Somewhere in the Norwegian Alps

It is Day 4 of my trip to (and from) Trondheim, and we set off in a westerly direction. Our destination is what Norwegians call the north-west coast.

Let me give you a regional geography lesson by stealing a picture from Wikipedia:

First of all, most of Norway is "west coast", but we don't call all that coast "west coast". Our long coastline has regional names, usually based on historical use. Since a lot of today's Norway was not part of historical Norway (i.e. the part the viking kings fought over), there is no "west coast" north of Trondheim. The west coast of Norway is, by definition, the coasts of the counties of Rogaland, Hordaland (my home county), Sogn og Fjordane, and Møre og Romsdal (yes, two counties have double names). (These counties are 11, 12, 14 and 15, respectively, on the map; my trip also included counties 5, 16 and 17.)

So, we are on our way to the county of Møre og Romsdal, specifically to the part called Romsdal first, since its in the north, and then to Møre. And finally, I got to take pictures of some gorgeous landscape!

The first clue that we were in western Norway again: Our first ferry crossing.

Somewhere in Romsdal

A series of islands on the edge of the Atlantic were strung together, forming the Atlantic Highway (Atlanterhavsveien). We had had sunshine every single day, but today fog meandered into the narrow fjord arms and didn't go away. So instead of seeing the horizon far away, I tried to capture the photographic charms that fog can have:

This last shot was taken through the bus window. I like the "double exposure" effect.

This stretch of highway was actually one of the reasons I wanted to take this trip. I had heard of this highway, and had seen some of the dramatic photos of high waves crashing onto curvacious bridges. I should be so lucky to get some of those myself. :-) It was a detour, really, so we turned around and got ourselves back on a southerly track.

Somewhere in Møre

We then got to the largest city in this area, Molde, which built itself a new soccer stadium right on the water. A hotel next door chose to make itself look like the sail of a boat. So that's what you see as we leave Molde:

And here's more ferry porn (hah, that'll get the search engines fired up) just because I'm a nostalgic sucker for Norway's typical black and white ferries.

Can't complain about the weather as this point. We had blessedly smooth sailing.

As our ferry moved south, we could see characteristic sawtoothed silhouettes ahead: The Møre Alps. The mountains do have proper Norwegian names but, heck, they do look like the Swiss Alps, don't they. Yeah, that's what the Norwegians think, too.

Our destination for the night was Ålesund, so that'll be my next installment.