Day Six - Voss to Loen

We leave bright and early this morning.  There was rain in the night and it is still kind of cool.  Long sleeve weather.  There is a weird fog hanging over the mountain which looks cool.  We have not seen much of Voss since we arrived right at the hotel from the train and drove another way to Bergen.  As we leave town, we drive through Voss which looks like a cute little town which was close to the hotel, but we didn't see it.  We are happy to know that Hilde will continue on with us for the rest of our trip.  She is learning from Michael since she will lead the August version on the tour.  She has brought along her computer and can locate yarn stores for us!  Well, other types of stores and things to see I guess.  We drive through the Vik Mountains to Hella to catch the ferry on the Sognefjord.  It is beautiful.  Our first stop is the Twinde Foss waterfall.  We stop and walk up to it.  There is a spigot where you can get a drink of the water.  It is rumored to be the fountain of youth.  We all take a drink, but look the same to me as we reboard the coach!  By the way, you can drink the water from the fountains in Norway because it is very good water.   Along the way we see lots of beautiful scenery and waterfalls.  There is a little cafe in the ferry so we grab a cup of coffee and a lefse.  You have to love a country where you can buy lefse all over the place.  No kringla, but lefse is okay.   We drive the bus right on the ferry and must stay on the bus until the ferry is underway and before it docks.  While I think of it, a bit of information on the bus.  It is a "luxury" coach which seats about 48 I guess.  It has a coffee machine on board and happily a bathroom in case you drink too much coffee.  Remember the coffee machine from the buffet and now one on the bus!  We drive from Hella to Skei.  We will have a chance to shop and have lunch at Audhild Viken's Weaving Workshop.  We arrive at 12 and must leave at 1:30.  It sounds like an interesting place - it has weaving in its name.  Michael says it is a good place to buy reduced sweaters and other souvenirs.  We run into the sale room kind of by accident (it is near the bathroom) so we spend some time there finding sweaters. We then realize our time is running sort so we go upstairs to grab a bite to eat.  We get behind another tour bus and so getting food takes some time.  We finish up our purchases and get back on the bus.  We did find sweaters and Mom and Deb get some other things including posters.  I find a couple of little Christmas ornaments in the Christmas shop.  Mom and Deb missed that!  We will have to look for more Christmas items along the way.  I did look for a nativity from Norway for my collection but didn't find one.  We drive to the Briksdal Glacier.  Along the way, we spot fjord horses, which are a beautiful tan color.  They were formally used to take people up to the glacier on carts. The cloudy day has turned a bit drizzly once we arrive at the Glacier.  We must wait for 30 minutes so we browse a shop there and buy Mom a poncho.  She is not sure she will go to the glacier because there is about a 10 minute walk up to it on hills.  We take a tram up to the 10 minute walk.  She goes with us but the first bit is quite steep so she waits on a bench while we walk up.  As it turns out that was the worst part, but she could see the glacier from where she sat.  We took pictures there.  We leave and continue on to Loen.  There is more beautiful scenery.  Mom says that the scenery amazingly just gets more and more beautiful.  We can see our hotel across a huge lake as pointed out by Michael.  Along the road, some kids were walking cows along the road.  We are not sure where they were going, but we took their picture.  We also saw a red church.  I tried to take a picture, but was not too successful.  I will continue to look for another one during the rest of the trip.  There are lots of red houses in Norway, but I thought it was odd to see churches painted red.  Isn't that the devil's color?  We arrive a bit late and get our assignments.  Our dinner is not until 7:30.  It is another beautiful hotel.  Our rooms are large.  I was expecting small rooms since three of us shared a room, but they are quite large. After dinner, we walk up to a church a little way from our hotel.  There were two disasters there.  The mountain fell into the lake twice, drowning large numbers of people.  There was a monument outside the church.  We walked by a few houses on the road.  Since there is only a small amount of farming land available, the people use ever bit of their land in a productive manner.  There front yards are hay fields or apple orchards or whatever their crop is.  Very interesting.   We had a bit of a late night due to our late dinner.  I take a picture from our hotel room at about 11PM to show the kids how light it still was.  Up early again tomorrow!