Norway Cruise 2015 – Part 5, Alesund

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Disney Magic Alesund Norway

Tuesday – Alesund

We had a fair bit of motion during the night, but not bad. Mostly things were creaky. I slept better but the jet lag caught up with Lee and he was awake for a while…just watching the hours tick by….

Alesund Norway

We had an excursion in the morning, but we didn’t have to meet until 9:30, so didn’t have to be up quite so early.

There were lots of interesting things to do in Alesund (OH-leh-sund), but we’d opted for the trip to the Trollstigen – the Troll Road. My brother and sister-in-law did it last year and really enjoyed it, and we were sure we would, too. But it was an all-day trip on a bus, so we wouldn’t have any free time in Alesund at all.

Unfortunately the great weather we’d had in Stavanger didn’t follow us, and it was overcast and cool the entire day. Oh well. It was certainly typical weather for this time of year.

Disney Magic Alesund Norway

There were quite a few buses going to the Trollstigen. We had one of the “adult only” excursions. The buses were delayed, so we didn’t actually get going until 10:15. We had an excellent tour guide who was from England originally, so we had no problems understanding him. He gave us lots of information on what we were seeing and some of the history and politics and culture of Norway.

We started by driving along the Storfjorden. There were lots of waterfalls, and we got kind of blasé about them after a while. 🙂 But we were still really enjoying the scenery. We also saw a lot of fish farms in the water. There was one that was three circles in a Mickey head shape, but I didn’t have a chance to get a photo of it.

Norway fish farm

After about an hour we stopped at an old church in Stordal. There were several other buses already there who had started before us. The church was called the Rose Church. The paintings inside had been restored recently. There’s a newer church nearby used for services and the Rose Church is only used for weddings.

Rose Church Norway

The scenery just kept getting better as we continued along the Storfjorden, passing mountains and waterfalls and small towns.

Norway fjord

small town Norway

This area is a very popular vacation destination and we went by lots of RV parks and cabins.

Norway campground

At Valldal we went inland toward the mountains. We stopped at a waterfall walk – Gudbrandsjuvet – that had a series of ramps zigzagging across the cascades below.

Gudbrandsjuvet Norway

Gudbrandsjuvet Norway

Most of our stops were short – just on and off to take pictures – but this one was a little longer and I had time to find some wild flowers in a meadow on the other side. With all of the short stops we made I was very happy that our group was responsible and punctual and everyone was on time – only once did we wait an extra couple of minutes past the time our guide told us to return. That was a very nice change from some of the other excursions I’ve been on – and even our guide commented on how good we were.

Norway flowers

As we climbed higher into the mountains our guide told us we were in troll country and pointed out the rocks and smaller, more weathered trees. The elevation at the top of the pass was almost 2800 feet above sea level but things were quite barren up there. Tree level is much lower in Norway than in California.

Trollstigen Norway

We started to see a lot more snow on the road and in places there was still 3-4 feet along the side of the road.

Trollstigen Norway

It was mostly clear at the top of the Trollstigen, though there were enough patches of snow for those who might want to build a snowman. (The kids we saw were more interested in using it for snowball fights. 🙂 )

Trollstigen Norway

We had an hour on our own at the top. There’s a nice cafe/shop complex there where people could get lunch (we brought our own).

Trollstigen Norway

There’s a paved path to two different overlooks, and that had been mostely cleared of snow. The first overlook was just a couple of minutes away and the second was less than 10, but it had a short, but fairly steep, climb, and then a number of steps down. We ended up on a cantilevered platform looking down at the famous 11 hairpin turns of the Trollstigen.

Trollstigen Norway

As we were driving up and I was looking at the clouds I was afraid we might be in them but we had a good view looking down. It was quite spectacular despite the gray sky.

Trollstigen Norway

We had time to eat our lunch and do a little shopping (we knew we wouldn’t have any time in Alesund – we’d have to go straight to the ship). All I really needed was a postcard for our stateroom door.

I’d been dreading the trip down all of those hairpin turns – just the idea of it rather than a motion sickness issue, but it was fine. Our bus driver had obviously done it many times and it was slow and controlled. Since it was so early in the season we only encountered a few vehicles that were coming up, which made it easier. It’s a pretty impressively steep road with a 10% incline. When our side of the bus was on the outside looking down, the next hairpin seemed a long way below us!

