Trip across Norway to Bergen

Over the long weekend (kinda like a spring break, except it was in the middle of summer school) during the International Summer School in Oslo I went on the trip across the country to the west coast and back.  We went to Bergen on a double-decker bus, so there were about 70 of us.  We made a lot of stops as we headed to the west coast of Norway.  The first day we saw a stave church from 1180 and spent the night in Laerdal, a small town in the middle of the country.

The next day we took a two-hour fjord tour and rejoined our bus at the end of it, saw a huge waterfall, and then continued on the way to Bergen.

Bergen was the old capital of Norway (like, quite a few centuries ago before Norway became part of Denmark and later Sweden) and was a Hanseatic town.   One night we had dinner atop the mountain overlooking the town after taking the funicular up there.  We also went to Ole Bull's mansion on his own little island.  Ole Bull was a famous 19th century Norwegian musician.  He also bought a huge chunk of land in PA b/c it looked like Norway and tried to get a bunch of Norwegians to move there and create a new community.  Only, unlike Norway, it didn't have all that much water and the community failed.  It's now Ole Bull state park -- in the middle of nowhere in the nothern part of the state.  He also loved heather and had specially-made china with heather as the motif and lined with gold.  how awesome is that?  We then went to the composer Edvard Grieg's house and got to hear a concert of his music there.

On the way back to Oslo we drove through the mountains and stopped to have a snow-ball fight.  in the middle of July.  I don't recommend wearing flip-flops in the snow.