Fjørdgasm: Norway on the half shell

You know how fast food looks so much better in the ad than on your plate? Well, travel delivers a lot of similar experiences. That's Ålesund as showcased on visitnorway.com . And that's me on an overcast, drizzly day in actual Ålesund. Our last day on Bukkholmen, our island in Langevåg, across the fjord, starts out grey, so we make for shore in our little boat and pile in the car for a trip to picturesque Ålesund, the famous Art Nouveau town. I'd built up the trip for months with tourist photos of the colorful Jugendstil architecture. The girls no doubt were imagining themselves sipping expertly made capuccino in immaculately Euro-stylish coffee shops, watching cosmopolitan Euro-sophisticates glide past. I was more concerned about finding a parking spot, and also not putting dings in our brand new car. Space in Norwegian cities and towns like Ålesund is tight , don't you know. When we finally made our way into a parking garage, after a lot of traf...

Random notes & travel tips! So you plan on travelling Norway (only the only the fourth most expensive country to visit !) on one or two shoestrings , which means you're going to avoid eating out and instead rely on supermarkets. At this point you may be wondering to yourself, what kinds of exotic foodstuffs will I need to sort through to feed myself? How will I know what everything is? Is it going to be a bunch of weird stuff with names like out of the Ikea catalog? Wikipedia Don't worry, it's not shelf upon shelf of Lutefisk and fermented trout. Most of what you see will be perfectly familiar. We'll get you through this. Let's start with the most Norwegian of Norwegian staples: Brød . Bread! ButikkDesign Norge AS Understand this. Internalize this. Norwegians live on bread. Bread is the default meal. Breakfast? Bread. Lunch? Bread. (Eating out … don't be effete, you urban elite, you.) Dinner? Maybe something else. Late-night snack? Bread. The ur...

We abandoned one child halfway up the mountain, and one of the other almost froze. It all worked out in the end, though: We'd brought chocolate, bunny , and a blanket. Goats also made it better. The reward was stunning coastal landscapes; soaring, windswept cliffs; and puffins at the very edge of the vast Atlantic. The drive from Ålesund to Fugleøya Runde — Runde Bird Island — takes you across Sulafjorden on the ferry to Hareid and then island hops its windy way across stone causeways and sweeping bridges. Small farms, pastures, and clusters of houses dot the surprisingly green and lush coastline. Think you need to see the Atlantic Road? No, you don't: The drive to Runde is every bit as good. It also comes with a hike to a bird sanctuary and is nowhere near thronged with other tourists. Not a tour bus in sight the entire trip. It's a blustery day, as befits this ruggedized landscape and the defiant village of Goksøyr. If you close your eyes ...

The sun tickles us awake. It's day one on Bukkholmen, across Borgundfjord from Ålesund. We're at the center of 360 degrees of idyll. The sun is shining, and we have no driving, no chores, all day. This baby approves. Our affable host, Reidar, took us across from shore last night in the boat that comes with the rental. I'd called him earlier from the supermarket to let him know we were just a few minutes away. “That would have been you I saw then, in the big Volvo with the red license plates,” he says, in the north-west brogue that tells you he's grown up here. “At the Bunnpris at Vedde. I thought to myself that must be guests of mine.“ Everything in Norway is local, you understand. This is a country that names every bridge and every tunnel, and when I grew up in Hokksund every hill and every turn of every street had a name. Even though the Ålesund area has a fairly large population, as these things go in Norway, it's spread out around the fj...

So we made it to Ålesund in two days despite taking the scenic route. And you could too! But should you? No. As I kvetched about described looking back on the drives over the Sognefjell mountain road and from Lom to Geiranger , you're winding your way through scenery so dense it's like a movie trailer that goes on for hours, or an all-day bar hop, only they're not bars but Michelin-rated restaurants — all highlights, no filler . Before long, you're numb . Not to mention many of these roads are tiring . After a while you'll feel like you spent spent hours threading a needle on a roller coaster while balancing on one leg and dodging high-speed geese. Learning: Give yourself time. We had, originally. The plan was to take two days from Lom to Ålesund, spending the night at a campground in Geiranger. We had to cut it short when we couldn't get the delivery date we'd wanted for the Volvo, and our AirBnB in Ålesund was already booked. So, we booked, a...

We set out to sea to watch the world's second largest bonfire * in a boat best described as rustic, yet solid . Let's call her Old Blue. If you're going to see the city of Ålesund's annual Midsummer bash, Slinningsbålet , we reasoned, you should see it from the fjord. The bonfire is the reason we're here on this day: The seeds of the Fjørdgasm were sown some time last year when Traci saw a video of the massive, flaming tower of wooden pallets and said, “Hey, that looks cool, can we see that?” And yes, yes we can , so a trip was built around this date and this place. And here we are, the kids freezing their asses off a bit — we've got an overcast and blustery evening — in the middle of an armada of small craft, watching the fire creeping down the tower from the top like a slow-motion giant match. Reidar, our affable AirBnB host, has lent us the sturdy old 25-footer. Maneuvering her involves bouncing back and forth between the wheel an...

“It looks like an intestine”, remarked Traci, marveling at our navigation system's map of the road ahead. We are winding our way towards Geiranger, and the analogy is apt. Which explains why we decided later to skip Trollstigen , but we'll get back to that. Yes, indeed, it's safe to say, and I'm here to testify to you: The only roads in and out of Geiranger are seriously twisty. But hang on, let's recap. This morning we carbo loaded at the world-famous Bakeriet i Lom, the Lom Bakery , with a view to the cascading Bøvra river. If you go there, which you should, and you happen to need to use the restroom, go upstairs. The upstairs bathroom might just be the nation's coolest; that sink pedestal is the front of a Volvo Amazon . You also have to appreciate the sense of humor required to paint the floor and the toilet lid with a yellow centerline. (They could have turned it up to 11 and painted skid marks, too, but that would have been gross. It's...