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Guys. Beautacular today. For real. I took more photos today than I think I ever have ever in my life, and I took the least bad and posted them. There’s a lot more, but like.. you know, I don’t wanna go crazy. I embedded a map of where we went.

We started off in Flaam, this old, tiny little town where we did the biking yesterday. There’s not a lot to do there, so we wandered around, did some reading in the sun, skipped rocks, etc. I took off my shoes and socks and tried to wade into the water, but it was so. so. cold. Like at the end of a barbecue when you reach into the cooler with all the melted ice, but there’s still a couple of ice cubes in it, and you hold your hands in there for as long as you can, but after about ten seconds they start tingling? It was like that.

Around three we took a boat up our little leg of the big fjord we’re on (Sognefjord, fwiw) and then down a different little leg to a town called Gudvangen. At that point we switched to a bus to go to Voss, then took a train into Bergen. Nice little trip.

The point is that it was super pretty. There were so many amazing waterfalls that my dad stopped saying “Look at that beautiful waterfall” and instead assigned that sentence the codeword “6.” Whenever he saw a good waterfall (always), he’s just point and say “6.” Indeed. There was some looking to be looked.

So we’re at a hotel in Bergen with a pretty nice internet connection, so I may try to post a video or something tomorrow. Since I can. For now, here’s a bunch of photos of prettiness. Pay special attention to the sunglasses I’m wearing in the last photo. Pretty ep’.

Norway just won the prize for looking awesome.

Today we took a bus, then we took a train, then we took another train, and we ended up in a city called Flaam, or Flam with a little circle above the ‘a’, but I’m not about to get my special characters out.

Everything about it was awesome.  The train was fun, the people were nice ansd relaxec and excited, and the scenery was epic.  Every five minutes or so I saw something that I just *had* to take a picture of, but I had to try to tone it down a little bit so that I wouldn’t bore everyone on the planet with endless pictures of blurry waterfalls.

After we got to the city, we bugged some folks on bikes, who suggested a possible bike trip for us.  We were thinking we would do it tomorrow, but the weather was so perfect today, we figured we should just do it!  We rented bikes and rode up ~20k up the mountain (pretty steep at times too!), and then back to town.  The way out took more than an hour and a half, the way back took about 25 minutes.  That kind of steep.

There were so many awesome waterfalls!  Man!  If you’re into that kind of thing..  like water and gravity, you should def. check this place out.  There’s even little mini-waterfalls-to-be where teh water is just slowly dripping off the rocky sides of the roads.  Big ones, tall ones, wide ones, skinny ones.

I think the pictures speak for themselves, but that’s not gonna stop me from dumbing them down a bit.  Oh!  My internet connection is rather okay here, I might even post the video we took today.

Oh!  I also bough a t-shirt today.  It’s kinda brown and it has an orange moose on it and it says Norge.  It’s rare that you see shirts in tourist shops that aren’t hideous, so I got this one.  It was actually kinda affordable at 69k, which is like $13.  I figured it’d be like 25.  Unfortunately, when I put it on I realized it has those “short” sleeves that come down all  the way to your elbow.  Not like baseball sleeves, but still enough to hide your ride ‘ceps.  I mean, if one had rad ‘ceps that one wanted to avoid hiding.

You see that blog title?  That’s freakin’ genius.

…After our quick tour of Stockholm, we made way to Oslo for a quick tour of it.  The guide in S.holm thought that only Copenhagen could give his city a run for it’s money, beauty-wise, but Oslo has that certain I-don’t-speak-French-but-whatever.

Our guide was great again, which unfortunately made us realize that our guide in Helsinki maybe wasn’t so great. All the more reason to go back.  More views, a great history of Oslo, nee Christiania (though Oslo before that!), etc.

Did you know people here are into boats?  They’re way into boats.  I guess that goes with the terrirory!  Ha!  Get it!?!  Cause it’s a giant coast-line of a country.  It’s like the Chile of Europe…  or the Delaware of Europe?  It’s cool.

But there are boats all over the place.  We went to three different boat places, and they were actually cool.  The Norwegians (NB! Oslo is in Norway) were teh last country to stop using sail boats commercially, and it wasn’t until the start of the 20th century!  Loco!  But they do love boats, and they love Vikings, and they love charging insane amounts of money for things like soda.  And laundry!  (I tried to get my laundry done, but at $15 for one pair of underwear?  I’lld bathe in dirt, thank  you.)

Um..  So this is like the fourth post in a row, there’s a chance I’m getting a little..  you know..  Fourth of Julied out.  I don’t know what that means.  Point being, Oslo is cool, but h. canoli is it expensive!  A beer at a bar is around $15, a six-pack at a grocery store is $25.  AND THEY DON’T EVEN TAKE DOLLARS!!  NOT EVEN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY!!!!

