Day 11 (July 2): Ålesund —> Hustadvika.
Kayaking in Ålesund.
One would think that starting your day out kayaking in a charming place such as Ålesund would be the clear highlight of the day. Especially with clear blue skies.
Yeah, no.
Now don’t get me wrong. It was wonderful. We had a great guide and captured some wonderful shots of the surrounding islands and of Ålesund itself.
As I suspected as soon as we landed a couple days prior, Ålesund is the type of place that we should have booked more time in and we would venture back. So future travelers to Norway, TAKE NOTE!
What made today incredibly awesome was the drive from Ålesund to our next stop - Hustadvika. You literally feel as though you are at the end of the world. But I’ll get to that later.
As Marc mentioned yesterday, we had a lovely bartender at Arkivet named Vilda, who is quite the raconteur. Vilda is from Ålesund, loves living there and when she wants “crazy”, she’ll fly somewhere for the weekend to get it. Ah, Europe and the proximity of almost everything.
We picked up the rental car and had a logistical issue around the display being in Norwegian. Funny how that happens in Norway. All I really wanted to do was connect my phone to Bluetooth for music. Marc started driving and I was stuck on the connection screen.
I knew I was seeing an error message of some kind but had no idea what it was. Went back to the main menu and figured out ‘Settings”. And then I said “a-ha!” - yes, like the band from Norway! I saw ‘Norsk’ as one of the options and knew that's how Norwegians refer to their language. Found English (UK) - I speak both LOL - was able to troubleshoot the Bluetooth. And then Voilä - we had music!
Map of today's drive.
In addition to giving us some great cocktails, Vilda gave us some wonderful recos on where to stop on the way to Hustadvika and they delivered. We re-routed our trip to hit these spots. We drove along fjords and stopped by lookout points such as Gubrandsjuvet and the infamous Trollstigen.
We then drove down what is Norway’s most famous road. It has that distinction for good reason. It has 11 switchbacks that allow you to go deeper and deeper into a canyon to see never ending waterfalls. It was a bit drizzly and grey in the mountains, but that’s to be expected. Still - SO. MANY. PHOTOS.
We knew we had a ferry to catch to get to our destination, but we didn’t bother looking at the timing because it didn’t really matter. We’d get there when we would get there. We were just taking in the scenery, which was absolutely spectacular.
But as luck would have it - we drove up to the ferry about 3 minutes before it launched and they had room for us. SCORE! That’s not exactly how it works on a Sunday in the Seattle area coming back from the Olympics or any of the other islands.
As we got closer to our destination, the sky started to brighten again and we continued to be blown away by the scenery. We arrived at the hotel in Hustadvika and the view from our room as well as the property was just incredible. [This post is really testing my command of superlatives BTW.]
View from our room in Hustadvika.
You really are at the “end of the earth” here. Right on the Atlantic Ocean. When you look west, you’re not seeing much but the horizon. It’s a very special place.
We got ourselves checked in and ventured around the property to take some photos. Our experience tells us that you never know when the weather is going to change…. for the better or for the worse.
We had a wonderful dinner with the innkeeper giving us some local tidbits about the area. As dinner progressed, the clouds starting shifting towards us.
The sky ended up clouding over but while we were outside seeing if the skies would change, we had some laughs with the innkeeper for awhile as we waited out the sunset. She told us about some white marble caves that people get married in but they need to do some crawling to get there. Guess a wedding dress might be problematic in this situation?We decided to call it a day once it was obvious that the sunset wasn't really happening and it was almost midnight.