We were in Mandal, Norway for the first few days of our trip. It rained continuously, thus flooding the road that leads to Eivind's parents summer house. We had to park the car and walk the rest of the way.
The water level in the river was much higher than usual, the snails were happy!
Ståle checking the water level...
While the snails were dancing, the roses were cyring.
"Yup, looks flooded." (Ståle)
This ladder is usually above the water
Ståle, Tyra and C
Lighthouse in Norway
Ståle and Eivind playing volleyball in Mandal
On the ferry headed towards Denmark. There was an all-you-can-eat buffet, but the boat constantly rocked back and forth, making it difficult to have an appetite:)
Here we are in Denmark on the first day of our trip. That motorhome parked behind our car late at night and shined its headlights right into our car (where we were sleeping). In the morning they gave us coffee because they felt bad for waking us up.
Denmark has many windmills.
Breakfast alongside the road, Denmark. Check out our snazzy car cooler, courtesy of Eivind's parents.
E and C
Our car is hitting the 150,000 kilometer mark
GPS (aka Eivind) downloading more maps into his hard drive.
Lunching in Switzerland. Our Nutella jar ended up covering the inside of our car cooler, a nice excuse to lick your fingers while cleaning it up:)
Farm in Switzerland
The water is bluer than it looks in the photo.
Swimming in Switzerland
Almost fully submerged in Switzerland
A dip taking a dip:)
Beautiful Switzerland
Overlooking the valley
Is it just me, or do we look sideways? Hmm....
At the top of a mountain pass in Switzerland.
GPS on the left and driver on the right.
Eating fondu and pizza in Tasch, Switzerland. From this town you take either a taxi or train to Zermat (the town where the Matterhorn is located).
Zermat, Switzerland.
Does this guy know enough to summit the Matterhorn? Or does he just need a donkey? Oh, it's Eivind!
Matterhorn looming over the city of Zermat.
Every direction you turn, there it is!
Hiking around Zermat
All the mountains had chair lifts, it is a big ski resort during the winter.
I couldn't get over how cool the roofs were! All of them were slate covered.
Many glaciers in the area.
The buildings were black and white like the goats.
A garden.
Near the base of the Matterhorn, a day hike we went on.
Since we didn't buy lift tickets (hiked instead) we could afford eating in the mountain-side restaurant. Here E is eating a piece of apple pie.
The hut at the bast of the Matterhorn. Hikers overnight here and start hiking at 4am, they return by 12pm (due to afternoon thunder storms).
We are still unsure if we should give up on the Matterhorn. The conditions were snowier than usual. No groups had summitted this year, so far.
Sheep!
Shepard boys ran the goats through the town twice daily. As you can see, the goats are camouflaged for the black and white buildings:)
Strawberries, vanilla ice cream and red wine. How romantic!
Our car had to be repaired in Zermat, so we were stranded for about 4 days, they ordered the wrong part 2 times! The last day we sat outside the building, hoping this would expedite the wait.
Then it started raining...
Along a river in Zermat.
Lido de Jesolo, Italy. Cirka an hour east of Venice.
Two of our friends from Tromsø (Guro and Robert) were vacationing in Lido de Jesolo, so we met up with them there.
Crayfish pasta, yuummm!
The whole gang.
Outside of their hotel.
Exploring the city at night. Stores were open late since they have a long siesta during the day.
A huge ice cream.
Our car was broken into in Lido de Jesolo, but they didn't take a single thing. Here you can see they just pushed the lock in. E was hoping they would take our old Gortex jackets so we could get new ones with insurance money, no such luck.
Waiting at the police station in Italy.
Yep, we waited 4 hours! Now that we have the police report in hand, we are happy.
Little do we know that fixing our lock will only cost $10, so we really didn't need to file the "break in" at all.
Camping in eastern Italy, 250 meters from the Slovenia border.
The mechanics where we fixed our lock, in Slovenia. They merely opened the door, removed the lock and reinserted it. All for a mere $10!
House in Slovenia.
Really neat cave in Slovenia. Photographs were no allowed in the cave, only upon exiting the cave (where this photo was taken). The cave was amazing!
The cave is part of UNESCO's World Heritage List.
Exiting the cave.
Beach in Croatia. The water was absolutely beautiful. They have constructed many concrete shores because most of the beaches are rocky, a little hard on the footsies.
Another town in Croatia.
Novi Vino, Croatia
Harbor
It was really easy to float in the water, hopefully because the water was salty:)
Senj, Croatia
Beach in Senj
Plitvicka National Park in Croatia. Also a UNESCO site.
The water was so clear!
The fish seem to be floating above the water.
I have never seen such clear water before.
Wandering throughout the park.
