Mark orchestrated a beautiful and seamless transition from Scotland to Norway. Perfect weather, perfect company, perfect convenience. I love the airports that have rental lots and public transportation directly connected to the arrival terminal- so once again the men set off to pick up the cars while I downloaded the route we'd take to get to Stryn onto 5 separate devices for the whole family. Stryn is a town in what's technically west-central Norway (still the fat bottom half if the country), but still feels very far north. But it isn't really. Norway is crazy long: its coast line is 13,624 miles long. Estimated drive time: 6 hours and 15 minutes, so we counted on doing it in 8. We left the airport at 3pm, confident we could make it before dark because Stryn in July has about 22 hours of daylight. Which, we will talk about in another post.
We hit the road, already impressed by the sheer number of evergreen trees, even in the city. But, before I go into gushing about how pretty Norway is, I have one thing to bitch about and then I won't bring it up again. Norway has some great things going: solid infrastructure, well made roads and tunnels, and fancy bridges. The citizens enjoy access to fantastic health care, nutrition, and seamless technological advancements. So why is it then, that Norway has the most disgusting bathrooms I have ever seen in my life?
Throughout our trip, most of them were in absolute devastation: unhygienic in dangerous proportions, graffiti, and trash everywhere, leaky sinks or non-working sinks. Putrid smears of body fluids were everywhere and even a dead animal was seen. It was an emotional experience (and not a good one) whenever I had to use a public bathroom. I much preferred to pee behind a car or in a bush. But of course, as Norway is technologically advanced, cameras are everywhere. Even restaurant bathrooms were cringe worthy. Shame on you Norway. Shame. Shame. The only decent bathroom was at the Oslo central train station but to enter, you had to pay 40 Norwegian Krone, or 5 USD via credit card or cash. FIVE DOLLARS to pee.
Moving on. About two hours in, stomachs gurgled so we stopped in Lillehammer for dinner, and having done zero research, we were at the mercy of an outdated GPS system to find us an open restaurant. GPS brought us to an outdoor mall and edible food was obtained. We saw the looming ski jump up close (very terrifying) and we were very pleased with ourselves when we came upon The Flamingo Bar. How great would it be to rub elbows with Steven van Vandt?! I say super great.
What wasn't great, was that we had had zero communications with Mark's parents after leaving the airport. Norwegians are stingy with their free wifi, so calling them was a bit trickier than we wanted. Whatsapp messaging was our primary mode of communication in Edinburgh, so we did the same here and hoped for the best.
The drive north was not unpleasant, though everyone drives the speed limit (fancy speed cameras and all) and anyway, most of the highway is 2 lane with a barrier or berm in between. We wouldn't be passing anyone anytime soon. Instead, we started making phone calls every 15 minutes, paying out the nose in airtime. A few hours later, we stopped again for groceries and found free wifi, hopeful to get an update from his parents. We did, but only a few messages of "where are we?" and "the GPS says we need to get on a ferry, should we take a ferry?!" Which, of course wasn't the original intended route. Sighing deeply, Mark and I decided to carry on, as it was nearly 9pm (still bright out) and we still had four more hours to go with delirious, napless children.
The unanswered calls continued, as did the milage. At 1am we arrived to the AirBnB rental, put the kids to bed and started calling again. Finally, at nearly 2am we connected. They were fine, but had gotten lost almost immediately out of the city. Google maps ate up the original route I laid had out and gave them a new one. They never made it to Lillehammer at all, but detoured west and in full on panic mode. His mom had only been using wifi to call me (I had no service whatsoever) and was leaving messages on Facebook which never went through. Realizing they were hopelessly hours behind us, they decided to stay the night in the last town they stopped at. Mark's parents made it to the house a full day later, but at least they had the benefit of descending into Stryn in broad day light. The views were spectacular with a mountainy landscape stuffed with glaciers, huuuuge towering waterfalls, and crazy deep ravines.
They greeted us with hugs and wool socks, which is totally what I would do, if I got lost too. Alls well that ends well, though and now everyone could now sleep better. Or could we?
We hit the road, already impressed by the sheer number of evergreen trees, even in the city. But, before I go into gushing about how pretty Norway is, I have one thing to bitch about and then I won't bring it up again. Norway has some great things going: solid infrastructure, well made roads and tunnels, and fancy bridges. The citizens enjoy access to fantastic health care, nutrition, and seamless technological advancements. So why is it then, that Norway has the most disgusting bathrooms I have ever seen in my life?
Throughout our trip, most of them were in absolute devastation: unhygienic in dangerous proportions, graffiti, and trash everywhere, leaky sinks or non-working sinks. Putrid smears of body fluids were everywhere and even a dead animal was seen. It was an emotional experience (and not a good one) whenever I had to use a public bathroom. I much preferred to pee behind a car or in a bush. But of course, as Norway is technologically advanced, cameras are everywhere. Even restaurant bathrooms were cringe worthy. Shame on you Norway. Shame. Shame. The only decent bathroom was at the Oslo central train station but to enter, you had to pay 40 Norwegian Krone, or 5 USD via credit card or cash. FIVE DOLLARS to pee.
Moving on. About two hours in, stomachs gurgled so we stopped in Lillehammer for dinner, and having done zero research, we were at the mercy of an outdated GPS system to find us an open restaurant. GPS brought us to an outdoor mall and edible food was obtained. We saw the looming ski jump up close (very terrifying) and we were very pleased with ourselves when we came upon The Flamingo Bar. How great would it be to rub elbows with Steven van Vandt?! I say super great.
What wasn't great, was that we had had zero communications with Mark's parents after leaving the airport. Norwegians are stingy with their free wifi, so calling them was a bit trickier than we wanted. Whatsapp messaging was our primary mode of communication in Edinburgh, so we did the same here and hoped for the best.
The drive north was not unpleasant, though everyone drives the speed limit (fancy speed cameras and all) and anyway, most of the highway is 2 lane with a barrier or berm in between. We wouldn't be passing anyone anytime soon. Instead, we started making phone calls every 15 minutes, paying out the nose in airtime. A few hours later, we stopped again for groceries and found free wifi, hopeful to get an update from his parents. We did, but only a few messages of "where are we?" and "the GPS says we need to get on a ferry, should we take a ferry?!" Which, of course wasn't the original intended route. Sighing deeply, Mark and I decided to carry on, as it was nearly 9pm (still bright out) and we still had four more hours to go with delirious, napless children.
The unanswered calls continued, as did the milage. At 1am we arrived to the AirBnB rental, put the kids to bed and started calling again. Finally, at nearly 2am we connected. They were fine, but had gotten lost almost immediately out of the city. Google maps ate up the original route I laid had out and gave them a new one. They never made it to Lillehammer at all, but detoured west and in full on panic mode. His mom had only been using wifi to call me (I had no service whatsoever) and was leaving messages on Facebook which never went through. Realizing they were hopelessly hours behind us, they decided to stay the night in the last town they stopped at. Mark's parents made it to the house a full day later, but at least they had the benefit of descending into Stryn in broad day light. The views were spectacular with a mountainy landscape stuffed with glaciers, huuuuge towering waterfalls, and crazy deep ravines.
They greeted us with hugs and wool socks, which is totally what I would do, if I got lost too. Alls well that ends well, though and now everyone could now sleep better. Or could we?
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| Not so north now, are we? |
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Gorgeous infrastructure.
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Finally settled into the mountain stocked countryside.
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