But it’s quite pretty, and they have great Indian food.  Man, I really should have either put this off until tomorrow, or written this last night.  Imma let the pictures do the stuttering.  I will mention that Oslo City Hall is cool, and if anyone suggests visiting it, you should think something other than “Seriously, you want me to take a tour of a government building?  Seriously?”

Oh!  There was a busker singing Lisa Loeb songs.  What gives, Europe?  Why all the LLL?

Stockholm!  We woke up around 7, enjoyed the complimentary breakfast, which was literally bonkers with people (literally literally bonkers, fwiw.)  Then we wen ton deck, drank terrible coffee, and took pictures.

Our tourguide for Stockholm was an awesome guy named Soren.  He took us to a lot of the highlights and some nice views of town, but he also took us to some less well-visited places and gave us a solid feel for teh city.  He even took us to his apartment (to his wife’s surprise!) to show us a typical Stockholm condo.

It was cool.  I could go on and on about how great Stockholm was, but I think I’ll just have to go back sometime and do it more justice.  Th eone story I will tell is about our guide.  We were in a (totally rad) black Saab sedan.  We drove up to where the king lives and stop the car as Soren is telling us what’s what.  He notices the guard looking at us and says “That guard isn’t doing his job, we’re not allowed to drive our car up here.”  Then he rolls down the car window and gets the guard’s attention.  When the guard approaches, he asks (in English) “Is the king home?”  The guard says no, the king is in France, and the guide says  “Oh, okay, nevermind,” rolls up the window and drives away.  If that’s not funny, I don’t know what is.

After the guide, we qajaqt (uvular stops, per original Inuit pronounciation) around S.holm for awhile (Thanks, Tracy!  You are the best every for suggesting this to us and I am forever in your debt!)  We got a tad lost, but made it back to port with our arms intact.  Then we wandered some more, almost went to a Swedish Tex-Mex place for dinner (Dad wouldn’t let me), and called it a night.
Seriously fantastic place though.  I definitely want to go back and spend way more time, especially if the weather is as warm and the lake is as inviting.

The ride from Helsinki to Stockholm is about sixteen hours, most of which I was asleep for.  The boat, far from being a ferry, was a legit cruise ship, with several restaurants, a casino, duty free stores, and annoying people.  Our room was quite nice, with plenty of space between the beds!  There’s a picture to help show what I now consider plenty of room.

I got a veggie burger, which is by definition a mediocre meal, but sometimes medicore is pretty nice.  Pop went to bed kinda early (~10?), and I tried to enjoy the Las Vegas-lite of the boat, although it turns out that’s impossible.  I got a gin and tonic, wandered around, and went to sleep (~12).  Dad got up sometime in the middle of the night and wandered around the boat as well.  When I was wandering, all the young folk were in their rooms, napping and pre-gaming.  When he wandered around, they were passed out and starting fights all over the boat, like in stairwells and stuff.  It’d probably be fun if you were young, and it makes a bit more sense now that I know how much beer costs in Scandinavia, but on the whole, kinda weird.

The nature part of the trip- like islands and birds and sky and stuff- was awesome!  It was so strange, being on this boat which was going pretty quickly, and having sea gulls glidin above the boat, going about the exact same speed.  It was like they were floating.  Should have gotten a picture.  Approaching Stockholm (which photos I think will be in the next post) is amazing.  It’s a crazy long archipelago, every island somehow prettier than the last.  That infinitely increasing prettiness really gets exponentiated in Norway.  To be seen.

First off- thank  you for complimenting the clever title.  I’m mosdef the first to say something like that.  Tray Original.

Hey.  So somebody keeps blahblahblahing and not letting me get to my important work, aka blogging about crap and posting out of focus photos.  Thankfully, it’s the 4th of July and I’m finally getting the freedom I need.  j/k!!!!!  We had an awesomely productive day, so it feels okay to goof off online for awhile.  Here we are.

Last I blogged, we were in Stockholm, but I neglected to post anything about our very short afternoon in Finland. It was nice, though not as mind-meltingly so as Stockholm and (to a lesser extent) Oslo.

We took a train to Helsinki on Friday morning, then took a quick tour around the city, and then got on a boat!  Super fast, but fun.  I should probably kinda definitely go back and spend some more time, but it was a nice taste.  A bit fishy, but what can  you do?

I’m gonna kinda burn through these photos so I can make up for lost time.  Here are photos from Helsinki.

We’re total badass kayakers, but we didn’t get pictures of it..  cause we were kayaking.  We did get some pictures of us doing whatever this is, which is also pretty fun.