Hellesylt & Geiranger, Norway

            Wednesday, 2 Sep 2015 – Jesse was awake by 9:00 AM, and he awoke Sally for breakfast at 10:30 AM.  (Sally had had trouble sleeping.)  The ship had stopped for two hours at Hellesylt, Norway, from 8:00 to 10:00 AM to unload passengers who would be taking an overland excursion to Geiranger.

            Several months earlier, Sally had decided to book us on that 9-hour excursion to Hellesylt, for a hike to Briksdal glacier and Josetedalbreen National Park.  Although the excursion was labeled as “strenuous,” Sally had thought the hike would be worth the expenditure of energy; however, recently she changed her mind and we cancelled our tickets two days earlier.  One of Sally’s considerations was the fact that our excursion at Olden, Norway the previous day sounded very similar to the Hellesylt excursion – though not to the largest glacier, the highest waterfall, etc.; the Hellesylt excursion was definitely more extreme.

At Geiranger we disembarked the ship by tender at 12:30 PM.  Without our Elite status, we would have waited at least 30 minutes wait to board a tender, but we were allowed to board immediately.  (As usual, we felt guilty for not waiting our turn, but we used our Elite status, anyway!)  In town, there was a Hop On – Hop Off bus available, but the next available seats were at 3:00 PM, and we didn’t really want to stay ashore that long.


Geiranger Church

Although the population of Geiranger is only 200, we were both exhausted by the time we walked along the side of a road that went up a long hill and then made a hairpin turn and went up another very long hill to the next hairpin turn, etc… (at least three turns) to see the church that was founded in 1450 and rebuilt for the third time in 1842.  On the way, we also saw a waterfall that originated from one of the glaciers.  After boarding a tender back to the ship, we were onboard by 3:30 AM and enjoyed what was intended to be a light lunch.

Geiranger Troll

Still not hungry at 5:30 PM, we went to dinner anyway, where we joined a table with Annette and Dave, of Vancouver, and two younger couples form Edinburgh, Scotland:  Margaret and Dave, and May and Paul.  The Scots all had speech that was difficult for us to understand.  We had seen Annette and Dave on the dance floor; they are more advanced dancers than we are.  (Annette is originally from India and Dave, from London.)  After dinner, we danced for a short time in the Club Fusion to the Leal Quintet.