Last minute trip to Europe!

Planning a last minute weekend trip to Europe for next weekend! Stay tuned for photos, details, advice, and a packing list!

Day 10, 3 flights home

We woke up early to see if sunrise was worth shooting and again, though it was beautiful, there were no clouds! I woke up early anyway, showered and finished packing and then we all went to breakfast at 8, said our goodbyes and thank you to the guides and the owners, and packed up the car and headed out to the airport. Leknes was about an hour away, so we arrived around 10:45 am for our 11:40 flight on our tiny plane. Checked in, went through security, where they made us take out all of our cameras and lenses. What a pita. Our first flight was open seating so we tried to get in line early to get decent seats and room for our large, overweight camera bags. It was a quick 20 minute flight to Bodo where we had a 25 minute layover before our next flight to Oslo. An hour and 45 minutes later we were in Oslo, where we had to get our duffels, check in for our JFK flight and go through security again. It took a while. When we checked in, there was one gate agent who was weighing everyone's carry on bags and we knew that our camera bags were very overweight, so as soon as the woman whom we saw was not doing that was free, we rushed over to her to check in and not have to deal with any consequences of our packs. Whoops! Lol. At security, all of our bags were flagged and they had to be hand screened. All for different reasons which was actually quite funny. I went through with some water in my purse and they didn't even notice that. However in my camera bag, something looked like liquid in the top of my bag and it was a nut bar. Weird!

We had a fairly long three hour layover so we went to Jamie Oliver's restaurant and had a wrap and some pizza, caught up on internet stuff and then proceeded through passport control to our gate right before we were to board. Boarding was free for all and they just announced ok, time for everyone to board and it was a rush! We flew a 787 Dreamliner home. Pretty cool plane part of the Norwegian Air fleet. When our meal came, it was fish or chicken. I'm sure by now you can guess which meal all three of us chose. We had some red wine with the meal too!

We currently have two hours left on our seven hour flight home, but we've just flown over Greenland which was gorgeous to see from above. The few times I've flown over before, it's been dark or cloudy so I haven't been able to see too much! We are close to new foundland now and almost back to the states! We are excited to come home and also sad to leave a wonderful country and end our trip.

More photo adventures will have to occur in the future! :)

Day 8, Norway backcountry skiing

Today was a truly incredible day. We had checkout the ski lodge yesterday just to make sure we knew where to go today and timing and such, so we arrived a little after 8am, walked in and went upstairs to have breakfast and make some lunch for our day. We met our ski guide, Sami and Fredrick, both from Finland. They brought us to the back and gave us skis and adjusted our boots to them, gave us skins and poles and we were set to go. Andy and I had brought our own avalanche gear, but Aaron is renting some avi gear for the couple of days. Then we were off on about an hour and 20 minute drive north to a mountain in an area with a V, that I can't for the life of me remember or pronounce. We put our skins on our skis, got all ready to go and started our climb. It was 8 degrees F and quite cold! Within five minutes I was so hot, I needed to shed a layer! Of course, I had on at least six layers, so I was toasty. We skinned up for about three hours, stopping every now and then for water and snacks and food. I ran out of water before we got to the top and started having snow. I had no choice!

The skin was not too challenging, it just took a while! They taught us all the proper techniques for skinning up and turning steep corners, which the boys had more trouble with than I, just because of flexibility. It was quite amusing to watch and frustrating for them. If it were not for Starbursts, I would not have made it up. They are a lifesaver and the only thing I use for quick energy when I'm normally skiing. They really helped here too. Aaron got a huge blister on one of his feet and luckily Frederick had some second skin that Aaron could put on his blisters so he could continue up. When we reached the top, the view was incredible. It was also freezing! So we stayed up for a little bit, flew the drone, ate some food and then skied down!

We were all pretty exhausted when we got to the bottom, and not looking forward to the long drive back to the ski lodge. We were sore and like old people aching every time we got out of the car, which ended up being a few times because we just couldn't resist stopping to take photos! When we got back to the lodge, they had a make your own waffle station which was heaven. We all made heart waffles and put chocolate spread on them. They were so good... or we were all starving! Then we went back to our cabin, grabbed our bathing suits and a change of clothes and headed to the sauna and showers!

