Day Eight - Alesund to Trondheim

Guess what.  Breakfast buffet is fabulous again.  I have discovered that they have hot oatmeal.  I wish I had know this earlier because I love oatmeal.  This is delicious.  Anyway, I digress.  We leave Alesund and drive to the ferry crossing at Molde.  This is one of the many ferry crossings we will make this day.  There are two women on the ferry dressed in the bunad, the traditional regional costume of Norway.  One of our tour members asked if we could take their picture.  After they had coffee, they graciously allowed us to take pictures.  They were the grandmothers of a little boy who was to be baptized that  day.  One of their husbands joked that he had on a matching tie and we could also take his picture.  One of the women showed me the purse ehich was part of the costume and was hand embroidered.  It was wonderful and I took a picture.  We arrive in Bud, a small fishing village on the Atlantic Ocean.  It was an important trading village between Bergen and Trondheim.  We take pictures of the village from above it.  There are huge racks for drying fish.  Probably to make lutefisk.  Yuck!  We are met by a guide who tells us about the German occupation of Bud in World War 2.  Norway was occupied by Germany from 1940-45.  They have restored a bunker so that people can learn about the history.  She was fabulous.  She had grown up here, having been born just after the war.  She has been in contact with a soldier who was stationed in Bud and had many tales to relate to us.  I wish we could have stayed there longer.  She was very interesting.  We then went to a restaurant in Bud for a traditional Norwegian meal of salmon, boiled carrots and boiled potatoes.  We also had caramel pudding for dessert.  I am always getting the dessert reported on!  It was delicious.  They opened it just for us.  We continued along the road with the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other.  There was a modern bridge which has allowed for travel in this area.  We made a wrong turn and ended up going out of our way which made for a longer bus trip and more ferry crossings than we had planned.  We arrived in Trondheim at about 7:30 and had dinner late at 8.  We stayed in another Radisson hotel.   This one did not have internet access in the room.  After another wonderful dinner with a dessert buffet, we walked up to the Nidaros Cathedral which was about a 5 minute walk from our hotel.  It was very impressive, but the doors were closed.  We saw a sign for two music events the next day and relayed them to Hilde and the others.  We walked back to the hotel and saw among other things a statue of a women who looked annoyed and several tree houses complete with glass windows in a park near the cathedral.  We must ask about this tomorrow.  Off to bed.