Norge: Paradise.

The first time I heard Paradise by Coldplay, Sam was playing it on the piano. He’s pretty good. Then I heard it for real when Noah was driving Anne, Robert and I into the hills of Santa Barbara for our backpacking trip between winter semester and spring term in April. It was really catchy! I found myself humming it as I jogged to keep up with Robert’s quick pace. Since I’ve been traveling the fjords of Norway, I’ve heard Paradise in a surprising amount of places: coming out of a car in Dover, England, where the cruise began; blaring from the headphones of a fellow weight-lifter in the gym on the ship; and in more than one restaurant I’ve passed while in Norway. And really, the song is rather fitting to describe my experience in this Scandinavian country.

Now, if I was a travel agent who only told what I knew from personal experience from traveling to Norway once, this is what I would tell you.

Oslo- Get the Oslo pass. It’s about $40 USD (260 NOK), half off if you’re a senior citizen, and it gets you 24 hours on all the public transportation  while doubling as a pass into a lot of the museums, including the FolkMuseum, the Kon-tiki, the Viking Museum, and the Fram. They’re all across from the cruise terminal on a peninsula, so start by taking a ferry and walking the ten minutes to the Folk Museum, an outdoor museum that’s taken entire villages from throughout the history of Norway and set them up all in one place; you can walk through villages from 1200 to 1800 AD. In many of the houses were men and women dressed to the period, sometimes knitting or baking Lefse, delicious bread, and all ready to answer any questions you might have. The Viking Museum was just up over the hill, housing four Viking ships that were preserved, some better than others, in burial mounds from the Viking period, around 1000 AD. A short bus ride brings you to the Kon-tiki, a boat that carried anthropologist Heyerdahl from Peru to a Polynesian island, and the accompanying museum that housed his other ships. The Fram, another ship, is right next door; it was famous for its voyages into the ice-clogged waterways of the Artic. Be careful of buying souvenirs here; Oslo is definitely one of the most expensive cities in the world, with a Big Mac carrying a price tag of $18 USD.

Folk Museum

Kristiansand- Little island that is obviously a vacation destination for Norwegians. Over five miles of trails take adventurous hikers to lighthouses and old outposts from WWII. Watch your step and enjoy the view. This town is most reminiscent of Maine.

Stavanger- A ferry and bus ride bring you to the base camp for Pulpit Rock (preikestolen), which may be the best view in Norway. A 2 hour hike at a leisurely pace through meadows, past glacial lakes, and up boulders brings you to the flat sheer precipice 600m above the fjord below. You can’t imagine looking down that until you do it. The only downfall is the amount of other hikers. I’d advise against purchasing a boat ride to it; because of its height, it doesn’t look like much from the water. You gotta hike it to truly experience Preikestolen.

From the top.

From the bottom.

Ulvik- Get there early enough and you can be one of the lucky ones to rent one of the five bikes from the tourist office! It’s a little town at the end of a huge fjord. Beautiful roads to run or bike along. It’s biggest attraction is its proximity to the HardangerNational Park, which was a ferry and bus ride away; plan transportation time in if you’re going to make it over there. Hardanger boasts many hikes, particularly the Trolls Tongue which is pictured on all the advertisements.

Ulvik. All of it.

Eidefjord- Go to the tourist information building and get the very helpful girls there to suggest a hike for your ability and time constraints. The Viking burial grounds, the oldest in Norway, are apparently very elusive, even with map in hand, but there are also old churches to be found on another hike. All the buildings are picturesque and seem to be perfectly maintained. New building happening at the edge of town shows growth.

Alesund- After almost completely burning down on Saturday, January 23, 1904, the rebuilding of Alesund was done all in 1905 and 1906 by mostly German-trained builders, so the city has an odd yet charming uniformity. Definitely one of the bigger cities. The observation building on top of the hill that juts to the right of the city offers a view that is definitely worth the 418 steps up. Aalesund Museum offers a history of the area with many items from the area during the 1800s and explanations of why fishing and boats are so important to the city. The Sunnmore Museum is similar to the Folk Museum in Oslo in that it has taken old villages from other parts of Norway and put them together. You can walk in many of the old houses, but there aren’t people to explain things to you. Sunnmore also has the Borgen Church and an indoor museum on the upper floors of the building where you buy tickets.  Beware: none of the museums mentioned above have English subtitles; all exhibit explanations were in Norwegian. They usually have some of the captions translated into English at the beginning of exhibits in separate pamphlets, but it’s frustrating to try and figure out which part of the pamphlet goes with which parts of the exhibit.

Alesund building style.

Amazing view from the observation building.

Geiranger- Voted most iconic travel destination in 2011 by National Geographic, and with good reason. Quick hikes give beautiful views over a narrow, steep fjord with the town at the end. Again, the tourist information booth is the place to go. There are lots of hikes here. There’s a waterfall that you can walk behind, which is a bus ride away and would be my choice for my next trip. Buy postcards here! Only 5 NOK versus 6-10 NOK everywhere else.

Bergen- The Hanseatic Museum you need a private tour to really appreciate; again, no subtitles in English, but the tours are in English. We lucked out and were able to tag along with a couple who had already asked (and paid for, I’m assuming) for a private tour. The Rosenkrantz Tower was neat because it was built in the 16^th century, and had some good exhibits, but after the views we had been getting from the tops of places, it was a little disappointing to just see our cruise ship and the other four ships in the harbor. The fishery museum (MuseumVest) is in an old warehouse that held fish from the 16^th-18^th centuries, so that’s cool as long as you can get past the smell. Also, getting a ticket at either the Hanseatic Museum or the fishery museum also gives you half place at the other museum.

Houses of the Hanseatic League.

Overall impressions: The tourist information buildings are your best bet for accurate information and free wifi. Only Geiranger didn’t have free wifi, but they did have public computers for 1 NOK per minute of internet access. The people who work there speak English well and want to help you have a good time in their country. Everyone seems to speak English, from the bus drivers to the cashiers in grocery stores. Take a boat cruise to see the Seven Sisters and the Suitor waterfalls in the fjords. If not that, just pick a fjord and cruise for a few hours. You won’t regret it, and you won’t see anything else like the lush green, the stark rock, and the floating waterfalls anywhere else. Also, apparently it usually is constantly raining in Norway (we lucked out big time; I only got soaked once); dress accordingly so you can still enjoy your time without worrying about the sun—or lack thereof. Take advantage of the long days. I haven’t seen it get dark since I got here.

At the end of the day, or rather the two weeks I spent here, I would hesitate only slightly to say Norway is my kind of paradise. Usually the word brings images of beaches with horizons dotted with palm trees, maybe a smoothie in hand. But the rustic and untamed beauty of the fjords, the serenity and separate-ness of Norway; well, it’s far more up my alley than a beach in the Caribbean.  I’ve always been some combination of homebody (who likes to travel) and introvert, and the lifestyle of many people in Norway seems to fit that description quite well. Houses and farms appear like magic on some of the less steep hills of the fjords, and I can’t help but want to live there for a while, away from everything and everyone else.