Day 34: Rest day in “a boring city” according to our waiter

Today was a lovely rest day in the city of Stokmarknes. We learned yesterday that a "rest day" means different things to different people, as a very friendly French couple said yesterday was their rest day, but they still did 40km! With a child in a trailer!! For us, a rest day is 0km. We did not move our tent at all.

The town of Stomarknes is dead on a Sunday. (Our waiter was from Estonia, and in her unfiltered opinion, it's dead everyday. To quote her: "All people do is hike and fish. I even started to hike and fish." However, we managed to have a great day in this museum of a town.

We started the day off in town but sleeping in a bit, which was great, and then having a low breakfast in camp. There were a lot of cyclist here last night, and so we chatted a decent amount with them about where they're going. Most of them are going to Nordkapp, which (looking now) would also have been a great trip. But that's for next time. What's odd to me is that we're doing one if the shortest trips of anyone here. The french couple was on month 3 of 4. There was a younger Swiss couple that were doing a 5 week trip. We're the only people here for 10 days!

After breakfast, we headed into town to checkout what the local bakery had to offer. Turns out nothing, as it was closed on Sunday. And so was almost everything else. So we walked over to a local myseum about the Norweigan Coastal Express. Where we are biking, there is a ferry that runs that has transported people, goods, and tourists for over 100 years. (It's actually how are bikes got to where we started. The museum went all into the history of the ferry service. I could probably go into paragraphs about it, but just a few fun facts: the boats were first used to transport goods, then people, and then tourists. Today they focus on tourist but also carry supplies. Almost all of the ferries were sunk during WWII by both German and allied forces. The newest version of the fleet have electric batteries for going into and out of ports.

As part of the museum, you could actually walk around the boat!

Thought this was neat, although seems a bit unnecessary

The whole boat is in this building! I'd love to know how they got it here. I'd bet they floated it in.

The ship is in the big white building in the main photo of this entry.

After the museum we went back to the campsite to do some laundry (yay!) and catch up on some texts/emails. Well, Darragh did, Mark watched a broadcast in Norweigan about the first stage of the Womens Tour de France.

However, the highlight of the day was going to Dypp. It's a sauna that's floating in the harbor of Stokmarknes, and it was beautiful! (And a great time)

(unfortunately, I cannot load videos right now)

After our wonderful sauna trip, we ran back to our campsite to get our laundry out of the dryer and get changed for dinner. We went to dinner at a local restaurant (where we met the server that hates it here) and then headed off to bed!

We have a shorter day tomorrow! Just 40 miles. And we'll spend some time stopping along the way and maybe getting some norweigan rain pants (which people just wear out and about here which I love.) Our next rest day is in two days and scheduled for Andenes with some whale watching!!