Monday, July 16, 2018

Europe 2018...Day 10: The Lofoten Islands!

Friday was a day that we had been looking forward to for quite a long time.  We were so excited about getting to the Lofoten Islands!  We loved our time in Bergen and could have enjoyed more time there, but were so looking forward to seeing an area of the world that is so unique.

A map of Norway and the location of the Lofoten Islands.  We were way up there!


The Lofoten Islands are in Northern Norway and require quite a bit of travel to get to them.  You really have two options:


  1.  Get to Bodo by car or plane and take the ferry.
  2.  Fly to Narvik (EVE) and rent a car.  
We went with option 2 so that we could drive the length of the islands to see all of the towns along the way.  I went back and forth over what we should do for months, but ultimately flying from Bergen to Narvik and renting a car was our best option.  In the end, we were glad we did this.

We had a 0630 flight out of Bergen and we arrived to Narvik at 0900, rented our car and hit the road!  The drive from the Narvik airport to Sakrisoy where we were staying was about 4 hours.  It was a long 4 hours on windy roads.

The scenery on the drive definitely did not disappoint.

Beautiful scenery on the drive to Sakrisoy


One of the many tunnels we drove thru


Our drive was really kind of cloudy and a little rainy, which is kind of a bummer when you are wanting to see beautiful scenery.  We entered a tunnel and came out the other side of a mountain to sunshine!  We were also greeted with the beautiful village of Hamnoy, which we promptly stopped at to get some pictures.

The scenery in Hamnoy was unreal.  Unreal.  These are actually working fishing boats.

Hamnoy with blue skies, thank you weather Gods!


We both felt so unbelievably lucky to get to see such a beautiful area with the sun out!

Hamnoy is picture perfect from every angle.

It was such a pleasant surprise to come out of the tunnel and see Hamnoy


Hamnoy, Norway


I think it can be difficult to put things into perspective in pictures, so here is a little video view of Hamnoy.


We hopped back into the car and drove the mile across the bridge to Sakrisoy, the island where we were staying.  Sakrisoy was equally as beautiful as Hamnoy.

Sakrisoy, Norway.  We stayed in the white building in the middle of the pictures.  It was such a beautiful place.  Can you believe the water is in the Arctic Circle and not the Caribbean?

We dropped off our stuff and walked around a bit.  We were so grateful for sunshine, that we wanted to take advantage of it.  We crossed over the bridge on foot and got another pick of Hamnoy.

This is probably my favorite picture I took on the entire trip.  It looks fake to me, but it is real, so real.

Cod anyone?

Sakrisoy had that drying fish smell.  We figured we would get used to it, but we never really did.  I feel like the smell of fish gives you the full experience.

Beautiful Lofoten

While we were out and about the clouds rolled back in.  We went by the restaurant by our hotel and had a bite to eat.  Ken got a whale salad and a beer while I had a dessert and wine.  Our bill was around $70.  Yeah, Norway is expensive!  

We decided that since it never gets dark, that we would go for a hike late in the evening.  I had read about hiking to Kvalvika Beach and that the hike was pretty easy, so we set off to do that.  It was still pretty chilly, probably around 45 degrees so we were fairly bundled up.  

This hike was pretty muddy and a lot of moving around on bigger boulders.  We arrived to where we could see the beach and saw that storm clouds were rolling in.  We hiked down a little further, but decided to skip hiking down all the way to the beach.  I am glad we did because it started raining on us on the hike back.  Of course it did.

Kvalvika Beach.  Apparently when the sun is shining this is one of the most beautiful beached in Lofoten.

Just checking out beaches in the Arctic Circle

We had fun on our first little hike in Lofoten

After we got back to the car, we drove back to our hotel to settle in for the night.  It was still very much light out when I went to bed at 11:00 pm.  Ken on the other hand, stayed up way later than I did.  He went out and about and got a few videos.


The area around our hotel at midnight



Walking across the bridge after midnight


We had a great first day in Lofoten.  We were excited to get out and do another hike the next day!



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