This weekend we marked our first anniversary by returning to Rosendal, site of our unforgettable celebration last year. We stayed at the same hotel, where all the waiters remembered us, and had yet another delicious venison dinner. We also enjoyed catching up with the hotel's owners, who have made us somewhat famous by putting our picture in their brochure!
After dinner we took a twilight walk (11pm of course, in the long Norwegian summer) up to the medieval church where we were married. As on our wedding day, the clouds hung low in the sky, gripping the mountaintops like troll-bird talons, and the only sounds were the rushing of waterfalls and the soft patter of raindrops.
In the morning we set off early in an attempt to see the Folgefonna glacier, something we didn't have time for last year. We drove for an hour through rainshowers of varying intensity, doubtful that we'd be able to see anything in the socked-in weather, but as luck would have it, the fog lifted just enough for us to spend a magical hour exploring the glacial lake beneath one arm of the mighty glacier, all the while marveling at its ethereal blue ice.
From there we drove further north to another point at which the glacier is visible, and again we defied the rain and our soaking-wet feet to take another fairy-tale walk along a glacial stream that led us through verdant valleys to another steel and turquoise lake. We stopped and lunched underneath a giant rock outcrop by the side of the lake, but the rain refused to abate, so we skipped and sang our way back down the trail to stay warm on the inside, if not in our extremities.
Returning to Haugesund in the evening, we were afforded a final breathtaking glimpse of the glacier in a saddle between two great mountains that careen down into Åkrafjorden. We also stopped at several waterfalls along the way, one of which I've included here in a short video clip that Anette took. Here's to wonderful memories of a year ago, and to new adventures created in the coming year.
