Norway tour 2008 (the story)
Of course I didn't write anything during the tour.
I must say I'm definitely not a blogger, I hope at least to be better in taking pictures and videos and make something nice with them.
In this trip I discovered an interest in video also, but maybe it's just yet another thing I'd like to spend a lot of time that I don't have on ;)
Anyway, at least a brief summary of the tour would be nice, so here it is.
July, 4th
Friday, after work we collected all our stuff from our places and literally filled Peter's Fiat Punto.
The first part of the itinerary was from Oslo to Stavanger driving through Telemark where we slept in a camping Friday night.
July, 5th
On Saturday, on the way to Stavanger, we had a stop and climbed the famous Prekestolen aka Pulpit Rock, an amazing cliff 604 metres above the sea.
Late in the evening we reached our second camping site, where we spent 2 nights in a cabin.
July, 6th
Sunday, dedicated to Stavanger, unexpectedly nice city, with a beautiful area full of white and coloured wooden old houses.
We also visited the very interesting Norsk oljemuseum, about the history of oil, gas and the petroleum industry in Norway.
We also spent a lot of time taking pictures of jellyfishes in the harbour.
July, 7th
On Monday we left Stavanger and drove to Bergen.
During this trip we saw some of the most amazing waterfalls of the whole tour, and of course we took tons of pictures and videos.
We arrived in the evening and met a friend of Luca, had a walk and drunk a beer in a nice old pub with some live folk music.
We spent the night in a room kindly offered by a couple of hungarian friends of Peter.
July, 8th
Tuesday was entirely dedicated to Bergen, one of the most famous cities of Norway, well known for the rainy weather.
Of course for us was different, we brought the sun and a clear blue sky :)
The city is great, especially the old parts and the famous Bryggen, the old buildings in front of the fjord.
That day there was a big italian Costa Crociere cruise, and I heard a lot of italian.
I ate some awesome salmon and scampi bought in the fish market.
Later we took the funicolar that goes to Fløyen, from where there is a spectacular view of the city and the fjord.
July, 9th
On Wednesday we travelled to Geiranger, another famous touristic destination in Norway, known for the beauty of the fjord where it's located, with majestic mountains and waterfalls.
We arrived late in the evening, just in time to go up to a viewpoint and take some pictures of the fjord and the small town before go to sleep in a nice dependance of an hotel.
July, 10th
Thursday, we drove back to the mountains behind Geiranger from which you can have an amazing view of the valley and the fjord.
Then we took a ferry towards Ålesund; the most expensive of the whole trip, but the waterfalls are unique and I think there isn't another way to cross the fjord and continue to Ålesund where we arrived in the evening.
Before reaching the camping site where we spent the night, we went up to a hill from where you can see the whole city and the open ocean, and had a walk in this nice city.
July, 11th
On Friday we drove from Ålesund to Trondheim.
On the way we stopped in Trollstigen, another attraction with huge mountains and a steep road with many hairpins.
In the second part of the journey to Trondheim we had some rain, which wasn't a problem anyway, since we stayed in a cabin.
July, 12th
Saturday we spent the whole day visiting Trondheim, still some rain that luckily didn't ruined much.
It's a nice city, with an old part as many others we visited.
In the evening we went back to the cabin and grilled pølse on the shore.
The trip was almost over, this was the last day before going back to Oslo.
July, 13th
Sunday we drove the whole rainy day back to Oslo.
I was pretty tired and I slept a lot, but after a week of sun, fjords and the best of Norway, I didn't miss much during this day.
The trip was just amazing, one of the best so far together with the one in Svalbard.
I plan to make a dvd of this tour, with some parts of the videos also.
For now I made a small slideshow with a selection of the best landscape pictures I took during the tour.
The video is available on youtube.
And here, enjoy! :)
Norway tour 2008
It's been more than a year since I first moved to Norway now, and I can't say I've seen much in Norway.
I've been most of the time in Oslo, and did just a few trips outside.
A tour around Norway, for an expat that lives there, is something mandatory, so, together with Luca and Peter, we planned an on the road trip.
The initial idea was to drive up to North Cape, but in a week or so would have been too much, so we reconsidered the itinerary to include at least the most common destinations up to Trondheim.
3 guys, 1 Fiat Punto, 3 DSLR kits, 3 sleeping bags, a tent, a lot of luggage and food... on Friday evening we packed the car and started the Norway tour 2008 :)
I won't have many occasions to post during the trip, since we will be often in campings or other places without internet connection, but I'll write something daily and post at the first occasion.
Stay tuned!
Sky art
A few weeks ago I saw the first spectacular sky phenomenon since I'm here in Norway.
No, it's not an aurora borealis but something else equally stunning and beautiful.
The norwegian word for them is perlemorskyer: polar stratospheric clouds aka nacreous clouds.
It seems that these phenomena are quite rare, so I consider myself lucky to have seen them live!
I wasn't prepared for them, so I didn't take nice pictures, but at least these photos have the particularity to have been taken in daylight, and not during twilight as most of the great photos you can see in Flickr.
Take a look also to this amazing photos my colleague Claudio took in those days and shared with the mankind!
Now I'm looking forward to see the midnight sun next August when I will travel far north to Svalbard for a short trip!
Enclosure:
First months in Norway
It's been a long time since my last post and many things happened.
I moved to Oslo and started work at Opera Software as an Information Systems developer.
My duties at the moment are related to the MyOpera Community, I'm part of the MyOpera Team and we work hard to maintain and improve the community users' experience.
I met a lot of people in the company from something like 42 different countries in the world!
That's great!
This also is helping me a lot with my english since I must use it every time for communicate also with norwegians.
I'm planning to join a norwegian class, probably in August; meanwhile I'm trying to study a bit by myself (without too much success).
I moved to my own apartment almost a month ago and I'm very happy about it. It's small but it's enough for me and is located in a nice and calm place well connected to the rest of the city by buses and also a subway line.
I'm trying to enjoy the outdoors but these days the weather is not so good and stable, anyway I've joined the DNT and I'm planning hiking trips around Norway for this summer.
With bad weather I just exercise in the gym.
A few new blog posts and a lot of new ideas are bouncing in my brain... so stay tuned!
Last week in Italy
This will be my last week in Italy before backpacking to Norway and starting a new job at Opera Software in Oslo.
I'm really excited for this and I hope I'll have a great time within the IS team at Opera and learn a lot of new and interesting stuff.
I must thank my colleagues at Satel Group where I've worked since 2002 (more than 5 years of my life!), especially Lucio who gave me the opportunity to work in the IT world and who has always believed in me; Cosimo who has been my mentor for all this years and for all his help and patience; Giorgio who taught me 1 or 2 things about the analysis process, the attention for details and the user point of view.
Thank you, guys and goodbye to all the others!
I hope we'll stay tuned!
A special mandi! to all my friends in Italy (and around the world) and to all the choristers of the "HARMONIA"'s choir .
I'll try to organize a concert in Oslo... ;)
Anyway we'll keep in contact!