28 may
4:00 up and ready to go for Cologne/Bonn airport to catch the flight to Vaernes. Meeting my girlfriend at the airport and went straight to Trondheim to do some serious shopping. When we nearly arrived at XXL to get my great Crispi shoes, a car had hit us with slow speed from the side on the parking lot.. After that we didn’t have time to meet Knut Erik – a friend of AG, but we went on a shopping spree – and get a mountain backpack :)

29 may
Slept for quite some time, and today is the day for hiking on the old king’s road. After searching whole Verdal and Ã…re for a fishing rod, and not finding one, we went on a hike on the old king’s road and walked for 7.5 kilometers one way from Sweden to over the Norwegian border. And then back again.

30 may
Went to see the Vømmølparade, a festivity that can be compared with Carnaval in Holland. The sun was shining – very warm, over 25 celcius. Barbequed with Lise at the cottage, doing knowledge quizes and being totally powned by the girls having lot more general movie/music knowledge :P

31 may
Stayed the night at the cottage at the sea, and in the morning had a breakfast on a cliff near the sea. Learned how to throw with a fishing rod, from the side. Nothing catched but sea weed – most probably because it wasn’t flood yet and the weather was too warm, but it was nice to practice throwing with such fishing rod. Enjoyed the weather, relaxing in the sun without sunblock and got a little bit burned :/

1 june
Today is the day were are going to drive to Lofoten! Anne-Gudrun is taking the first half of the trip on her account. Stopped at Mosjoen, but the brochure looked more awesome than it really was – the town seemed dead, and there was not much to see. Drove further to the artic circle and eat a quick meal, continuing to pursuing our route to Saltstraumen, arriving at 21:00, and hired a cottage there at 650 kr. A really nice cottage and a nice place. Lots of salmon fishers there because of the great streams.

2 june
Driving to Skutvik where the Hurtigruten ferry leaves at 18:30 to Svolvaer. Arrived in the evening, going to our rorbuer fisherman’s cabin equiped with a nice kitchen, bathroom and cozy living/sleeping room. Being quite tired, we decided to go to sleep.

3 june
Woke up, made breakfast ourselves with small Norwegian style pancakes named ‘svele’. Very delicious and a good start for our extensive trip to the other side of the Lofoten islands, to a place called Reine. Stopped at many sceneric viewpoints, and been to a gallery where AG bought a nice painting from the Artist … Made a detour to Henningsvaer to try a delicassy, dried cotfish (turrfisk), which tasted surprisingly good. You see them drying everywhere on the island. Driving throughout beautiful scenery including large, diverse mountains and nice lakes. Stopped at the vikingsmuseum, and saw a authentic viking’s longhouse fromt he outside. Because it was too windy and too cold, we didn’t continue to see the vikingsship. After a long drive we reached Reine and after a small break we turned back the same way to our fishermen’s cabin. We ate kjøttkaker which was a delicious, easy meal with meatballs of reindeer meat in a distinctive sauce. After the meal, I decided to do some geocaching. The first one was located on the top of a small mountain with a nice view. The second one was a very easy one to find, but was on a slightly more rough terrain. Unfortunately, I had to stop searching for the third one – it became too late and too dangerous to continue climbing
the huge rocks. These geocaches were a good test for my new Crispi’s mountainshoes – and they pass with brilliance :)

4 june
Took the boat from Svolvaer to Skutvik – our original plan was to drive the whole night to Verdal, but because AG was getting a bit tired we decided to go by several campings and ask for a cheap place to stay. After trying some campings and hotels we came across the camping Nordnes – and they have one left we could get for a discount. We got an amazingly big cottage for seven persons totally for ourselves at 600 kr. After a good night of sleep, we continued our journey to home sweet home.

5 june
Today we are going to drive back to Verdal, coming across a Pizza and Kebab restaurant named Trixie located at Trofors which we couldn’t ignore. A “small” pizza was however an understatement – we eat ourselves to almost death :P

to be continued…