We hit the E38 and followed it until we reached Mandal, where we got a real apartment, with water inside the cab and a sleeping room on the second floor at Sjosanden. Not quite cheap, but still reasonable for the features. The whole camping site felt like being in south France, with its stone pines all over the place and its sandy beach.

From that day on our trip turned into a real holiday - at temperatures at about 25 degree celsius and a merciless sun burning down at us for almost 20 hours a day, we agreed that we wouldn’t put on our heavy boots and climb some mountain under such circumstances. Instead we went to the city center of Mandal, a beautifully small town, with white wooden houses. Softice was inevitable.

That evening, we went down to the beach again…

Bookmark to:

Puhhh… the bed was once again not made for me. I may sound a little picky here, but I just can’t sleep very well, when I sink into the mattress about 3 inches. Hell, I thought I drown in that thing. So this morning getting up was twice as hard, as we decided to set our alarm clocks earlier than usual.

Today is Preikestolen day. The big plateau, that leaps 605m above the sea, with its steep walls. You can look directly from the top to the sea below. To get there, you need to overcome some 2 hours march on rocky ground, with little climbing passages and off course vise versa to get back to the starting point. Weather was mixed, mostly cloudy and on the way back, we had some rain, turning all stones into little slides. More than one time people fell due to slippery stones.

It is remarkable what kind of people with what kind of footwear tries to reach Preikestolen. A sign right at the parking lot says, that you shouldn’t go with high heels. “Sure thing”, you think and than, while rain keeps pouring down, some Spanish family passes you by, womens dressed in mini-skirts, blouse and high heels or Havaianas pass you by. One can only wonder, if they ever reached the plateau.

The site itself is impressive. 600m above the sea and right a the branch of Lysefjorden, you get a nice view. Sadly it was very cloudy and started to rain, when we were there. Anyway, a nice spot, worth the visit.

Although quite tired we only took a short stop at our apartment, to change the wet cloth, we went to an old mill in Tau, where every Sunday, is a an exhibition of local artists, along with tasty waffles, coffee and cake.

Bookmark to:

We started out early and spend the whole day in the car. The weather was perfect and several ferries and winding roads later, we reached the little city of Tau. We chartered a house… yes, no cabin this time, as we found no free one. Koeby called one camping site after breakfast, but no chance. All cabines gone. We were lucky we found that appartment, although the price is double as much as we payed for the cabines.

But we got seperate bedrooms, a porch, a real kitchen and a real bath with water, direct out of the faucet. Pure luxury!

When we arrived at half past four, we took a little walk to the nearby harbor. Back at our new castle, Nadine made some mexicane food and we chilled thorugh the evening, and played cards.

Bookmark to:

Bergen. The weather was bad for most of the day fulfilling the prognoses that Bergen has 260 days of rain during a year. Bahh! Guess we were lucky as we had times where it was not raining and in the evening the sun came out for the rest of the day. Lucky us!

The fishmarket was nice. All kinds of sea dwellers and tourists. Brygge, the ancient city center that was completely burned down and rebuild had many souvenir shops and much more tourists from all countries of the world - at least it appeared to be so. I discovered some great street art - see for yourself .

After a massive city tour we came to rest in a cute little cafe called Vagen feevare where I had access to the internet. Happy to upload my notes to my blog I had to find out that they were gone. Shitty windows trashed my file while saving it to my SD card on my eee. Next holiday I will put Tiger on it. So I used the free inet access to skype my friends at home. Flip told me that he has added me to his blogroll which gives me a hugh boost googlewise. Thanks for that, man. Now that I have rewritten all my report it is half past 11 already and the sky is as blue as if it is just about 6 in the evening. Let’s see if the others are up for another round of cards.

Bookmark to:

The first bed that meet my requirements, but sleeping with an open window and a small river right beside the house made us visit the toilet pretty often. At 4 a clock we reached Bergen, after traveling by two fairies and passing another spectacular waterfall. The road was narrow and with lots of serpentines, so it took more time than we expected for 60km.

At around 4pm we reached Nesttuns Grimme Camping and got a cabin right away. Although weather was not that good, we took the track on the other roadside of the camping site and went up winding path along an ancient railway. On our descend we found a tunnel and with a vivid memory of “Stand by me” on our minds, we stepped in it and took some pictures. Turned out that it was not that long.

In the opposite direction from our camping ground was nothing special, but a nice place where some big rocks reached into the fjord. The rest of the evening we spent playing cards, completely forgetting about the time and as it never gets really dark during the summer month we went to bed very late…or early.

Bookmark to: