2021 came with another "stay at home" advice for the summer vacation - meaning, well, I know you know what it means, but anyway.. meaning spend your vacation in your own country. Even though the rise in vaccinated people and somewhat open boarders ment that you could travel - but you might or might not have to go into quaranteen when you returned. So we stayed in Norway.
I've just finished my three weeks summer vacation, and am back to working from home whilst hubby and the kids still have another week off (they're visiting the in-laws). It's a little strange how fast time flies by. I mean, three weeks are still three weeks, even when they feel like one..
My first week, the kids and I spent in Trysil, visiting my mom. Not many pictures from the visit, unfortunetly, but the days were spent, knitting, sewing, reading and jumping on a huge trampoline! (The kids did all the jumping, not me.)
Hubby came up the last weekend, and then we started our adventure for the summer : visiting Trondheim!
I feel like I more or less grew up in Trondheim, spending many vacations there visiting our grandparents (when they lived there) with my sister. So going back there felt good! Hubby had visited a couple of times before - but this was the kids' first visit. We had many plans, some were followed - others, well, there will be other times and other visits. :-)
First things first, there are a couple hours of driving from Trysil to Trondheim, or Malvik - which is where the house we borrowed was located (we swapped houses with another family, who wanted to visit Oslo - which is another story for another day). That's why we deciced to take a couple of stops on the way north. The longest stop was spent in Røros, where we visited the church, saw and climbed th mountains of debree from the old mines - and had a nice lunch in one of the bakeries downtown.
The view from the mountains of debree is spectacular!
Our first day in Trondheim, we visited Nidarosdomen, a magnificent visit indeed! I love the stained glass windows.
No sight of the monk some claim to have seen inside, but we did find this handsome chap on one of the pillars inside.
Our second day was spent near Meråker, in an outdoor climbing park called Rypetoppen. Hubby and Peder went on a tour of the largest trails Peder was allowed to climb (red), while Aurora and I stayed on the green ones. (P, A and hubby took a blue trail too, which I documented with pictures and video.) I managed to slip on one of the first obstackles, and bruised my ankel pretty badly. It still hurts and looks bad even now, two weeks later. But we had a fun day! We stayed until the park closed, and on our way back to Malvik, we were stopped twice by heimevernet and the police, checking to see if we'd been across the border to Sweden. (Rypetoppen is pretty close to the swedish border, and with the COVID, you'd have to be tested when crossing the borders and possibly quaranteened.) Lucky for us, we hadn't crossed the borders, so we could drive back to Malvik and enjoy a very late but good dinner.
It doesn't show very good in the picture, but the kids and hubby are several meters up in the air.
We had to make a stop further north of Trondheim too, I mean, when there's a town called Hell... how can you NOT stop for pictures? Here's my soon-to-be-teenager (just kidding, two years left) channeling his inner dark metal spirit.
A girl working at the local gas station told me that they had an american tourist came in one day, asking if they had a stamp (which they did) and asked them to put the stamp in his passport. I'm not sure if gas station stamps are allowed in passports, but it is still pretty cool.
We had lunch in the sky one day - high up in this tower (74 meters above the ground)! The windows at the top is where a two-story restaurant is located - with the top floor slowly rotating, so that you get to enjoy a 360 degree view of Trondheim during your meal.
The church we visited earlier the same week, Nidarosdomen, is visible in the upper left half of the picture, identified by the pointy green tower.
We visited Rockheim too, a music museum and hall of fame for musicians in Norway. A and I stumbled across a room dedicated to Knutsen og Ludviksen, where we sat down and enjoyed some fun music and videoes.
Coming back home and the leaves are starting to fall, covering pathways and ground and grass. I'm not ready for this, I'm not ready for summer to be over and fall to come..
