We drove on to our spot for the night in Hunderfossen. This little town is outside Lillehammer, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 1994. We were staying in a resort area that has a Family Adventure Park.
Found a nice restaurant for dinner, which had a varied menu. Will and I shared the paella. The seafood was quite good.
Of course, we had to do a drive by of the ski hill where they held the slalom and giant slalom races for the Olympics.
Norway decided to finally grace us with a beautiful sunny day for our drive back to Sweden. We drove by the bobsled and luge track. It was closed, so all we got was Kendall inside this model of a bobsled.
Then on into Lillehammer to look at the ski jump and check out the Norwegian Olympic Museum.
The Olympic Museum was quite well done and gave history on the origin of the Olympic Games as well as some history of the various modern Olympic Games. The ticket for this museum also includes their open-air museum and Norwegian history museum. So, we also took a quick look at some of those exhibits as well.
One of the exhibits in the history museum were these carved wooden boxes. They were done by Erik Hellelokken who died in 1899. He was considered insane and violent and was chained to a side room in his home for 20 years. At that point he was moved to a psychiatric hospital. It’s really sad, what was (and continues to be) done to the mentally ill through-out the world.
Spent the night in the Lake Silijan area. We first had to stop at the B&B that manages the apartment we rented. We had to pick-up our bed linens from the B&B. The owner had left her elderly father in charge for a few hours. So, with him only speaking a few words of English and me speaking even less Swedish, it took a while to get the needed linens even when we broke out Google translate. It was quite amusing especially when he had us follow him on his motorbike to the apartment. Loved his Evel Knievel style helmet.
The area around Lake Silijan is known for its Dala Horse factories. The Dala horse is a wooden toy horse that has been made for hundreds of years and has come to be one of symbols of Sweden. You can take a tour of one of the factories in the area, but it was Sunday, and we had to get an early start.
We were rapidly wrapping up our tour of the north. The next morning, we headed to Stockholm to return the car. First, we stopped in Avesta, Sweden to see the largest Dala Horse Statue.
At the Dala Horse statue there was also a pole representing the height that Armand Duplantis reached during the Olympics. You know its high, but standing right under it really brings the height into perspective.
Got to Stockholm and it was rainy and gloomy. We went to dinner with Kendall for one last time. She was flying on to Copenhagen early the next morning and we were flying back to Reykjavik for a night.
We had an uneventful flight back to Iceland and picked up our rental car. With the high cost to take the bus to the city center and our hotel having free parking it was a no-brainer to just rent a car.
We started driving to the city and almost immediately I spotted the lava from the recent volcanic eruption. So, we were able to find a place to take a few pictures. It was still quite a distance away. The authorities had cordoned off a large area as the volcano has been erupting sporadically.
Then we drove straight to the Perlan museum. We had heard about the museum and wanted to check it out. The Perlan Museum was pretty cool. They have a number of exhibits that explain Iceland’s history geographically and exhibits on volcanos, glaciers wildlife, and waterfalls. There is also an observation deck on the top floor of the museum. It offers 360° views. Unfortunately, my view was limited by a lot of fog and rain.
And back once again to our favorite, Reykjavik Fish. Another great dinner.
We were flying home the next day but had quite a bit of time before we needed to head to the airport. So, we went to Flyover Iceland. It’s similar to Disney’s Soaring ride. We actually got to do the ride portion twice. One of the preshows was malfunctioning. So, they offered to let us go again for the full experience. It’s expensive, but we did enjoy it.
We went searching to see if we could see the lava flow during the day, but that was a failure.
But as we were searching, we did find the bridge between continents. The bridge was built as a symbol of the connection between the European plate and the North American plate.
So, many great times, but I guess it had to come to an end. Until next time friends.
FYI – Some advice about the airport in Iceland. It is a small airport, which gets a ton of tourists in the summer months. So, when flying home, get there early. The line to get through security will sometimes be on the ground floor and you will have to wind around up the stairs to the second-floor bag check area. If you are from the U.S. (or non-Schengen country) and are going home, you will have to also go through passport control. So, once you have gone through the bag check area, head directly to the “D” gates. This is where the passport control area is located. (I would do this even if you don’t have an exact gate number yet.) The line for passport control is also usually long but moves steadily. It probably only took us about 15 minutes to get through. But they don’t seem to post most gate numbers until right before boarding begins. So, if you wait until you have a gate number and then try to go through passport control….