Kirkenes Part 1

Today was amazing!! We got up and got going and drove the rest of the way through Finland which was pretty nice. Lots of lakes and water and the trees. We stopped at a small grocery store by the border as I asked my friend who lives near Helsinki and is also vegan if there were any vegan Finnish things I should try and she gave me a giant list! I wish I would have thought to ask before we left, but I only did after we went to the grocery store yesterday. We only found one of the things she suggested, the first treat in the photos, this like rice pudding in a pastry/bread thing? It was…not bad, but not amazing either. Kind of odd, but fine. She was like well x you are not going to like, it’s kind of boring, but you should try it because it is Finnish and super popular here for everything she recommended which made me laugh. We will be by the border again in a few days and there is a larger grocery store there so we will go by and see if we can find some other “boring” Finnish foods.

The people we saw here in Lapland were also super friendly. Like we passed some in the grocery store parking lot yesterday when they were going out and we were going in and they all smiled and said hi. People at the gas station. This morning we noticed a guy filling up drinking water at the small grocery store and that was one of our chores for today so after he was done I went over to fill up a container and the guy came over and showed me how to turn it on (you needed a key thing that was hanging there that I hadn’t noticed, but I also didn’t have time to try and figure it out as he came to make sure I knew how to do it) and he was super friendly and smiley. It was odd, but nice!

So yesterday and this morning I was like why didn’t I plan a Sweden or Finland trip instead? Like we were driving through some nice areas, the hike we did yesterday was really pretty, why did I decide to come back to Norway? Why not explore a new country? Well, we crossed the border and started driving in Norway and pretty much instantly I was like oh, yeah, this is why. Because Norway is so unbelievably beautiful! Like everywhere we have been has been stunning. The photos today do not do it justice at all, but oh, it was amazing! Like everywhere we went was just gorgeous! I took so many photos as around every corner was another amazing view! It is still holding that this is the most beautiful country we have been to. When planning the trip I did think this might not be as nice as our last trip as the photos only looked okay, nothing special and maybe by the ends of the trip we would get to the really nice places, but man it is amazing here. I thought it was going to be super flat as that is what the internet said, but at least here it is but at all! But then again it was really difficult to find info on places up here. When planning looking for park maps or ferry times or anything was so frustrating as I could not find the info! So maybe I missed the not-flat memo, though I think it will get flat as we go by the biggest plateau in Norway…

Last time I was like just driving through the country is so nice and today I was like if the whole drive up would have been like this I wouldn’t have minded it so much!! But then again we might have stopped more to look at all the things! Plus I think this is like the perfect time to be here. The fall colors are almost over, but there is still so much left. These pops of very bright orange and yellow and red are just so so gorgeous. Oh, today was amazing!

So all of the photos before the first treat were taken on the road/at a rest stop. Then our first official stop was a hike to Appelsinstein, a large rock with views over the area that was one of the things to do in Kirkenes (and I could not find a map with info on how to get here even though it was listed everywhere as a thing you should do!). It was a really nice hike with views over the water and the town and all the rocks! It was really great. And we could see rain in the distance on either side of us, but it wasn’t raining on us…until we were almost back to the car it was sprinkling a little bit and I took the last photo at the same spot as the first of the hike and you can see how stormy it had gotten! We ate lunch in the van when we got back and as we were eating it really started to rain and low clouds came in and you couldn’t really see the mountains anymore! I was like we got really lucky with the weather there! I had original planned on doing our day the opposite way we ended up doing it and I’m glad we did it in the order we did as the weather worked out for us all day and we would have been hiking in the rain with no views had we done as I had planned! So that was really nice we didn’t get rained on on our hike and we got to see everything!

We also found some berries to try on our hike - some bog billberries (european blueberries) which were super tasty and tart, and crowberries which look like blueberries, but on a conifer like bush. Online it said crowberries are a little sweet and bitter but most people find them bland. I was like how can it be bitter and sweet and bland at the same time? Well we tried one and it is somehow an accurate description! Somehow it was bitter and a little sweet, but also super bland. We only ate one because it was like eating something with no taste, but also bitter? It was really strange. So that was fun trying the wild berries! I looked into it before we got here so we made sure to know how to identify them and what we can try!Read more