2 weeks of fjords, museums, car rides, ferries, family and anything else you can imagine on a road trip in Norway.

I know, I know, it's been FOREVER (Kate) since my last post! In my defense, things were a bit crazy getting ready for my parents, Aunt Diane and my cousin Alex to arrive for a 2 week road trip around Norway. Now the road trip is over, my family is safety on the ground back in Minneapolis and I have nothing better to do --so I'm ready to blog. :)

In order to make this cohesive and interesting, I think I will break up the trip into multiple blogs. This blog will give you a general overview of where we went and what we saw. Coming blogs will give more details and pictures about the places we visited and the funny experiences along the way.

                                (Norway map courtesy of  http://www.kaosdesign.no/photogallery.htm)
Day 1

On Saturday, July 10th, I took the train from Kristiansand to Oslo in order to pick up
mom, popsy, Diane and Alex from the airport. I left at 6:30am in order to get them at 1pm. After meeting them, we took the train back to Kristiandsand (or at least that was the plan). Turns out, Norway in the summertime means construction on train lines (kind of like MN). This meant that we had to take a train from Oslo Gardermoen Airport to Oslo S (central station), then hop on a bus that took us to Kongsberg, where we had to get back on the train to get to Kristiansand. Not to mention some delays on the train for this and that problem. Finally, we arrived in Kristiansand around 8. It had been a long day for all of us. I had been up since 6 and on trains all day. The rest of them had been traveling from MN since 5pm the day before. We were all tired. However, fresh shrimp and crab was waiting for us in Kristiansand! That made the day of travel worth it!

 The train. On one of our long stops in Bø.

We made it to Kristiansand! (Plus Diane taking the picture :))

Our seafood feast of shrimp and king crab legs! 

Check out the albino shrimp! :)

10:30 pm and still light out. Although shortly after this picture, my jet-lagged family needed to pass out for the night. Side note: the next morning, Alex and I were up before our parents! (Alex because he slept basically the entire 6 hours on the train!) You know your parents are jet-lagged when you wake up before them! (and we had to wake them up at 10am, because they were still sleeping!)

The rest of our trip--that will be detailed on future blogs:

We spent Sunday wandering around Kristiansand, and on Monday we set off on our journey. 

Monday--on the road to our cabin near Stavanger (by car)

Monday night-Wednesday morning-- at our cabin at Preikestolen fjellstua. 

Wednesday-- long travel day by car

Wednesday night-Tuesday morning-- at our cabin in Luster on the Lustrafjord (a part of Sognefjord)

Tuesday-- travel to Bergen by car

Tuesday night-Thursday morning-- in Bergen at the Bergen Montana Hostel

Thursday--travel to Oslo by train

Thursday night-Sunday morning-- in Oslo stayed at Oslo Haraldsheim Hostel

Sunday morning-- family flies back to MN, I take the bus back to Kristiansand