Dinner was family style at the lodge and very nice. Unfortunately it was fish, again. Lol. Seriously, I cannot eat any more fish! However, I did since I knew I needed some energy for skiing and to replenish the thousands of calories we burned. We ended up going up about a 1000 meter mountain; my Fitbit claimed about ten miles, though my Fitbit does not do well with elipticals so skinning is very similar to that.

We stayed and talked with some of the ski guides until almost 10 and wanted to go and shoot Aurora, but there wasn't any at that time and we were so tired, we came back to the cabin and all passed out!

Day 7, Norway, Reine to Svolvaer

3:15am wake up call hoping for Aurora. It was cloudy but we had high hopes that the clouds would clear enough for us to see Aurora, so we ventured out to Hamnoy to try and photograph the Toppoy mountain. Unfortunately for us, the clouds never cleared and a stormy, moody sky with mountain and water ended up being out shot. At this point, it was almost 6 am and we were freezing (luckily I have my north face long down coat that's the equivalent to wearing a sleeping bag, so only my toes and fingers were numb!) so we got into the car and drove back to Reine, about ten minutes, to see if things would light up a bit for sunrise. We stood on the bridge in Reine for a couple of hours and saw a tiny bit of pink on the horizon, but nothing on the clouds for us! We have not had any good sunrises or sunsets thus far!

We had to check out of our cabin today, so we all decided we needed a quick nap first, then packed and then got on our way. We took our time heading up north and explored various spots along the way and also scouted a few locations for Aurora which we knew would be strong tonight. It took us about 4.5 hours to get north and when we arrived, our hotel was situated on the water with gorgeous mountains surrounding it. None of us knew what to expect up north and it is more beautiful than we could have ever imagined. Ever turn we had to stop and our jaws just dropped. One more beautiful scene after the next. It's hard to fully describe but if you can picture huge fjords, massive lakes and waterways, bridges, trees, and happy people, then that would be my description of Norway.

Our cabin was super cute and large with a downstairs of a kitchen and living room and upstairs two bedrooms, with an extremely steep staircase! We went to dinner in the main lodge and our waiter was great. He was chatty and said that he had to moved to Norway for the fish and that he loved fish and fishing and had a boat that was in Sweden with his girlfriend and that he could eat fish seven days a week. We had fish. Lol. There is literally no other option! I am so over fish right now. The first meal I want when I get home is a salad!

Toward the end of our meal, while watching the sunset as we were eating (it was perfectly clear skies, so a beautiful sunset but not good for photos since there were no clouds), Aaron went to check if the Aurora had started. Sure enough, it had! Yippee! So we paid for our dinner, ran out the door, grabbed our gear and started shooting. We drove around and photographed many spots up to over an hour away until 2am. It started to die down by then, but we had some good shots and were happy so we made the trek back to the hotel to sleep for a few hours!

Norway, Day 5, Å

This morning, we all woke up tired at 5:45am. That could be due to the fact that at least I went to bed after midnight. They boys fell asleep a bit earlier. We got ready and quickly headed out the door to head to Hamnoy to photograph the sunrise. There are doing some construction on the bridge so the "typical" view was blocked. It's still a gorgeous view no matter where you stand from, so we set up and waited. Our photographer friends running the workshop here also showed up, which was fun. The bridge was full of us and tripods! Unfortunately it was very cloudy and quite socked in and though the sun did rise behind us in a little sliver of open clouds, we did not get and pinks or purples or much light at all. We have a stormy sunrise shot now!