Trollstigen Norway

We had a couple of very short stops for photos, which gave us an excellent view of the Stigfossen waterfall.

Stigfossen Norway

And we actually saw a troll in the rock. 🙂

Trollstigen Norway

I believe this is called the Romsdalhorn.

Romsdalhorn Norway

Our last stop was the Trollveggen, the Troll Wall. It’s the tallest vertical cliff face in Europe – over 1100 meters (3600 feet) from the base to the highest point. But of course people have climbed it.

Trollveggen Norway

While standing there we heard, and then saw, a rock avalanche, shortly followed by a snow avalanche down the same chute.

Trollveggen Norway

Our guide pointed us towards the toilettes that were part of an old railway station – the station is closed but the restrooms are still maintained. There were a couple of unisex stalls, and then one with this sign, which we found quite amusing.

Restroom sign, Norway

Railway station near Trollveggen Norway

The drive back to Alesund was about two hours. There was still lots of interesting scenery on the ride back along the Romsdalsfjorden but our brains were kind of on overload by then.

Romsdahl fjord, Norway

We went back through Alesund via a different route and were able to see some of the Art Nouveau buildings that were constructed after the fire in 1904 destroyed so many buildings.

Alesund Norway

We were a little late in returning but since we were on a Disney excursion we weren’t worried that the ship would leave without us. And we still arrived 20 minutes before the 5:45 all aboard time. Lots of people had also been delayed in getting back and there was a long line to board. In fact, our table mates were late for dinner because they had been delayed by a bus issue.

We were escorted out of the harbor by a fire boat – the only one I saw on our cruise.

Trollstigen Norway

After dinner we went to the Geiranger lecture by Dr. Marv. He talked about some of the sights we would be seeing as we sailed into the fjord, like the Seven Sisters waterfalls, and “The Suitor” waterfall that’s on the opposite side. After the lecture I went chasing down the first three clues in Anna’s Chocolate Hunt. They weren’t too difficult, though some of the symbols were placed to make them a bit more challenging to find.

Chocolate Challenge

We went to Keys for a while, but the Commodore had told us that we would enter the Geirangerfjord starting about 5:45 in the morning so we tried to go to bed at a reasonable time so that we could get up early. “Early” being a relative term since it was still quite light outside at 10:15 – this was the view when we returned to our stateroom. That was the night of our latest sunset: 11:26 p.m.

Disney Magic Norway Cruise

Coming Next: Geiranger

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Laura Gilbreath is a native of San Diego, CA. She has been making the trek up Interstate 5 to Disneyland since she was a small child and terrified of talking tikis and hitchhiking ghosts. She and her husband Lee enjoy trips to Disneyland and Walt Disney World, as well as sailings on the Disney Cruise Line.

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2 Replies to “Norway Cruise 2015 – Part 5, Alesund”

  1. Laura,
    Great reading so far. Sorry about Lee’s jet lag. My aunt gets it really bad when traveling west to east (but not the other way). Loved the photo of the bathroom sign. I don’t think any business would get away with using a sign like that in the US.

    Laura replies: I’m with your aunt – it’s much harder for me to travel east than west. Not that a 9 hour difference going west is much fun either, but I find it easier to adjust. Glad you enjoyed the bathroom sign. We thought it was very surprising.

  2. Laura,

    My mom alerted me to your blog since my husband and I were also on the 7 night Norwegian Fjord cruise! And as it turns out we were actually only two staterooms down from you in 6580! I remember walking by your door everyday. If I only realized!

    It’s very interesting to see someone else’s journey on the same cruise. I really like you got to spend some time in Stavanger. We did the Pulpit Rock excursion which was an all day thing but so happy we did it the view from up there was spectacular. We also were on the Adult Only excursion in Alesund! It’s so funny to see different view & pictures from your perspective. For example, my husband and I must have been inside when the avalanche happened at the Troll Wall!

    Looking forward to reading the rest!

    Laura replies: Hi Jessica! Glad you are enjoying the blog. We obviously had some of the same experiences. 🙂 Were you in bus 15 for the Troll Road excursion? I think there were three adult-only buses…our tablemates were in bus 14, so we didn’t travel with them. Hope you enjoyed the cruise as much as we did!