Eidfjord — Jim Winslett

Today we woke up in another fjord.

This isn’t a bad thing, but with back-to-back cruises - one ending with four days of fjords and the other beginning with three more days of them, we’re kinda jaded on fjords now. I know at some point, I’ll go back and look at these pics with fresh eyes and go "WOW, that’s beautiful!!!”

But at the moment, it’s more like [throws open curtains]
“Oh. It’s another fjord.”

Reminder: you can click any image and have it open fully on your screen, so you don’t have to scroll to see it all

The “fjordville du jour” was Eidfjord ( “eyed fyord” ) and it’s very much typical Norway:

Typical Norway, how?

It’s a little town with lots of typical Norwegian architecture, and even though there’s only 500 residents, they have a fuel station with 15 electric vehicle charging ‘pumps’. And during the day, they were all busy (this shot was taken around 7:30am)

After brekkie, we hopped the tour bus and went down the road to Øvre Eidfjord (Upper Eidfjord) to see the Nature Centre.

Inside, we watched a panoramic film of fjords, mountains, and waterfalls plus some wildlife. It was nice. Then we had a bit of free time before the bus came back for us. I took some pics, of course.

Then it was back to town for lunch on the ship and some exploring of Eidfjord. The town is pristine and people really take pride in the appearance of their houses and yards.

There’s a nice walk along the water with a row of trees wearing sweaters

There was an art gallery with a funky piano art exhibition…

...as well as some giant works by the artist Nils Bergslien

One of the nicest views, however, was from the balcony of our ship cabin.

Dinner was back at the upscale Italian restaurant, our second reservation there. Rob had a veal dish with lemon sauce and I had that nice steak that I had last time. I switched up the appetizer, though, and opted for the octopus carpaccio this time.

Most of you are likely familiar with carpaccio, but if you aren’t, its paper-thin slices of raw meat, drizzled with oil and seasonings.

I’m a fan, but I usually don’t order it unless it’s a kind I haven’t tried before, since it tends to be quite expensive for a tiny amount of food.

But HEY, on the ship it’s included, so order away!

I did like the octopus version and I’d order it again, but it’s my least-favourite of the five kinds of carpaccio I’ve had.

The best one by far was kudu, then zebra, beef, lamb, and now octopus.

Anyway, after dinner, we had very nice views from our room as we left the fjord. Some waterfalls,

…some villages,

... and farms with impossibly green grass,

We even saw the sailing ship Petrine go by -

I looked it up. It’s a 111-yr-old ship that you can book a cruise on, but it’s a really different kind of cruise as you’re a member of the crew while you’re on board. Everyone has a job to do and once you’ve set out into the water, everyone on board decides by vote where they want to go next.

You can read more about it here: https://petrine.de (Website is in German)

In other news, my Apple Watch congratulated me on meeting all my exercise goals for the week, then showed me a summary of the last 7 days.

I feel every last one of those 275 flights of stairs, believe me!

Every time I think I’m going to take a day off, I’m reminded of the most important three words about this ship:

Unlimited wine refills.

The sunset was on the opposite side of the ship from our cabin this evening, but we did get to see some nice colours anyway.

I imagine the next shot in the context of a meeting of the mountains in the fjord….

Lead mountain: You all got the memo on what colours to be this evening, correct?
All but one mountain: Yep! Brown, forest green, dark grey.
One mountain in the back: ORANGE, bitches! 🤪 With a cloud hat!