Hurtigruten, Preikestollen, and back to Oslo

We steamed out of Trondheim at 10 am on the good ship M/SNordlys, a Hurtigruten ferry bound for Bergen - a 28 hour overnight trip down the Norwegian coast.
We constantly cruised inside and close to lots of islands, so the scenery was always great, and we basked on the back deck in warm sunshine, soaking up a bit of shipboard life. In the evening a crowd gathered in the ships conference room for the World Cup Final. Lots of cheering, mostly for the Germans, and exasperated groans at the near misses

Back in Bergen, we overnighted and next day were on a bus to Stavanger, gateway to the famed Preikestollen, or Pulpit Rock. First up, we did a walking tour of the Stavanger Old Town with a young history student named Erik (natch!), then next morning a ferry and bus got us to the start of the walking track to Preikestollen and we set off with a few hundred of our best friends for the top. A steep hour and a half later there we were - on one of the world's best lookout platforms. I love that there are no steel guard rails stopping people from getting too close to the edge. Australian authorities would have had a bloody great safety fence all around the edge and completely ruined it. Not in Norway. If you're dumb enough to get too close to the edge and fall off - whose fault is that?

That day's outing completed the fjord riven part of our Tour de Norway, but we still had a little to do. A train the next day to Oslo took us through the first relatively flat, or rolling hills type farmland we had seen in Norway, and once there we had in mind some places we hadn't had time for a couple of weeks previously.
First stop was the Holmenkollen Ski Jump. First built for the 1950 Winter Olympics, it has been improved and heightened a number of times since, and is still used for top level competition. Standing at the top, it's a loooong way down! We gave ourselves a small taste of the flying feeling by ziplining off the top to the finish. A speedy way down! There was also a great ski museum, and a simulator in which you could do the Olympic Downhill at 130 kmh, and a couple of runs down the ski jump. Pretty cool!

Then we jumped back on the Metro to Vigeland Sculpture Park, where there are heaps of sculptures by one guy, Gustav Vigeland, who spent 40 years putting together the body of work which forms the park's attraction. All human forms, based around families and relationships. It was pretty good. After a minor false start on our return journey - went one stop in the wrong direction - we found the right tram/train combination and made it back to Central.   

That evening we wandered around looking at old timber boats of all sizes, checked out the WW2 Resistance Museum next morning, and then boarded our train to Malmo to visit Susie's son Thomas and his girlfriend Sofia.