For all of those who follow us on facebook, or instagram (@kevkberg, @nicolehberg), you know that we took a pretty epic vacation to Norway recently. My grandfather was born and raised in Trondheim, Norway, and I’ve always wanted to visit the city where he lived. Luckily, I married a beautiful woman who loves nothing more than to get a new stamp in her passport. Actually, I think travel was one of the vows I had to agree to at our wedding! With Trondheim in mind, Nicole planned our vacation. We would spend a few days in Trondheim, then take a rental car to Geiranger for an overnight trip, and then fly to Tromso for a few days. It was a pretty packed trip, and we had sooo much fun! Norway is an absolutely beautiful country with a huge bonus of very comfortable temperatures this time of year. I sure did enjoy missing out on a few 100 degree Louisiana summer days in exchange for a range of 45-75 degree temperatures.

The strangest, and probably most difficult part of our trip was that the sun was up almost 24 hours. Seriously, there was basically zero darkness while we were there, which stinks because I love taking nighttime photos! Seeing the Midnight Sun was pretty cool, though! First off, we landed in Trondheim and, after getting settled into our hotel room, we strolled around the town. Upon our arrival, we noticed that there were lots of banners and tents being setup. We were just a few days early for the St. Olaf festival. The second picture posted below is a Statue of St. Olaf…you’ll also notice some banners celebrating the festival.

As we were walking around we saw a cool alley way, so we stopped for pictures!

We made our way down to the water’s edge and took lots of pictures! It was just so beautiful along the water.

The next morning we woke up early and walked back down to the water to take a ferry boat to Munkholmen, which is a little island not too far away. I couldn’t help but take a picture of the Big Horn Steak House while waiting for the ferry. The picture below the steakhouse is the Last Viking Statue.

Munkholmen is a very popular picnic and beach area for locals. But what was neat for us to see were some older war relics, such as this gun bunker. You can go inside the hill and see the underground portion of this bunker. Not a whole lot of room down there, but it was interesting sitting in the gun chair looking out at the sea.

After our visit to Munkholmen, we took the bus back to the airport to get our rental car. It was a pretty sweet Ford station wagaon that had a six speed standard transmission. Yep, a six speed. From the airport we went to Kristiansten Fortress, which was built after the great town fire of 1681 and stands guard over the town. From there, you got some amazing views of the city!

On all of our vacations, Nicole is in charge of the maps…

My sister, Kennie, and I became fully aware of our Norwegian roots by the abundance of one particular food…PIZZA!!! There were pizza places everywhere! So we made sure to grab a slice here and there. While having lunch at Pepe’s Pizza in Trondheim (right along the water), I snapped this shot from my seat…pretty awesome view, right?!?!

Next, we walked over to Nidaros Cathedral, the Archbishop’s Palace, and the Royal Regalia.

After seeing the Cathedral, we walked over to Old Town, an area of town that has some of the oldest homes in the city (all made of wood!). To get there you crossed the Old Town bridge, which gives you the most amazing views of the wharf!

After capturing this next image, I could have ended the trip and been happy! This is what I wanted to experience and capture, and I’m so happy with the way the image turned out. I took this same picture about an hour earlier, but the lighting was just terrible, but, an hour later, it was perfect! I cannot wait to blow this image up and hang it, not only in our house, but also at my office!!!

The next morning we woke up and got ready to drive to Geiranger fjord. So we loaded up in the station wagon and headed out. It was an beautiful drive through the countryside with only one downfall…the speed limit. Imagine driving cross country at about 40 miles per hour! So, while the station wagon had six speeds, we barely used the fifth! We finally saw Geirangerfjord in reach and took the curviest/steepest/most dangerous road any of use has ever driven on down to the small town and our hotel. Of course, we stopped along the way to grab a photo or two!

(Oh, and we also had a just for fun photo-session where we made my sister model for us! See the rest of the images here.)

We did one of the silliest and most fun boat excursions you can do, a Viking ship tour! We loaded up on an actual Viking ship and took a tour of the fjord from the water! We got to see some beautiful sites, including mountain goats, whales, and waterfalls! But the most fun of this Viking tour was attacking all the kayaks and other ships in the water! The battles were long and hard fought, but we won them all thanks in a large part to my amazing horn blowing! (The horn blowing really struck fear into their hearts, and annoyed Nicole to no end!)

We stopped along the road on our drive back to Trondheim at a few spots. The plan was to check out the stacked rocks we saw, but then I had to run up the side of the mountain for an epic pic!

We flew into Tromso late the next evening and got to our hotel at about 10:30 p.m. Tromso is north of the Artic Circle and for part of the year is a huge destination for those seeking the Aurora Borealis. The other part of the year you get to see the “midnight sun.” Well, we got the midnight sun! This next image is from our hotel window at mid-night!

This is a picture of the bridge we crossed to get to the Arctic Church pictured above. The bridge itself is over half a mile long uphill both ways! But the views from the bridge were amazing!

We saw lots of cool things in Tromso, including an old fishing vessel, seals, and a wooden Lutheran Cathedral!

But the most fun we had was on our fjord touring excursion! We had local guides take us around to see parts of the area most tourists don’t get to see (because they don’t know where to go!). It was a great photography expedition, but we also got to have a campfire and cook hot dogs over an open flame next to the water. It got pretty cold that night, and the fire was actually needed for warmth! We watched the sun set, and by set I mean dip just past the horizon right about midnight. We kept touring for another two hours and it was never even close to dark. While at the campfire one of our tour guides, who was Scottish, pulled out some Scottish whiskey for us to taste. It was pretty good, and, while I have the pictures of Nicole tasting whiskey for the first time, I choose to live and not share it here! ;)

I hope we didn’t overload you with vacation pictures! I promise, we did our best to cull the blog down to a “reasonable” number, but we were excited to share! I’m already asking Nicole to plan us a Tromso trip when we can photograph the Aurora Borealis! Thanks so much for stopping by and sharing in our adventures! Now that the picture portion of the blog is over, we do have a brief video to share. It’s silly and fun, and all done on an iphone, so don’t judge us too harshly on the video!  (Those of you who have been to Disneyworld should understand the reference!)