Peet and Jess's Scandinavian bike trip.

[kiwipeet]

The cool thing about Kronborg Slot is that it sits on the Oresund straight, which is the narrow stretch of water seperating Denmark and Sweden.

It's only about 4 kilometers across, which means you can stand in Denmark and look across the water to Sweden.

The photo below was taken from the Castle and you can see the coast line of Sweden on the other side between the cannons. You can actually see the buildings of Helsingborg in Sweden.

[kiwipeet]

After visiting the castle we took the ferry across to Sweden, and started heading for Kalmar. Due to a wee navigational error on my part followed by my TomTom Rider dying for the third time, we ended up taking back roads through Sweden.

Both Jess and I where pretty underwhelmed with the scenery. Sad to say but what we saw of sweden was nothing exciting.

[kiwipeet]

Day 4 we just wanted to head up to stockhom and take a day off the bikes looking around.

There where trees, and lakes. and sometime lakes with trees.

You have now seen Sweden. Please move along.

[kiwipeet]

We decided to stay in Stockholm for 2 nights and do some sightseeing. We visited the Vasa ship musuem and it was absolutely amasing.

Basically the king of Sweden commisioned the ship to be built as his flagship. Unfortunately the designer miscalculated how much ballast was needed.

On it's maiden voyage (in 1628) it started to list so badly that the gun ports dipped below the water line. The ship filled with water and sank.

In 1957 it was redicovered, and raised, amasingly in pretty much one piece.

[kiwipeet]

For the full story. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_Ship

If you are eer in Stockhom this is a must see.

[kiwipeet]

On Day 6 we set off for Oslo, but the weather was looking pretty bad. After about 300k's of mostly wet riding we'd had enough and stopped at Karlstad.

It looks like it would normally be a busy place but as it was Mid-summer night holiday the town was pretty much closed and deserted.

[kiwipeet]

Day 7 was pretty much like Day 6. Mile muching just to get to Oslo.

The weather was miserable, so we didn't really stop to take photo's. Although the scenery had changed noticeably as we crossed the border form Sweden to Norway.

[kiwipeet]

Once we had checked into the hotel we went for a walk around town. The harbour front is really nice and has a fortress over looking the harbour.

[kiwipeet]

This photo wastaken from the Resistence musuem in the fortress back over Oslo harbour. The cream building near the corner of the harbour is were there give Nobel Peace prizes.

[kiwipeet]

We got a lucky break i the weather and set off for Voss. Unfortunately I missed a turn and we took the 'extra sceic route'. But it turned out to be a great day with the most spectcular scenery we had seen so far on the trip. Things where starting to look up :)

[kiwipeet]

Once we got clear of the city, and the weather lifted a bit we would find amasing views around ewvery corner. As our friend would say it got a whole lot more 'scenerier'.

[infoatnmmoto]

Nice shots so far. Don't get to see much H20 where I am!

[kiwipeet]

There where dozens of waterfalls, some of them where hundreds of metres high. In this shot there is a 2 story building on the shore at the bottom of the waterfall.

[kiwipeet]

As we climbed higher the rivers got higher and higher. The recent rain and summer snow melt meant the rivers where close to flooding.

[kiwipeet]

Maybe the weirdest thing we found on the trip was a massive tunnel called the Lærdalstunnelen.

It's nearly 25 kilometres long. Not only does it have emergency bays, it had 3 parking spaces in the tunnel where you could pull over for a rest.

I just looked it up on wikipedia, and it claims it is the longest road tunnel in the world!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A6rdal_Tunnel