Holiday photos and more

Hello everyone, hope you're all well and coping if you have a heatwave as we do here on the UK south coast at the moment.
Just got back from our holiday to the Norwegian fjords which we greatly enjoyed as the scenery was spectacular and we were lucky with the weather as there was only 1 day with some rain. The rest of the time was mostly hot and sunny which made it rather weird to see snow on the mountain tops and ice on the glaciers we visited.

I have a few pics to share here. We stayed at Balestrand, a pretty village with traditional houses with carved wooden dragon decorations typical in the area. The fjord was the longest one called Sognefjord and it was strange the water was salt so far inland.

The food was largely fish based which I love as it's my favourite and I tried out several I haven't had before - catfish, coal fish and monkfish to name but a few. The only downside to going to Norway is the astronomical price of everything - £5 for a rather bad cappuccino (Norwegian ones are nothing like Italian!!!), the same for a 330ml bottle of fruit juice, almost £50 for a bottle of wine and so on.

Kvikne's Hotel in Balestrand where we stayed, room with a fabulous fjord view

Typical property in Balestrand with dragon decoration

View from the Akvarium jetty at Balestrand and apparently much painted

Little fjord view towards Balestrand

Further little fjord view

Esefjorden flora

Esefjorden reflections as the water was like glass

Waterfall seen on rib boat trip (exceedingly scary at first!!!)

Goats spotted on this very small scrap of relatively flat land, the rest of the area had trees everywhere and a few more lone goats were seen in these. Farming in this area is very difficult due to the lack of flat ground and we saw many tiny farms on mountainsides.

First view of the glacier area from the boat

Closer view with 2 glaciers in the distance

Supplebreen and yes, that is ice at the top, it was a blue grey in colour

Boyabreen with a top and bottom glacier as the middle section had melted

Mundal book town with lots of books in the most peculiar places, this one being the most picturesque

The top of Esefjorden

Vik Stave church complete with carved dragons

Vik Stave church and churchyard

Amazing view of layered mountains taken from Vik quayside and the photo doesn't really do it justice

There were lots of jellyfish in Vik harbour!

Bergen harbour where we spent a few hours on our way back. The tall ships race was on and the harbour was packed with masted ships (not shown here as it was too difficult for me to take photos of them). Andy was in his element and took 100s of photos.

Hope you like these and will be catching up as soon as I can.

Link to my post for last Friday at That's Crafty! Blog where I was sharing 2 cards made with 1 stencil technique.

Fliss xx