Cruise Chronicles – Day 15 – Lillehammer, Norway

On this day, we got out of the capital city and took a train north to the winter sports town of Lillehammer. Norway has hosted the Winter Olympics twice…in Oslo in 1952 and here in 1994. After yesterday’s intense touring of many Oslo attractions, this would be a more leisurely day. It would also be the worst weather day of the entire vacation.

Sondre Park and the Lillehammer Church (22 May 2019)

What’s not to like about a train ride through the countryside? Someone else is doing the driving and you have a big window to see rural Norway. I suppose you could say that a bus ride will do the same thing. A bus will also give you close-up views of six lanes of traffic. Instead, the train has the right-of-way all to itself and often gets you close to scenes you don’t get from the Interstate – see the last shot below.

Norwegian Olympic Museum, Lillehammer, Norway (22 May 2019)

Climb a hill away from the train station (this is a mountain town...no two streets are on the same level), and you reach a concentration of attractions. Adjacent to each other were the Norway Postal Museum and the Norwegian Olympic Museum. No offense to any dedicated postal workers out there but the choice was unanimous. While the exhibits address the greater Olympic movement, the emphasis is on the winter sports and Norway’s significant contributions to Olympic lore.

A Different Kind of Fence (22 May 2019)

Walking back to town from the Olympic museum, I saw this simple fence. No nails or other fasteners required.

Lillehammer, Norway (22 May 2019)

Follow the advice we see more on photo sites lately…even I recommended it back in 2011 – get out in the bad weather. The weather is not ‘bad’…just a bit difficult for your equipment and getting around, but it can make for great images.

The rains were enough to keep us from exploring the town further. We did not get up the mountainside to the Olympic venues. We visited Lake Placid, New York in the summertime, site for the 1932 and 1980 winter games. Bobsled runs without ice look like fun. Treacherous downhill ski runs, where people fly down the mountain at expressway speeds, appear much less so when they are green meadows. Frozen water under your feet makes any activity more interesting. The only view that still made me think “This is nuts” was from the top of the ski jump.

But I digress. There are no images for you winter sport fans because I did not go there. Tune in for the next post for a little of that.

Outside Lillehammer, Norway (22 May 2019)

After the Olympic Museum, we ambled along the main drag as the skies grew darker. We decided to have lunch at a café with outside seating…under a big umbrella. Good thing since our burgers were served with a side of heavy rain. We lingered there longer than we ate. Since the rain gods were watching us all along, the showers stopped right after Beck scampered over to a store and bought plastic ponchos.

Lake Mjosa in the Afternoon (22 May 2019)

In 2012, I wrote about how I take pictures from moving vehicles. The examples then were planes and cars. The train that returned us to Oslo traced the shoreline of Lake Mjose, the largest lake in Norway. Increase the ISO (“film speed”), reduce the aperture number and you’ll get the faster shutter speed that will reduce the blur you get shooting through the window of a moving train. Of course, most of the images will be rejects because there will be poles, wires, half buildings and other elements that appear just as you press the shutter and spoil the composition. But there might also be a winner. Fire away. The film (and developing…that all-but-extinct process where we brought the film to a store that sent it away to be turned into pictures you could see a week later) is free. Images and More strives to help our younger readers understand what life was like back in the pioneer days.

Despite the inclement weather, this was a good day. After yesterday’s intense city scramble, a train ride through the country and hanging around a picturesque mountain town worked just fine.