Slow but scenic roads, a scary deadbolt, ferries, &--ta-DA! Balestrand!

Day 3, Thurs., June 2:  Enroute Balestrand.  Breakfast this a.m. at the Scandic Oslo/Gardermoen was fit for a king--or more accurately perhaps, a king's army!  A staggering array of all kinds of food!  We couldn't even begin to try all of them, the breakfast room itself was gargantuan, & making the rounds of all the serving tables would itself have taken half a morning.  I had some rather runny scrambled eggs, a few small strips of very crispy bacon, some OJ (Minute Maid, from concentrate, & not very good), some cut fresh fruit, a small croissant, a thin Swedish-style pancake, some excellent raspberry & blueberry jams, & of course, their wonderful coffee.  I'm looking forward to another sumptuous breakfast here when we return to this hotel next week.

   Before we hit the road for Balestrand, we tried calling Unni Marie, our hotel keeper at the Balestrand Hotel, from the parking lot of the Scandic.  I kept getting a recorded message, saying "This number is no longer in service".  I thought maybe we'd written the number for the Balestrand Hotel down wrong.  Or perhaps the phone service provider was at fault.  But the problem was that I hadn't put in the country code before the hotel's phone number.  As the phone is registered with a U.K. service provider, we always need to put in a country code if we're not in the U.K.!  Lesson learned:  it's not where you are when you make the phone call, it's where your phone service originates from!
  

   And so, at last we're in Balestrand, after a very scenic but arduous drive up from the hotel in Gardermoen.  The road took us through lovely green river valleys, past tidy farms, & over hills & mountains.  Although we thankfully had no rain despite the forecasts, it took us much longer than we expected partly due to its being a holiday:  the roads were clogged with bicyclists & slowly meandering drivers.  But there was also a stretch of very poor road, some of it under construction, where we had to slow to a creep to avoid large potholes.  I think we missed an important turn & may have ended up backtracking some miles, though I still can't figure out where or how that could've happened.

   Most of the slowness of our progress was due to the narrow, twisty-curvy roads where you just couldn't go any faster than 35 or 40 mph.  Some of Google's directions were ambiguous & had us wondering if we'd made a wrong turn somehow.  We were a little nervous about the 2 ferries we had to take--whether we'd find them without difficulty or if we'd have a long wait--but fortunately that was one of the more straightforward aspects of the trip.  Ferries are a normal part of life here, & using them is probably less complicated than taking the Metro in Paris.  We found our 2 ferry docks with no problem & had short waits for both boats.

Our first ferry ride, from Fodnes to Mannheller

This ferry was making the return trip

   And so, with our usual blind dumb luck & some help from the Fates, we finally made it here in one piece, around 4:10 in the afternoon (we'd left at 8:45).  The drive from Gardermoen to Balestrand was about 250 miles, or a bit less, which we'd figured from looking at the map would take us no more than 6 hrs. at the very outside, considering we were on an E-road, which is a main highway in Europe--usually at least 4 lanes.  Little did we know that E-roads in Norway are another species entirely, being mostly 2 lanes & in some cases lacking even so much as a dotted line down the middle!  So it took us about 7-1/2 hrs. altogether with no stops except for the ferries & a single potty break.

   That restroom stop was memorable.  We'd been seeing these road signs all along the major highways announcing picnic tables & WCs.  We finally stopped at one, expecting the worst--knowing what disgusting privies sometimes await us at home in the national forests, public parks, etc.  The one I went into here was clean, with no flies & no smell.  It even had a sink with running water & a hot air dryer for hands.  BUT the deadbolt lock was a problem.  I locked myself in (with a bit of difficulty) but then could not get the door unlocked!  I turned the lock every which way, kicked hard on the door, even resorted to shouting & screaming, but Rob was in the car & couldn't hear me, & there was no one else in close enough proximity either.  I kept turning the deadbolt this way & that, & finally when I was really getting desperate, the door miraculously & mysteriously opened.  Whew!  I vowed never to forcibly lock a tetchy deadbolt again.

   Arriving at our hotel finally, we were greeted by Unni Marie, whom I'd not yet met, though I'd already had much correspondence with her by e-mail &we'd also talked on the phone (while she was still in California where she spends half her year).  We also met her daughter Charlotte, on summer break from school at UC Berkeley, who was helping out at the hotel.

   Dinner tonight at Kvikne's Hotel "bistro"--a fancy name for the open area in front of the hotel bar.  We decided on Kvikne's because we knew how to find it, it was only a 2 block walk from our hotel, &it seemed the safest choice.  The bistro was supposed to be cheaper than eating in the hotel's restaurant, but we found the prices pretty high anyway.

   I had "coalfish" (a kind of cod) and Rob had 2 appetizers including a sort of wrap made with elk ham--cured.  My fish was o.k., not great.  It may have been fished, as the menu trumpeted, out of the Sognefjord (the body of water surrounding Balestrand), but if it was, it certainly hadn't been caught recently.  Also it was over-salted.  What were very VERY good were the "butter-steamed" little new potatoes & the diced pear relish that came with the fish, & also the dark bread with seeds that was put on the table before the meal.  Our waiter (he was also the bartender) was also very charming & young, as was the one last night, & his English was also pretty good.

   Our wing of the Balestrand Hotel is filled with (East) Indians, & are they ever NOISY!

   I took the following photos from our room, which fronts on the Sognefjord:

This is the picturesque little village of Balestrand.  In the lefthand photo, the multistory yellowish building (very small) in the center background (being cut off by the white building on left) is Kvikne's Hotel.  You can just spot a tiny portion of the hotel's ugly, no-style new wing sticking up. The photo on the right is looking down the road in front of our hotel in the opposite direction.

   And this is our little hotel, beautifully run & owned by Unni Marie (Kivkne) Palmer & her family.  Yes, she is a daughter of the family that owns the grand old Kvikne's Hotel a few blocks away.  You might say that hotel administration seems to be in the DNA of this family.   But this is a much different type of operation than Kvikne's down the street.  Here at the Balestrand, personal attention is given to each guest by Unni Marie or one of her kids.  There are local weavings on display in the public rooms; prints or watercolors by another member of the Kvikne family hang on the walls.  There are also watercolors by Bjorg Bjoberg, a local artist (about whom more in a later blog entry) whose designs appear on placemats in the breakfast room.  Bookcases in the living room area contain many titles that might satisfy the curiosity of English-speaking visitors who are new to this region--such as books on the local wildflowers & bird life.  After our first couple of days at this hotel, we truly felt at home here!