Today we took the 1.5 hour tourist ferry boat through the Geirangerfjord from Hellsyt to the town of Geiranger.
This is the Seven Sisters Falls. Usually there should be 7 streams of water coming down instead of only 4, but it has been dry this year. Across the fjord from the Seven Sisters Falls is the Suitor Falls. The poor suitor asked each of the 7 sisters to marry him, and they all said no. Legend says that the suitor has to sit at the other side of the fjord looking at them for all eternity. However, evidently the sisters all remain unmarried so it really didn’t work out for anyone it seems.
A few picturesque abandoned farms such as the one here dot the hillsides of the fjord. Most were abandoned in the 1950s and 1960s. At this farm, the family grew a lot of apricots and at one point they had 100 goats. There was no fresh water accessible so they had to boat across to the other side to get water for themselves and the livestock.
We already knew that is was a very popular tourist destination, but it wasn’t until we landed in Geiranger and saw the two giant cruise-ships worth of people that we got a little worried that it was going to be too crowded. The town is extremely small so the main drag was essentially solely a tourist destination with people everywhere looking at shops, booking scenic busses, renting go-cart-sized “talking cars” (honestly!), wandering aimlessly, etc…
The first thing we did was head up to … what else? … the scenic viewpoint! Geiranger is so scenic that it actually has 3 scenic viewpoints. We did one before lunch, one after lunch and skipped one. Here is the first one:
As for the second one, I’ll write up a separate post tomorrow about our afternoon waterfall hike, rainy weather and the second scenic outlook of July 31. It’s getting late here and I’m running out of steam!
Balents Trip Blog 