Geiranger and Alesund

Today, we had to get up to an ungodly hour (6:40 am) to sample some tea and then visit the wonderful countryside of Geiranger fjord and the surrounding mountain range. Our ship arrived early in the morning at 6:20 am and through the anchor. Therefore, we had to shuttle to the shore by tender boat. Left and right of our ship, the mountains rise high mostly made of granite. We espied snowfields on the mountains in the distance. While the guide called them glaciers, most of them melt completely in the summer.

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The mountains around us were formed while continents collided, and later shaped by glaciers and water. The mountain on our starboard side has deep carvings created by waterfalls which occur seasonally in spring when the snow melts. They create rubble with roundish stones flowing down the hills.
The rock formations show also larger breakouts by frost, which created large cuboid blocks of rubble in the size of cars and houses. The can be found in the fjord and also on the plateau.

Unfortunately, I have no clue about geology, but still you can see how water and ice formed the fjord, the rubble hill where the Greiranger village is located, the valleys and the mountain tops. Definitely a great side for hiking.

We took quite a lot of landscape photos and even more enjoyed the marvelous view and forgot to take pictures. Therefore, you have to visit this place yourself in case you want to see the really good stuff. Also consider walking, as we only had the chance to take a bus ride and — you know — with buses you cannot examine anything intensively enough to dive in and emotionally connect with the place, as you just rush through locations. Therefore, we have to come back.

Later that day, we visited Alesund, which has an Jugendstil town center. It was created after a fire consumed the old wooden buildings in 1904 and was rebuild wit help from the German Emperor Wilhelm II. Unfortunately, the town is rather quiet and not that interesting, but we might have looked in the wrong direction.