The weekend came... and though we really had no concept of weekends at all, we thought it would be a fine day to go to Rosendal.
We woke up Friday morning and there was snow. Lots and lots of snow. It wasn't there when we went to sleep... but there it was when we awoke.
No problem. This isn't Vancouver. The world doesn't shut down with an inch of snow!
We were off.
Ingebjørg dropped us off at the ferry in Gjermundshamn and we were on our way across the Hardangerfjord to Rosendal. It's a 45 minute ride when it stops at the island of Varaldsøy on the way, which ours did. (It's 25 minutes without Varaldsøy.) Across we went, on to Løfallstrand, the gateway to Rosendal.
Ingebjørg's sister Gunvor and her family live in Rosendal. Her husband Rolf picked us up at the ferry. They have three children: Øystein, Håvard and Ola. Every day for the last three months before we left on our trip, Øystein would message Jon on MSN Messenger asking him "When are you coming? When are you coming?". So we had a pretty good idea that the kids were excited.
We were too. Rolf makes the most amazing smoked salmon in his Hunstad-oven™. Beth has been craving this since the first time she had it in 2006. Mmmmmm!
Rolf and Gunvor have a great house right on the fjord. With the snow, the kids had set up a pretty killer sled course down the side of the house. Of course it needed a ramp. Jon got some air!
It was a lot of fun. You just can't beat good food and good times.
The biggest change from the last time we were here was Ola. Where last time. he had wanted to be in every picture... This time, if you pointed the camera in his general direction, he would dive behind a table, a wall, a person... anything to escape the camera lens. Luckily, Jon had bought a toy before we left home: a trick lens. It's mirrored, so if you point it forward, it actually takes a picture to the left or right at 90 degrees. Great for shy kid photography!
Using the lens, we actually got some good shots of him. Mirrored of course, but very nice. Definitely a recommended toy if you have kids around.
We also ended up going to a Christmas concert at the Rosendal church. It was a good (and very quick) show. It turned out that due to the weather, the conductor of the choir couldn't make it... so the entire choir part was cancelled, leaving just an hour of other performances. Håvard played with the school band. (The rest of the time he rocks out with his band, Black Water. If it's black, it has to be cool!)
Suddenly though, we found ourselves thinking about time. How much time we spend doing this, how much we do that... Five weeks initially seemed like a ton of time, but now that we're in the midst of it, we realize that we might have planned just a little too much into this trip. Iceland, dog sledding, Denmark... but it is what it is. So we decided it was time to head back to Mundheim. A few more days there up until Christmas... and then on to Bergen.
No comments:
Post a Comment