Day 31: Lofoten!!
We are in the bikes! For those keeping track at home, you might be wondering where days 27-30 are. Trust me, they’re coming! But we're skipping them for now as we hope to write daily while biking. They will still be uploaded.
Today started at the very authentic Best Western Plus. We loved our stay there. It was clean and the TV's supoorted chromecasts. Also, I was told that Rhi would love the bed setup. King size bed with two duvets. We had a great sleep.
We had an early morning (with an included breakfast that was great) and made it to the Oslo Airport around 7:45, taking a bus from the hotel. It was easy and quick. There was a long line, but luckily we had "FastPass" which enabled us to skip the security line and breeze right through.
The flight was uneventful, but the scenery was gorgeous. I understand why the Scandanavian people moved to Minnesota/the UP. It looks very similar.
After landing in Bodø we took a bus into town, and went searching for our bikes. I assumed they’d be pretty easy to find, but they were not. They were supposed to be at the fancy ferry terminal, but i ended up asking around and walking around loading docks in a ship yard for 45 minutes until we found it. Ugh. But I also could’ve read the email "gooder", and that would’ve solved many issues.
The bikes are great, and we repackaged everything out of our duffel bag into our panniers. (FYI, the north face duffels are very popular here.) Our last errands where to get the duffel bag + carry ons shipped to Tromsø (our final destination), get camping gas, and get food/water.
After a few missteps to the wrong stores due to bad advice from people, we finally found how we could ship the gear to the hotel. The worker at the Posten helped pack everything and gave me a deal. It cost only $21 (including buying boxes) to ship our gear to Tromsø. (FYI, it's pronounced "Trom" (like Tron with and m) - suh (rhymes kinda with duh). The english teachers out their can correct me on my phonetic spelling and any Norwegian out there can tell me how far off i am, but it's somewhat close.
We boarded our 4 hour ferry first, and grabbed window seats so we could see. There were cars from all over the EU boarding, so most be very touristy.
The ferry was packed! But it's free for pedistrians/bicyclists. So that was nice!
Darragh and I played cards on the ferry to pass the time, and Darragh slept while I looked out at the beautiful scenery.
We arrived in Moskenes. (Take a look at were it is on Google Maps, we're way above the Artic circle. The views are stunning.
It's really hard to capture the beauty of what we're looking at, but we'll try tomorrow.
We had excellent italian food for dinner at a small place called Gadhus, (would recommebd it again, it was delicious), and the found the campground pictured above.
I'm writing this at 10:20PM, and it's bright outside. The sun will not set for 2 more hours! And then it's up again at 2:15AM. So lots of sunlight here :).
Our tent is flapping in the 20 mile an hour wind we're in right now (i hope that dies, it's a cold wind!) and i'm going to try my eye mask. I think Darragh is fast asleep already! So I'll attempt to do the same!