We came back to the cabin after sunrise and I had some breakfast and tried to figure out my SIM card which is not working, but may start to work soon, who knows. Andy and I both took naps, which is very unusual for me, but just shows how tired I was! Midday we left to explore further south towards A, which is the southern most town on the archipelago. We explored several spots along the coast line looking as far south as we could be. The road ends but there are still mountains we hiked out as far as we could. The locals here like to be outside and we see many running, skiing, walking their dogs, and using sleds to get around as they get older and for kids (it's so cool!). We then went to a lake right near the end of the road and walked out a while to find some nice shots. This lake is large but completely frozen. We had hoped that it wouldn't be totally frozen as that is nicer for photos, but there were some nice designs on the ice that I shot. We also walked around the rest of the lake and found some nice compositions for sunset. Near where we parked was a fish drying rack too so we took some close ups of the disgusting fish smell fish!
The islands are fishing islands, so there are drying racks for fish everywhere. It smells like fish pretty much everywhere, and either we are used to it or it's actually not that bad. On a side note, as we walked to dinner tonight, we all noted that is smelled like the raw drying fish and cooked fish at the same time. Maybe we smell too?!
We drove around for a bit more exploring until it was time to head back to the lake for sunset. We set up right by the edge of the lake and every few minutes we would hear ice cracking. It's very unsettling to hear, but the sunset was pretty.
Dinner was at the restaurant where we are staying which was probably the best meal we've had so far. I had the Arctic char and some chocolate mousse! So delicious. The boys had fish soup, which was also very good, and whale filet, which I thought was gross and tasted like veal. Hello world wildlife foundation, whale adoption funds, etc. Apparently, 500 minke whales are caught each year and stored for the winter. Although I had some whale yesterday, a taste was all I needed. I love whales too much!

The kp for tonight is supposed to be quite high. The clouds are also supposed to be here. However, as we walked back to our cabin from dinner, both Aaron and I thought we should at least take a photo to see if what we were seeing in the sky were clouds or Aurora. It ended up being both. A faint Aurora sliver in the distance and clouds. So we grabbed our gear, almost too full to even move, and drove to the bridge in Reine to take some test shots and see for sure. It was super faint. We are now back in the cabin waiting a bit and then we will probably drive north a bit to see if it's clearer up there for some aurora!

Stay tuned!

Norway, Day 4, Leknes to Reine

 

As a reminder, I am writing this on my iPad and therefore there may be some autocorrect mistakes and other things that happen when I touch the side of my hand down on the keyboard while typing! Eventually when I return, I will go through and edit all of these posts and also post photos with them. My app is not allowing me to post photos and I haven't had time to figure out why yet! For now, you get writing and I hope you're following along on instagram to see my daily stories! @photographybyrs

Norway. Wow. As bad as wow airlines was, wow is all I can say here. It is just stunning and magnificent! We stayed in Leknes last night and woke up bright and early around 5:45am to head out to shoot sunrise about 20 minutes away. Luckily checkout wasn't until 11 so we could leave, come back, eat breakfast and then pack up! We drove north of Leknes to Uttakleiv to find round rocks, ocean, mountains and a pretty sunrise! We spent quite some time exploring the beach and taking detail shots. There is some kelp here that is long and hard and wiggly... so hard to describe but it's huge! I will take a photo and post it when I can. After sunrise, we drove around a bit and explored the nearby beaches of Haukland and then stopped along a beautiful reflection area where we discovered people were below and they ended up being some photo friends of ours teaching a workshop! Fun to run into them and they are staying a bit further north of us so we will all communicate when the aurora come out about when to get up and Shoot! (Cross your fingers, the kp level is supposed to be high Tuesday though Thursday evenings!)

Back to the hotel to eat a nice breakfast, check out and then venture to the grocery store where we picked up some things to eat for the next few days as we are staying in a Rorbuer cabin with a kitchen so we can make our own food if we want.

If we had not explored or stopped at all, it probably would have taken us about thirty minutes to get here. However, almost every 500 feet we wanted to stop and take photos. It just got more stunning and beautiful every turn we made. We also scouted many locations for other shoots and flew the drone a few times!

It is gorgeous here. We checked into our cabin in Reine, which is situated directly on the water, overlooking fisherman and mountains. We have two bedroom with bunk beds, a living room, kitchen and bathroom. It's fantastic! I'm glad we will be here for three nights!

We had dinner in the next town over and I tried whale for the first time. I was not going to get it as whales are some of my favorite animals and I am very against it, however Iceland and Norway both still participate in whaling and this particular whale is not endangered (yet). It was delicious. I had a few scallops for dinner and some bread.

Back to the cabin and shotty internet, but a couple of hours of relaxing is nice, however we seem to not have any hot water, so a cold shower and some laundry time was what I did!