Wow, it has been awhile since I first started blogging about my trip to Norway! But this past week I’ve been getting lots of notifications from Timehop reminding me that it’s my one year anniversary of visiting one of the most amazing places I’ve ever had the fortune of seeing- Lofoten Islands. If you need refreshing, this is the blog post about our first day in Lofoten- and this was probably my favorite part of my trip. Day One in Lofoten.
Let’s begin, while I reminisce. Day two in Lofoten- we woke up at our Airbnb and drove to the harbor town of Svolvaer, a town that Erin and I had both read a lot about. The drive took about 1.5 hours and was so beautiful, I wish I had more pictures but I was driving and there weren’t many places to pull off, but just imagine mountains and the clearest water all over the place. Kind of like this:
We did pass the Vågan Church, also known as the Lofoten Cathedral, built in 1898 to be large enough to accommodate all the fishermen who came to Kabelvåg each season. The Lofoten Cathedral is the largest wooden structure in Northern Norway, and it was very picturesque, but unfortunately we weren’t able to go inside.
Into Svolvaer, where we found street parking and started walking, but we were perplexed because we had read so much about this town, but it was a very industrial town, especially compared to the places we had seen the day before. We found a pier with cafes, hotels and boats, which was cute, but was that was about it. Svolvaer is a big fishing town, and a big transportation starting-off point for people visiting Lofoten Islands, but I wouldn’t bother going again. There is a big WWII museum, that usually I would be into visiting, and an ice sculpture/bar place, but we opted out of both- we needed to be watching our pennies.
Visiting Svolvaer did help us out, however, because we were able to find an information center where we got a map and the worker told us about some towns that we should visit, including a town called Kabelvåg, where there are several attractions, including the Lofoten Museum and Aquarium. We didn’t visit these tourist attractions either, but we did explore the grounds.
After a bit of exploring, we drove about 40 minutes to Henningsvaer, passing some pretty tall mountains, but also lots of people parking and getting out of their cars with ropes and climbing gear. We learned later that this is a huge mecca for climbers, and it’s easy to see why!
We arrived in Henningsvaer and we were in need of food, so we went in search of food, and we happened upon a cute cafe located in an adorable alley across from a climbing shop. Here I was able to get a veggie burger- an exciting thing because it was a little tough being a vegetarian in Norway.
After lunch we took a walk exploring the town, which has a population of about 444 and is formed like a U around the water. It was absolutely beautiful.
Unfortunately, Erin wasn’t feeling well, so we had to cut our day of exploring a bit short, we drove back to our Airbnb, where Erin took a nap, and Heidi and I went to the grocery store to get sauce for our pasta, milk for our cereal and more food for the car. Back at the house we contacted the owner so that she could get the TV to work for us, but she also suggested a beach nearby to go see the midnight sun. So we decided to stay up late and do that. We were sleepy, but at 11:30 we headed out. It never did get 100% dark the whole time we were in Norway, because it’s so far north, and since it’s summer we wouldn’t be able to see the Northern Lights, so this was the next best thing. We arrived at a beach, passing lots more of the adorable sheep that just wander around everywhere, and I had to put my feet in the water.
But even though the beach was beautiful, and there were lots of people setting up tents to sleep, we couldn’t see the sun. The only other nearby road that didn’t lead back to our Airbnb went through a mountain and seemed to be completely off-limits, but we risked it, and came out to another beach and there it was- the midnight sun! It was amazing! These pictures were taken at just after midnight, and check out that skyline! We were completely in awe.
We stayed there awhile, but had to get back, because the next morning we were planning on leaving at 9am and having a day with a lot of driving. Lofoten- you were amazing, I hope I’ll be back!
