HiHi from Norway

Yes, that is a real live reindeer. I was mere metres away from this and MANY other reindeers this past week during my Norwegian adventures. This one doesn't appear to have any horns but lots of them did have short, velvety horns. I guess they regrow them every year and the velvet gets rubbed off during the summertime. So that was pretty cool to see so many reindeer just roaming about. It's almost getting to be summer in northern Norway so they were on the move to graze in greener pastures.

Other cool things about Norway:

The Midnight Sun - It doesn't ever get dark in Alta!! The town of Alta (where Nicole and I stayed) is past the Arctic Circle, which means that for about 70 days in the summer the sun never sets but stays up all day, even at midnight, hence the Midnight Sun. It's a little disconcerting to have sunshine at midnight and definitely threw me off a bit psychologically but also makes for a very beautiful setting for those few months. We climbed to the top of a "hill" overlooking Alta to try for the Midnight Sun view one night but it was super windy so we settled for the 10pm sun instead. The flip side of this is the neverending darkness that lasts from November - January where this town never sees the light of day for a few months. That would be really hard I think.

Nordkapp - we visited North Cape, the northernmost point in Norway (and mainland Europe?) that you can drive to. You can hike to some other crazy place, but let me tell you Nordkapp is north enough as it is. The day we went it was actually snowing on the road and it was so windy that we could only be outside for a few minutes at a time. But, we went, we saw, we were at the end of the world practically and it was pretty neat. 

Brown Cheese - I tried this famous brown goat's cheese that is supposed to be a favorite Norwegian cheese, and it was interesting...a little sweet, a little tart, and an acquired taste I think.

Rock Carvings - We saw some pretty ancient rock carvings (between 6000-2000 years old) just outside the town of Alta. The carvings were not discovered until 1970, which is so crazy to me as they've been sitting here near the water's edge for thousands of years. It was definitely a cool thing to see and wonder how things might have been thousands of years ago...I'm guessing by the rock carvings that life had a lot to do with reindeer, fish and skiing.

 And other than that it was a pretty relaxing visit. Bjornar, a family friend, was our host and he was really so so kind to both Nicole and I. He has two daughters the same age as us who are not living at home so we stayed in their rooms and it was kind of nice to be looked after for a few days. We had Norwegian waffles with sour cream and jam (it's good, surprisingly) and he cooked us eggs for breakfast. It reminded me a lot of home with the spacious small town feel of the place, although it did just make me want to go back and visit Norway again soon. Overall a really welcome change of pace from busy, crazy London and a chance to regather my thoughts and perspective.  

But crazy busy London shall soon be my focus again as it's a return to work, moving day and the Queen's Jubilee this weekend!!!! I think I'll need a little bit of Midnight Sun to get everything done in time...