Today's direction is Ålesund. We depart from Öyer through the Gudbrandsdal with a short stop at Dombås. The large river Gudbrandsdalslågen flows through the valley and ends in Norway's largest lake Mjøsa.
Velkommen til Åndalsnes and Romsdal, the end of the Gudbrandsdal,...
... where we stop at this waterfall called Slettafossen:
We pass the so called "Wall of Trolls", where certain rock formations resemble in somehow Trolls, mythological creatures related to elves, dwarves or monsters. Well, you need a lot of imagination though to find them. I only could get hold of this one on the below picture. Do you have enough imagination to see its face as well???
The way along the "Wall of Trolls" leads us directly to the Trollstigen Camping and Gjestegård where we have lunch.
Two examples of trolls:
Stigfossen waterfall:
Trollstigen Camping and Gjestegård lies at the bottom of the famous winding "Road of Trolls" (Trollstigen), a popular tourist attraction due to its steep incline of 9% and eleven hairpin bends up a steep mountain side. The road up is narrow with many sharp bends and although it has been widened in recent years, vehicles over 12.4 m long are prohibited from driving the road (I have to consider this in my bookings).
Trollstigen is closed during the fall and winter months, but as far as I remember one of our first groups this season (in May) had to make a long detour as the road was still closed due to snow.
At the top there is large parking place which normally allows visitors to leave their cars and walk for about ten minutes to a viewing balcony which overlooks the road with its bends and the Stigfossen waterfall. Also we stop at the top of Trollstigen with the intention of enjoying a beautiful panoramic view over the valley. But this great view failed to appear... due to very rainy and very foggy weather conditions. I could see as far as 100 m... so no sense in taking any pictures. We simply proceed our tour along the fjord Storfjorden...
... to finally arrive in Ålesund:
But before entering the city the bus takes us up to the panoramic lookout at Aksla from where we take the steps down to the city and to the hotel.
After check-in to the Thon Hotel Ålesund we have about 2 hours free time - of course accompanied by heavy rain - to discover the city:
... which that day hosted the Queen Mary 2 (which I have seen in Oslo just four days before) in its harbour:
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