I woke up in the middle of the night, it was still dark, but the ship was casting a glow onto the cliffs around us. The clouds were level with us on the 10th floor of the ship. It felt like I woke up in the middle of a scene from Lord of the Rings. Instead we were slowly making our way through the Geirangerfjorden. At one point we stopped and turned 180-degrees and began backing our way toward the very end of the fjord.

I went back to sleep for a couple hours, and when I woke up it was light, and rain was falling. We had breakfast at Blu where I enjoyed my new favorite breakfast, a poached egg over ham and spinach on an English muffin with Hollandaise sauce on top. I’m not sure where Eggs Benedict have been all my life!

Today we had hired a van to take us to see the amazing sites around Geiranger. We added one other couple from cruise critic so we had the van to ourselves and a very friendly driver.

Ok, the nerd in me was super impressed by their mobile floating dock that unfolds and comes out to meet the ship!

Our first stop was above the village, you can see how cloudy and rainy it is but you can see our ship and the unfolded dock.

Next we passed some old farm houses. The sod roofs start with wood at the base, then birch bark as a sealant and finally dirt and grass.

We arrived at the top of Dalsnibba which would ordinarily be an amazing site, but the driver explained that due to the snow overnight that had just reopened the road, and since the clouds were so low we might not see much. He was not wrong

But after a few minutes the clouds started to blow away for a few minutes and you can see all the way down to the fjord for another view of our ship!

Next up, we drove all the way back down the mountain. Many many many switchbacks, very tight switchbacks such that only one vehicle at a time can pass, especially when the oncoming vehicle is a big tour bus.

We then proceeded to climb up the other mountain where we would have another view of the ship as well as the famous seven sisters waterfalls.

The sail away gave us new views of the scenes that we had only seen in the dark. I have many many more pictures of waterfalls all of them beautiful in person and all of them fairly disappointing when captured by camera.

The waterfalls above are the seven sisters, the story goes that there was a young man (or maybe a troll) that was in love with a beautiful young girl, However when he asked her to marry him she turned him down. No problem he thought, I’ll ask one of her sisters, but apparently he was so ugly that every sister turned him down, which drove him to excessive drink. Eventually he drank himself to death and turned into another waterfall on a rock outcropping that looks like a wine bottle.

So many of these Norwegian fables have such sad endings. But maybe the band TLC summed it up best - Don’t go chasing waterfalls