Geilo

Because the tour itinerary promised that people would have a chance to walk around Bergen in the morning, we left later than usual. Normally, this would've hurt us at our arriving destination. However, in the case of Geilo, there wasn't anything to do there. Geilo is a known Norwegian ski town. As it is late summer, none of us were going to do any skiing so there wasn't any rush to get to Geilo. Still, our drive to Geilo wasn't entirely boring.

We stopped at one large waterfall called Stein something. The thing that is so interesting about this fall is that you can walk behind it. It was pretty neat. Another neat thing we did was take a short ferry ride across Hardangerfjord. The crossing only took 20 minutes but, I found it neat.

The rest of the drive to Dr. Holmes Hotel was uneventful. The hotel itself was founded as a place to treat respiratory diseases and became very successful. Later, it served those who liked to ski in Geilo. The hotel has a 6 lane American bowling alley which surprised me. It also has a spa with a wading pool, whirlpool, hotpool and good size swimming pool. I saw the swimming pool and decided a swim would help me burn some pre-dinner calories. The swim ended up being fantastic. Afterwards, I changed back for the group dinner.

The dinner was supposed to be a buffet but, the summer season was over so the hotel changed it to a set meal. Each of the course was superbly presented BUT I found the staff were incredibly slow to serve them. I was ready to chow down. I wanted FOOD! Instead, the meal dragged and we ended up not finishing till past 9 p.m. It was very annoying.

After the dinner, it was time to crash. The hotel's breakfast buffet turned out to decent though we had the same cramped seating we had the night before. We finally departed the hotel at 8:40 a.m. for Oslo.

Note: The rest of my adventure blogs will be reported from home. Tomorrow morning, I'll fly back to the U.S. It saddens me that the tour is coming to an end. Yet, it has been a fun tour. I can't wait to take another one. Harvey and I are looking at taking a Globus tour of France late next summer. It would be a lot of fun. We'll see if it happens. Cheers all!