Take a hiking break – exploring Ålesund
We started the day with the drive from Åndalsnes over to Ålesund. Luckily the night’s sleep had helped a lot, we both felt more refreshed. The road took us along the fjord, offering great views of the sea and the mountains. It was sunny, an easy drive, time passing by quickly with talk and good music.
By 11:30 we had reached Ålesund. Here, I convinced Nils to take the short hike up Sukkertoppen, a hill offering a great view of Ålesund downtown. It was not really a hike, rather a short walk, so he could wear easy sneakers and give his feet a rest by not bringing a backpack. It is a nice and easy walk, with some spectacular views. Unfortunately, the peak itself was covered in clouds, so we didn’t see much from there. This was a manageable hike for Nils, and we both felt good for moving at least a bit (otherwise I would have felt like I’m missing out on something, the last three days hiking had felt so good)
After walking back down, we drove downtown to start exploring Ålesund historical city center. Ålesund has a cozy small city center, with small houses lining the old harbor.
Nils had asked the Norwegians we had met on the Romsdalseggen hike for a great café in Ålesund, and we decided to stroll around and then have a coffee there, at Lyspunktet Café, Kipervikgata 1A. We walked along the harbor, and down a street, and found the place easily. It looked very inviting, typical cozy Scandinavian style café. They had a great selection of burgers as well, and carrot cake. So we had this delicious cake, and a grilled salmon afterwards, and a coffee each.
We had already noticed the prices in Norway were tough, but paying a bill of 40 Euros for food and drink that would usually have cost us 15 to 20 Euros felt funnily out of proportion. This was our first time to pay for food in Norway, and after we were both even more appreciative for the great idea of going by car and bringing our own food. We sat a while, using the free WiFi, and planning the next days (since Nils wanted to be careful with his feet, we rescheduled a bit further ahead). Then we strolled a bit more through downtown, and around 4 pm took the car down to Geiranger fjord.
The drive was nice, after leaving the bigger E39 for the smaller 650 which went along the fjord first and then passed through a couple of small villages with the typical stave churches. Eventually, we reached the ferry crossing over from Linge to Eidsdal – our first ferry ride. We also checked the option to take the longer ferry from Valldal over to Geiranger and then take the boat from there to go hiking, but we decided against it – it was quite expensive, and we both didn’t feel like being on the boat for so long. A good choice, as it turned out.
After the short ferry crossing, the road went up from Eidsdal again through the mountains, passing the lake Eidsvatnet. Eventually the road lead to the viewpoint at the top of the hairpin descent down to Geiranger fjord. We stopped at the viewpoint to check out if there were any nice places to tent for the night. Since the steep cliffs on the fjord didn’t look very promising, and Geiranger itself looked like a very touristy place, we just took a couple of evening sun pictures and went back to lake Eidsvatnet.
Here we pitched our tent on the side of the road at the lake shore. We had a quick dinner, just a can of soup, and then sat at the lake to watch the sunset with a cup of wine. This had been a very relaxed and enjoyable day, and closing it with watching the mountain shadow slowly crawl over the rose-glowing face of the opposite mountain just felt like an extremely good way to end it.
