Lofoten

Norway

xxxxxx

6 days

Day 11: Arrival, sunset
Day 12:
Day 13:
Day 14:
Day 15:
Day 16:

Hotel: Home Again Apartments Nygata 16 - Great location in the old town. Two room apartment. Large living area/kitchen with amazing natural light. Bedroom and bathroom cozy. Lots of low sloping ceilings so watch your head. Bonus - big TV with streaming services and a laundry machine and drying rack.

Favorite restaurant or bar: Krambua

Day 1: Arrival

Very easy to take the light rail to the airport from downtown Bergen. Flight to Lenke very smooth . They turned the plane around within an extremely short window during our connection. Try and get a window seat into Leknes. Ours was free seating so easy to do.

Ate at Digg in Leknes. Good food (fish snd chips and salmon) and friendly service.

Went onto our cabin's deck around 10:45pm.

Walked one minute to the bridge. By 11pm no filters no adjustments to our camera - just wow.

Hotel: Eliassen Rorbuer. We have a small one bedroom fisherman’s cabin right on the water with a great view. Location is fabulous. 1 minute walk from the bridge everyone takes pictures from. Bakery, restaurant and bar on site. Feel very fortunate to be staying here.

Our cabin is second from the left #23.

Day 2: Pulpit Rock hike

After a restless sleep we headed over to the Radisson Blu Atlantic Hotel to catch our Express bus to the Pulpit Rock trail head. Bus showed up on time. We bought our tickets (from Go Fjords) 1 month in advance as we were concerned it would sell out but there definitely were many open seats. Bus was clean and comfortable.

The bus ride was about 40 minutes. You go through the longest under sea tunnel in the world (14.4 kilometers). Drove through small towns with lots of greenery, well maintained houses with glimpses of the sea and various mountains. Definitely starting to see a smattering of new construction.

Pulpit rock hike

5 miles, 1,570 ft elevation gain, round trip - 4 hours

The hike up started as a steep gravel trail and quickly transitioned to rock stairs, big rock slabs and an occasional wooden walkway. Lots of people speaking all different languages, at different physical fitness levels, kids and dogs. I was pleasantly surprised there were actually some flat sections. Our training at home paid off as we were well prepared. Warm enough to sweat from the exertion, but mixed in clouds and winds made it feel quite variable.

Towards the top we walked by a couple of small lakes. Too cold for anyone to swim

The view at the top was amazing! And we were so worried about the weather but it ended up being just a little cloudy no rain. Well worth the effort to experience looking out at the Lysefjord fjord.

As well as looking at Pulpit Rock and then standing on it. Pulpit Rock supported filming of one of the Mission Impossible:6 scenes with Tom Cruise rock climbing the face.

Got a new very pretty view on the way back down

Arrived at the bottom at 1:45pm and the 2pm bus had room so we were able to hop on and get back to town at 3pm rather than 4pm.

2:45pm we arrived back into town and it started to rain.

Dinner: Trattoria Italo (aka Olive Trattoria). Friendly server. Food was quite good - salad mista, salmon and pasta, pasta and shrimp. We would eat there again. We did not leave hungry.

Day 3: Lysefjord Cruise

We arrived 10 minutes early rather than the suggested 20 minutes earlier and we were the last ones to board what looked to be an endless line of people.

We were worried we wouldn’t find anywhere to sit. Turned out there was still plenty of seating downstairs which had big clear windows and a small outside deck in the front.

You could still go upstairs to take pictures but seating was full. So if you want a seat outside definitely come early (e.g., 30-40 minutes before departure). It was nice go to different areas of the boat. If you want to lock in, the left (port) side would be best.