Exploring Ålesund and Geiranger

Today we explored Ålesund, before driving to Geiranger for a fjord boat tour.

We started our day with breakfast at our hotel in Ålesund, and then set out to explore the town. We first hiked Mt. Aksla, which is a small mountain(really a hill) in the center of town. This was a short mile up, and at the top we had unbelievable panoramic views of the town and the harbor. After we’d hiked back down, we explored the harbor and a few of the downtown streets.

We next hit the road to Geiranger, and upon arriving stopped at a viewpoint that gave us magnificent views of the fjord. We headed down to the base of the mountain and explored town a bit, grabbing fish cakes in bread(a fish cake sandwich if you will) from one of the vendors. Next we hopped on our fjord tour, which took us deep into the fjord by speedboat. Unfortunately the weather turned right before our tour, and we were stuck in freezing wind and rain on the boat; that said the views were still pretty fantastic.

After the boat tour we’d planned to head to our hotel, but our road was closed due to snow on the mountain pass. Instead of a 1.5 hour drive we were hit with a 4.5 hour detour. We made the most of it and grabbed dinner from a grocery store and scarfed it down on the ferry. After the ferry, we got two hours into the detour and hit another closed road! Thus we researched how Norwegians navigate and downloaded the Norwegian traffic app before starting the new third and final route, which was an additional 4 hours. It was a late night, but we eventually made it!Read more