As we were heading down the worst of the serpentine roads towards Geiranger, for some unfathomable reason that quote popped into my head. Perhaps it was a stress reaction to the fact that, as a new motorhome owner, I was driving the wide colossus down a far too steep and narrow road. When you felt for a moment that now it is still flowing, you were met by a tourist bus which quickly raised the stress level again. However, I have a certain feeling that the stress was mostly about habit as Trollstigen and the roads down to Geiranger are still quite manageable compared to many other roads in Norway.
Stressed or not, you should still make many stops on this route. Partly to breathe out but also to enjoy the incomparable views. It is really beautiful and since a few years back they have also provided the route with lots of fancy rest areas that add extra value. By the way, the road is a so-called tourist road, i.e. a road that the National Road Administration has selected as particularly worth seeing for tourists. There are 18 roads like this in total, and this particular one stretches from Sogge bru to Langvatnet.
You can find our previous posts here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 4.
Just before you start the descent to Geiranger you will find a beautiful viewpoint called Ruinen, it may not be quite as spectacular as Ørnesvingen but at the same time there are always plenty of places to park and in addition you do not have to take any risks to turn off. We still think the view was pretty ok here too... 😉
We had actually planned to spend the night at Geiranger Camping, but it was more or less just a large car park, which meant that we went further up the other side, towards Vinje Camping. This was something completely different, a super cosy campsite spread over a number of floors and with fantastic views of the entire fjord. It was also a bit special that the campsite was right next to the Grinddalsfossen waterfall, which meant that you could hear a relaxing white noise from the water masses passing by. You can read more about the campsite itself here.
We were a little hesitant to walk down to Geiranger along the narrow serpentine road but it turned out that they built an excellent walking path along the rapids. It was a lot of steps but still a very nice walk as there were beautiful views along the entire stretch.
Geiranger town itself was perhaps not a favourite. The location is of course incredibly beautiful but the town itself is more or less a theme park for the cruise ships, which in practice means that the town consists mostly of souvenir shops and knick-knacks. However, there are exceptions such as Geiranger Sjokolade with its homemade truffles with all sorts of local flavours such as blueberries and strawberries but a little more odd varieties such as brown cheese and beer... 😛
There is no evil that does not have something good with it and one advantage of the large number of tourists is that there was an unexpectedly large selection of restaurants for a small Norwegian village. We even had a bit of a hard time choosing but finally ended up in Brasseri Posten which served an incomparably good dinner and good wine.
When we woke up in the morning, we saw that an even bigger cruise ship was about to enter the harbour and that was our signal to move on. Although we were not so impressed by the touristy city, this was still an incredibly cool experience. Everywhere you turned you were surrounded by forested peaks and between them an adorable fjord that would fit into any fantasy film. Quite magical, in other words. What we didn't realise at the time was that the next part of the journey would be even more impressive...
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