Friends and I had been talking about something like this for a couple of years now. See, Erling is from Norway and there is a ferry system that travels up and down the coast. Then after he moved back to his homeland last year-ish, we gained another reason to do this trip. Start with a bit of research and planning (which I let Ken and Erling do all the work of. lazy, lazy me.), and we got ourselves set up to ride the M/S Kong Harald of the Hurtigruten down from Kirkenes to Bergen. Add to this a few extra days to see Bergen and Oslo to see the cities. And that builds up this vacation.

A fun trip overall. Definitely one of the more laid back ones; plenty of time on the boat to just sit and watch scenery drift by. Being able to meet with some of Erling’s family the last couple of days and seeing Norway from a non-tourist perspective really added a wonderful depth to the trip.

Also being a techie, I brought along my GPS receiver so I could link all my photos to about where I took them. A little scripted glue and I get a kml file for the photos. Which can be loaded with Google Earth, or the map below. (if javascript is on and you’re in a supported browser.)

Brief Summery