Loen

After our time in Alesund we headed to the small village of Loen which is located within the Nordfjord region.  Here we took the Skylift, one of the steepest cable cars in the world, to the top of Mt. Hoven.  At the top, the view is not only of the fjord but Lake Lovatnet and the valley in between.

I definitely balked at the price for the four of us to take the skylift up and back but, in the end, I wouldn't have wanted to miss the view.  Even though it wasn't a crystal clear day it was still stunningly beautiful.

Afterwards, we checked into Hotel Alexandra, which while lovely seemed humorously stuck with the 70's/80's upscale family lodge vibe!  Grace and Harris were delighted by the whole thing.  Of course, we went down to sauna and jump in the fjord. 

That evening, we went for a walk through the village and to visit the Loen Church.  One of the crosses in front of the church is over a thousand years old!  There are also two stone pillars memorializing the lives lost when part of the mountain slid off causing a massive wave that killed 135 villagers.

One of the things that Harris really wanted to do while in Norway was to kayak and I had planned on doing that while in Loen.  However, to my surprise when I went to rent the kayaks I was told that in Norway if you don't have a "license" to kayak on the open sea you have to have a guide and there was no availability.  I was so disappointed!  However, the guide kindly shared that there was a camping hut by the lake that would rent kayaks and that the view was "actually much prettier."  So we got up early and headed to the lake hoping to find this hut (there was zero information online about it!).  We did and we had a spectacular morning on the glacier lake all by ourselves.  The pictures don't even come close to doing it justice.  The experience was literally awesome.

Of course the kids had to get out!

The maneuvering it took to get this selfie was monumental and I remain extremely impressed that we managed it!  Ha!

We ended up having such a wonderful time on the lake that we had to give up the train ride I had planned for us.  I couldn't even get too worked up about that because the experience of being on this incredible lake, by ourselves, on a beautiful morning, was well worth the trade off for a more touristy type of activity.  It was a wonderful way to end the more nature focused part of the trip as from here we headed to our last stop, the coastal city of Bergen.