Beautiful Norway

Over Memorial Day weekend, Jay and I traveled up to the beautiful land of Norway. It is quite an expensive country, one of the most expensive in the world. We did our best to keep it cheap, but it sure wasn't easy!

We were there for three nights and spent two of those nights in the car. The one night we were in a hotel, we paid $180 for a simple two twin bed room. It sure wasn't anything speial for that price! But it was nice to shower and sit on a toilet (not squat in the trees).

Many beautiful country churches. A perfect setting with the mountains in the background.

 Also a church, but from 2000 years ago!

We also had to eat very cheap. We ate one meal of McDonalds and one meal of pizza. For the rest of the meals we went to the grocery store and bought bread, peanut butter, and jelly. I was definitely ready for real food by the end of the trip.

It stayed light most of the day and night. At 2:00 in the morning it was still somewhat light. Made it quite hard to sleep in the car! This picture was taken at 10:00 at night. We didn't even realize how late it was.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't the greatest for us while we were there. It rained quite a bit, which made for not such great viewing. There were some things that we wanted to see but didn't get to because of the rain and fog. Nonetheless, it was still beautiful. The mountains, the water, the farm land, everything was so pretty.

This is what we saw a lot of the time! Looking out the window as we waited for the ferry to arrive.

Finally, an almost clear day!

 The torch from the Lillihammer 1994 Olympics. We also saw the ski jump and speed skating arena.

Jay and I really enjoyed looking at all the barns. They were so beautiful! We took lots of pictures of them. Several times we felt like we were in Iowa!

As we were driving up a mountain, we passed a bus that had blown a tire. We got about 200 meters up the road and heard a strange sound. We too had a flat!! I went to the trunk to get out the spare, and there wasn't one! Instead, it was a repair kit. After looking at the pictures of the directions, we finally figured out what to do. We had to pour a glue like mixture into the tire, swish it around, pump up the tire (with an electric pump that plugged into the car), and then drive for 10 minutes to let it harden. We checked it after 10 minutes and it was still holding. Two days later when we turned the car in, it was still good!! We were so lucky to not have any more problems. Buying a new tire would have cost a pretty penny!

This is the valley where Jay's Grandma's family came from. It was an absolutely beautiful area, with a stream running through, trees all around.

Overall, we had a good trip. It wasn't my favorite country, but the bad weather and the high prices had a lot to do with that. I'm glad we went though, as it is a great way to remember the awesome creation that God blessed us with.