After we picked up our car in Gudvangen we headed towards Laerdal via a scenic route. From Aurland we took a serpentine road over the mountains.
The views of majestic beauty opened up to us.
We stopped at one of the look out points to enjoy some brilliant afternoon sunshine.
You can see behind Mark the route our boat took through the fjords.
And this is the village sprawling downhill from where we were driving.
As we drove further up, we reached Stegastein point, one of the scariest and coolest viewing platforms we'd ever seen.
It sticks out 30 meters out into thin air.
It's made of timber and steel.
And rises 650 meters above the fjords.
The kids had a hay day here, especially knowing how scared I am of heights when little children are involved. If you look REALLY carefully, you can see my reflection (in blue) being all nervous for someone to fall off.
I did pretend to be all happy and worry-free for this family shot though.
This was not the end of our drive. We headed even further up traveling along the road called the "Snow Road" as it is in fact covered in snow even through the summer.
At first we thought these sheep resting along the road were snow. Just kidding.
But then, we reached about 1300 meters above the sea level, we started seeing real snow. And lots of it! There is no way we could have just driven by snow without stopping. So we found a cool place and let the kids run around and play in the snow ON SEPTEMBER 5th!
Robert took a few picturesque pictures from the spot where we stopped.
We seriously still can't believe our luck on this day. The sun was just glorious! The daylight hours were still long so we were able to enjoy this scenic drive even when it was getting closer to dinner.
Another beautiful waterfall as we were approaching Laerdal.
We loved seeing these bright red huts along the mountains. It's always interesting to discuss with the kids (who didn't have any DVD's or iPads for this day trip) about what life could be like in this remote but picturesque area.
One of the cool parts was on the way back from Laerdal towards Flam was taking the longest under mountain tunnel in the world!
This is seriously a 15 mile tunnel!
Kids in the tunnel. No one dared to hold his or her breath for the duration of our drive through it for some reason.
It had really cool lit up colorful areas in a few spots throughout the tunnel. You could stop and take a break (it even had trash cans there) from your 24 km drive:). It was awesome!
We passed Aurland at dinnertime, had a great Norwegian pizza (haha) and headed back to Bergen.
We got home around 10 pm. It was a full busy day, but we were so glad we did it on our own, at our own pace rather than with a timed itinerary. We absolutely loved this area and if there is just one place in Norway you have time for--this is it!
Lyana.
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