiling.

From Mount Fløyen you can get a spectacular view of the city (even though it is only 320m above sea level). If you are lazy or "just-have-an-invested-interest-in-alternative-modes-of-transportation" you can take the funnicular up or down.

On this mountain hovering over town, Bergeners can still get lost in the forest or see their reflection in a still lake.

My kind of city.

Norge

We just finished a week in Norway with no computers, half our luggage (not much to start with), minimal showering and life in a tent (without a tarp). The week was very beautiful and very wet. I think it was the best week I've had this year.

We took the Oslo-Bergen train and stopped at Myrdal, where we hiked 21km down the Flåm valley to the town of Flåm. Having not hiked in a while, I had no idea what kind of time we would make so we were in a bit of a rush. We ended up getting far under estimate and 10 minutes before the grocery store closed to boot! There is really no dinner like the dinner you have after a long day of walking (no matter what the food is).

Luckily, I still managed to snap a few pictures in our haste. Most people take the Flåmsbana, an hour-long scenic train ride down, but the views from the train are incomparable to the hike (we took the train on our way back up a few days later).


While the valley is spectacular, Flåm itself (in the distance) is a bit of a tourist town, a sightseeing cruise and train hub with little to experience and not much of a fjord view. So, the next day we hiked to Aurland (from where this photo was taken). Somehow we made the seriously steep and curvy 8km on what seemed like an unmarked path.

I'm still not sure if we were even on a marked route, seeing how we didn't have real maps our entire time in Norway... but we found lots of wild raspberries! Enough said.

Aurland is much more of a town, filled with friendly faces and pretty houses, so we made it our base for the next few days. From Aurland we had another very vertical day hiking 2/3 of the way up the mountain Prest (Note: Norwegian mountains are very small) to a lookout over the Aurlandsfjord.

Always lots of sheep (and flies) to keep us company through the Norwegian woods. and everywhere else.

The Aurlandsfjord, which is really only the tip of the Sognefjord, longest fjord in the world. Doesn't a kayak trip through the fjords sound perfect? One day, a must.

There is also very elegant lookout structure designed by Canadian architectsTodd Saunders & Tommie Wilhelmsen. This picture really doesn't do it justice. For brilliant craftmanship, a feeling of vertigo I could honestly describe as "beautiful" and other reasons, it really must be experienced.

The Norwegian mountains. So much beautiful rock, it reminded me of home.