Eivind took about 15 minutes to try and get a photo of this frog. Can you actually see it. I told him it wouldn't turn out, but he was determined. We first found the frog because of the strange sounds she/he was making.
Waterfall, check out the green water
Another waterfall
Here is what the pathway (that runs throughout the park) looks like.
Look at that water!
The pools of water lie at different levels.
Serbia. There was a lot of smoke in the air due to record high temperatures and forrest fires.
The signs were often difficult to understand.
A monument in a national park we found (Serbia), it was much different than we expected. This park didn't seem to have many tourists in it.
Having a beer in Serbia
Driving from Serbia into Romania.
Entering Romania. There were a ton of horse-drawn carts on the interstate, check out the semi coming up behind him. People told us that at night it is difficult to see the horses because they don't use reflectors!
Lugoj, Romania. Where the wedding is to be held.
This is the church were the ceremony was.
Exploring the town.
At the market.
Heading to the bride's parent's house (where the bride and groom are). When we drove to the house and afterwards the church, the tradition is to honk your horn the whole way. It was a honking war when we met other wedding parties also driving on the road.
Grapevines at her parent's house, they provide shad during the summer.
Cake and beer, we ate so much food. We had just had cake and drinks at the hotel, before arriving here at the bride's parent's house.
There are the bride (Andreea) and groom (Jon Even).
E and his friend from high school (Jan Robin) and his girlfriend (Terese).
Andreea and Jon Even.
Her dress was amazing.
Arriving at the church.
The priest. He was really serious, didn't smile until the ceremony was over.
The entire ceremony took place behind where we sat.
The priest looked really warm, he was wiping sweat from his forehead the entire time.
They got to wear silver crowns!
The first of 5 courses, I was going to take photos of all of them, but forget the last two. The locals almost didn't touch this dish, while E and I dug in...when the last dish was served we realized why the locals took it easy in the beginning.
Chicken soup was the second course, the pasta was apparently hand made by Hungarian women.
Local dancers performed at the wedding.
E and John Olav eating pork cordon bleu, cabbage salad and potatoes. We had just finished eating cabbage stuffed with meat.
Cake
Trying to make room for cake. After cake, around 3 am we were served steak! We went to bed around 4:30am, but there were still people on the dance floor.
Dinner the day after the wedding.
We stopped in Budapest, Hungary on our way back north.
Jan Robin and Terese were also in Budapest, so we drove together from Romania.
Downtown Budapest
In Slovakia, a really neat castle on the hill in the background.
This fortress protected the river (that runs from Poland to Hungary) for many centuries. It was built during the 13th century.
Auschwitz
It was really eery here, amazing museum.
Very emotional...
Very depressing...These were the gas chambers.
Fence surrounding the complex.
Cracow, Poland.
Cathedral in Cracow
A plaza at the cathedral
Really small car.
Eivind took photos of the river while I got my hair cut.
Cafe
Eating kebab, post hair cut.
Downtown Cracow
Warszawa by night, it was so hard to find our way around. We were just trying to drive through.
Not sure who the photo is of...
Cobbelstone roads are really bumpy.
An aquarium in a shopping mall in Lithuania.
A windmill in Latvia. It has been converted into a hotel, not the windmill itself. They have a bakery in the windmill.
They allow campers to tent on their lawns, so we didn't actually stay at the hotel.
Here is a soap shop inside of the hotel.
We ate a huge breakfast.
Inside the windmill
They give baking lessons in the windmill, I thought their photos were cool
Riga, the capital of Latvia. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to stop, just passing through.
The beach in Estonia, a bit chilly.
Shopping in Estonia.
Volleyball champ/GPS
We just bought our ferry tickets to Helsinki from Tallinn (capital of Estonia).
Seeing Tallinn by night
Tallinn the next morning.
On the ferry.
I don't think I have every complained about food at a restaurant before...We ordered a piece of pie on the ferry, it was so bad we couldn't eat it. She asked if we wanted another pie, I was like Nooo...So we got a roll instead.
E took this candid shot, we were sleeping outside the bar on the ferry because it was closed and not many people walked this way. Not because I was waiting for it to open!
Helsinki
Market in Helsinki
Eating fish at the market.
Cathedral in Helsinki
Shopping in Helsinki
C diving in Finland, the water was chilly.
E doing a somersault into the water.
Eating Swedish meatballs at IKEA. We were planning on driving through Finland all the way to Tromso, since it was Sunday (all stores closed). Well, I took a wrong turn and we ended up in Sweden, but IKEA and all the stores were open! So we spent a couple hours at IKEA:)
Finland, by the ocean.
You can tell we are approaching Tromso, the weather has turned bad:)
We saw a ton of reindeer while driving, here was an albino one. I have heard that they mean good luck.
Another reindeer.
Our apartment after we unloaded the car!
