ANGELA B. PAN

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this at least 100 times since we’ve been back from Norway, but my favorite part of our whole trip was our stay in Geiranger. It seriously took my breath away and every time I think of our trip, Dalsnibba pops straight into my head.

I know if I had to do it all over again, I would have wanted to cut out a few things just so we could have stayed in Geiranger an extra night. The cabin, the scenery, the atmosphere was absolutely perfect. I even found myself thinking about Norway the other day and being amazed how a place like this even exists in the world. It was truly breathtaking and I’d highly recommend anyone visiting.

After driving up the long, windy road to the top of the mountain, Andrew and I were greeted by snow and lots of wind. It was an unexpected surprise but in some ways it felt more like “Norway”. I loved it. We got to see the mountain tops in a whole new way. The sky was dramatic so I thought I would take advantage of the textures in the clouds by making them more than half of the image. I love how it’s blue monochromatic and in some ways the clouds are sort of imitating the mountain tops. I don’t have too many images printed of mine that are hanging in our house but I’d definietly consider it for this one. I feel like I could stare at it for hours and it bring back so many great memories of our trip.

Other photographers reading the blog- do you print out your images and hang them in your house?

My camera settings for this image is f4.0 at 1/1000th sec at ISO 500 with my Sony A7II and 70-200mm zoom lens.

Just got home from an amazing trip to Norway. It was honestly one of the best trips I have ever taken! The scenery, the culture, the experience was something I will treasure for a long time. But it took a lot of time and research to plan the whole trip. So I thought I would take some time out and lay out everything I did to prepare for the trip to help future travelers.

Side note: This trip was Andrew and I’s big trip for the year but he didn’t plan any of it. He was so great that he let me plan whatever I wanted to do and he was going to be ok about it 🙂 So obviously I planned this trip all around taking pictures. 

To be honest, I didn’t know much about Norway before I booked this trip. Obviously I have seen some stunning images of the country on Instagram but it wasn’t until I was saw this one old episode of the Amazing Race that really got me interested in going. I know, cheesy but true. The very next day I received an email from TravelZoo with a promotion to travel to Norway. I figured that if that’s not a sign, I don’t know what is!

Prior to booking, I read that the best landscapes were along the west coast so Andrew and I booked round trip tickets to Bergen for a week. From then on I was all over pinterest and tripadvisor looking for recommendations of what to do in Norway but in the end it was the advice of my friend, Frithjov who helped out the most.

The Goal:

1. To drive as much of the Norwegian coast as possible without being in a car all day
2. Not have to drive past the same sights when traveling back to Bergen
3. Some short hikes here and there would be great

Frithjov asked one of his friends for recommendations and laid out an ambitious itinerary for us including Kristiansund, Dombås and Odda.  But I did not want to have to be on a very strict time table. So after a lot more research and several changes, here’s what our more relaxed schedule finally ended up being

Side note: Booking a ticket on the Hurtigruten was key! It’s a cruise ship that stops at many ports along the west coast of Norway. Luckily you can customize your travel with shorter segments. I’m so thankful for that ship and the ability to bring back the car with us back to Bergen. So booking this ship was the first thing I did and the rest of our travel based on the fact that we were going to take it from Ålesund to Bergen at the end of our trip. Consider goal #2 accomplished.

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Driving in Norway was an experience all in itself. Initially everything about it seemed pretty normal to me. They drive on the right side of the road, car works the same as they do in America, etc. No big deal. But actually driving in Norway is super different. First road signs are so hard to see. In the cities, Bergen and Ålesund, they were just little signs on the side of a building. I may be getting older but they are so small that you really had to be the first person at the stoplight to see them. Otherwise, we were just guessing if we were turning on the right street or not.

Second, there aren’t many stop lights but there are so many roundabouts. I guess this is there way of making turns easier but we also noticed that not a lot of people don’t use turn signals at these roundabouts either. I swear at one point there was like 3 in a row within 2 miles of each other.

Third, Norway is a very mountainous country. Well, at least on the west coast. So driving up and down these mountains can be a little difficult, especially when you have hairpin turns like this! I showed this image to my brother and he was saying how there’s a lot of car advertisements who film on this road, but I will have to say that this isn’t the only road that’s like there. The whole country is full of them! This is probably just the easiest to capture on camera. While we were driving into Geiranger it was so foggy I could barely see 10 feet ahead of me. It was an experience that would be hard to forget.

My camera settings for this image is F10 at 1/80th of a second at ISO 200 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.

Before leaving Geiranger, Andrew and I decided to go on a 30 minute hike. It wasn’t too far from the cabin where we were staying and an excellent way to get some physical activity in before we got back on the road to our next destination. What started off as just a normal hike along a mountain ended up being one of my favorite memories of the entire trip.

The beginning of the hike started off pretty flat, but that wasn’t going to last long. I could see about half a mile ahead of us, we were about to go up a little hill and turn the corner as soon as we got to the top. So we started our hike with that view just ahead of us. It hadn’t even been 10 minutes into when I saw two ears and a little head pop up from around the corner. OMG was that an alpaca? I turned around to Andrew to see if he saw what I was seeing and he was! Then all of the sudden 2 more heads popped up and I screamed “THERE’S EVEN MORE OF THEM!” I could not contain my excitement. I think in the end there was about 5 or 6 of them. I had my long lens on and captured a few images from a distance but immediately switched to my wide angle. There was no way I was not going to walk closer to them. Can you imagine see a group of alpacas with the Norwegian mountains and fjords as the backdrop? Holy crap my mind was blown.

The rest of the hike was great. More about that later but seriously these alpacas were so cool to see. I’m still smiling ear to ear just thinking about it.

My camera settings for this image is F4.0 at 1/3200th of a second at ISO 800 with my Sony A7II and 16-35mm wide angle lens.