Heading to Aurland, we did a short detour to have a look at a stave church at Borgnund. This church was built around the year 1200 and is entirely of wooden slats. It is the best preserved stave church in Norway and is very impressive, including the fee to go in and have a look.

                      This group of fungi was at my feet as I was taking the photo of the church

                                        On the road to Aurland. Scenery still very impressive.

Celebrating Paul's birthday with a glass of wine. Now I think about it...it must have been Paul's birthday every day....

Aurland was a bit of a disappointment as it is very much a tourist port. The cruise ships stop here and tourists disembark in the 1000's. There is a very famous train ride that goes very steeply up into the mountains and most of the ship passengers do this train trip. They were queued up along the dock for hours waiting to get tickets. We stayed 2 nights and were ready to move on, Bergen our next destination.

Just a bit of information about driving in Norway. The maximum speed limit is 80kmph. And I think that at some stage we might have actually reached 80kmph. Many of the roads are only single carriage-ways and it is quite a feat to pass a car, bus or a tractor going in the opposite direction. Much backing up and squeezing past which is quite stressful for us who are used to the open roads of Australia. So it is rare that vehicles reach any great speed. Also ferries are a part of life over here. Imagine catching a ferry each time you had to go for groceries or go shopping. And they are not free. Probably average about AUD20 for a 15 minute ferry ride. But what has been the most amazing thing is the number and length of the tunnels. To get to Aurland, we had to go through a tunnel that was 24.5km long. There would be very few roads in Norway that did not have tunnels. This is because the fjords are so steep and rocky that building a road along the fjord is just not feasible. The old narrow roads that still exist around the fjords are gradually being replaced by new tunnels. As we left Aurland, we drove through a 11.5km tunnel and then straight into another that was 7km long. That day we were headed for Bergen and when we arrived, Janeve said that part way along she started counting the number of tunnels and over about 130km, we had driven through over 30 tunnels.

When we arrived in Bergen, we had a free camp for 3 nights. I had sourced through Google Maps, a shopping centre outside Bergen that was on the train-line into the centre. I had emailed them and asked permission to stay in the car park and they agreed. With our motorhomes totally self-sufficient, it was a good camp with food, servo, shopping, restaurants and the train only 8 minutes from the city centre (all the way through a tunnel from one side of the mountain to the other). Bergen is a nice place but again full of tourists from cruise ships and long queues for everything.

There is a chair lift , the Floibanen, up to Mt Floyen from Bergen. There was such a long queue for the chairlift that we decided to walk up.You can see the top station of the lift in the middle of the mountain in the background.

                                                       Look who I found at the top?

                                                                            Bryggen

The very first buildings in Bergen were along the harbour called Bryggen. In 1360 the Hansas-a german guild of merchants- set up one of their import/export offices in Bryggen and dominated trade for the next 400 years. Many times Bryggen has been devastated by fire, and the great fire of 1702 reduced the whole city to ashes. Bryggen was rebuilt on top of the old foundations that had been there since the 11th Century and is now one of Norway's most visited sights and their most recognised silhouette with the coloured gables. I was disappointed that since we had last been there in about 1997, the whole place was just full of souvenirs and junk.

Our next stop was Eidfjord and as the name implies, it is situated on a fjord. Just a small place with a fabulous outlook with huge steep mountains rising out of the fjord. We took a drive up one of those twisty roads with numerous switch-backs to a place called Mabo Canyon and the Voringfoss (Foss means waterfall).

                                                   Mabo Canyon with the Voringfoss

                                                                Campsite at Eidfjord

                                      Hiking to some waterfalls up the mountain behind Eidfjord.

Leaving Eidfjord behind and heading south again. Until our next stop, bye for now.