Today we got up and went downstairs for breakfast around 8:50am…to learn that there weren’t enough guests to make it worth their while to open breakfast….so she told us we’d have to go down to the other hotel. (The one we got dinner at last night because the restaurant was closed at ours). Trouble was, they quit serving breakfast at 9am. grrrr. I was really irked… and was absolutely sure I was going to write a terrible review and ask for my money back from Booking.com since the amenities listed weren’t actually available and I paid EXTRA for included breakfast….
We quickly loaded the car and drove down, making it by 9:06. The staff was just getting ready to put up the items from the buffet but they sorta slowly decided we could grab some stuff quickly. again, I wasn’t happy…but quickly just started grabbing some food haha. Then, as we are eating, in walks the lady that told me breakfast would be in our own hotel… apparently, she was working the late evening at our hotel…but was actually like the main property manager. I (in a nice way) told her how we had to hurry down and grab breakfast because we found out last minute. She was like, “Oh…thats not OK. I will deal with that.” and starting texting haha
So… turns out it seems the people down there were just too lazy to get the food out for the 4 people who were staying there haha I hope they got in trouble because I’m spiteful. She was super nice and loved Norah… was very apologetic, lived in Cork for 3 years, and brought Norah back a bag of surprises including a CD of traditional Swedish music (our car doesn’t have a cd player haha) a handmade wooden heart and some candy ribbons and chocolate. So… in the end, we got breakfast and I liked the manager…so she saved the day. ha
We set out for the town of Mora, a cute little town in the area of Dalarna (also the area Marie lives).
They have a really cool church, the church of St. Michel..and a statue of St. Michel slaying the dragon in their downtown square.
They are also famous for their knives. Morakniv is a world famous knife manufacturer. Kegan was drooling over them and trying to figure out how to get them back home. haha
This area is famous for its wooden horses. These days, the horse is just a symbol for this part of Sweden, but it started out as a toy that parents would carve for their children back in olden days. People started manufacturing them for sale as early as the 1600s although, if Wikipedia can be trusted, they didn’t get the intricate painting on the red horse until the late 1800s. I had to buy one a tiny one to go on my travel knick-knack shelf alongside my loch ness monster. lol
After Mora, it was back in the car for a couple hour drive as what could best be described as the Ikea warehouse. (Nothing but new growth Pine forests for 2 hours! you know that wood was bound for some sort of flat packed dining table ha)
We did see a little grocery store and we stopped in to ensure we would at least have some snacks if we couldn’t find dinner tonight. I love that they had these little kid carts! Norah thought she was such a grown up with her own cart. It was cute.
We arrived at Fulufjallets National Park right on the Norwegian border to see the largest waterfall in Sweden: Njupeskar.
The sign says “2”…. so maybe it’s trail 2? some sort of slag, like ‘this way 2 Njupeskar’ or something? because it definitely wasn’t 2 kilometers. lol
A lot of the trail was on boardwalk, which I thought was really neat.
Ansel Adams over here spotted a tree that he knew would make a cool picture. Gotta get the shot!
In all fairness… he did pretty good:
As I was going through photos, I turned this one black and white and LOVE the busy-ness of it. Might be a framer.
Of course, Norah made friends. Some Swedish lady wanted to high five her, so she cornered her into a game of pattycake. lol
We’ve got poses.
Always stairs involved with everything cool. I don’t understand. lol
Ansel Adams also took this photo of the spiral bark dead tree. Came out pretty cool, too. So apparently Kegan should have the camera, not me. 
Speaking of, Kegan actually took some photos today I can be in the blog post too! 🙂
When we finished climbing Everest (ok, so I’m a bit dramatic about hiking…) we decided to just eat at the little cafe- they had some menu options posted above the window-all in Swedish of course- so I just picked something. Turned out it was cube steak. haha but it was good!
After leaving the park, we entered Norway again and we were supposed to head over to the west coast to catch some AMAZING scenery and fjords….but i didnt calculate out the time right for driving it….it was just too far to do and not be miserable… so we decided to save the other Norwegian coast for the next trip and just go to the town of Lillehammer and live out our olympic dreams. Lillehammer was the site of the 1994 winter Olympics and there are still a lot of Olympic related buildings around. We’ll explore that more in the morning.
One other thing Lillehammer has is the Hunderflossen Amusement Park with a Norwegian folklore theme…so of course, there is a giant troll in the park. Unfortunately, the park closed Aug 18th and was only open last weekend. I guess you have that when you put an amusement park in the middle of a ski resort town that gets snow 8 months out of the year.
We drove there anyway, just to see if we could get a view of the giant troll or the fairy house. We could barely see both, but it was enough 🙂
Trolls are beings from Old Norse mythology. A lot of folklore talks about them big, strong and dim witted. They turn to stone if they are caught in the sunlight… which it seems is what happened to this particular troll. He got caught in the sun and here he sits.
Our view of the park:
Other people’s photos of the troll and fairy house:
The troll sits on top of a restaurant inside the park. Inside of the restaurant is held up by four more trolls. Little disappointed we couldn’t go here.
We got to our hotel and it will do just fine for the evening. 🙂
We grabbed hamburgers at the gas station right up the road…and there was corn on it. That was a first!
Tomorrow, we’ll see some of Lillehammer and drive back to Marie’s house for dinner!
