okay, i have so many hundreds of pictures from our trip to norway to organise and share! as long as i can remember, the fjords of norway have been at the tip top of my travel wish list. for one reason or another different destinations have beat out my dream destination over the past few years, but this june i at last got to norway! i had high expectations, but they were exceeded! this is such a stunning part of the earth.

we spent a week exploring the fjords via cruise boat:

and the next week exploring the fjords via motor home!:

it was an epic family adventure and i’m not sure how to start documenting it…! i guess i’ll just start at the very beginning…
we traveled via train to southampton and then walked to the cruise boat terminal from the train station, looking like quite the circus with two small children, a stroller, two car seats, a big suitcase, and two backpacks. but we were really pumped when we saw our boat!:

after we got settled into our cabin, we spent some time at the kid’s splash pool on deck fifteen, got the kids to bed, and then got to check out this pretty sunset as we cruised through and out of the english channel. next stop, norway!

we had one full day at sea. cruise ships are so fascinating to me. they are kind of a weird little world, but are really fun when you just lean into their uniqueness. our ship had an awesome kids club that moses looooved (gabriel wasn’t quite old enough), and also a “night nursery” where you can leave sleeping kids and babies. ian and i got to have a dinner date every night on board, it was awesome! and although the food wasn’t super great, the options were abundant and everything is all-you-can-eat, which is kind of my love language, haha.
we had a relaxing at-sea day around the ship. it was cool to step out onto our balcony and just see endless ocean.
 
mo loved running down the loooong corridors on the ship. when we woke up on monday morning, we popped out onto the balcony and saw our first port: stavanger!
 
as we drifted in to the shore, we saw millions of jellyfish in the water. every speck in this (really bad) photo is a jellyfish! kind of wild. it was mesmerizing to watch them swimming around as we pulled into the port.

and then we were off to explore! here’s a picture of closed-eyes ian and grumpy-face moses with our parked cruise boat.

we wandered around the streets a little and got our first taste of norway! moses spotted a troll statue, which turned out to be the first of many that he adored throughout our two weeks around the fjords.
 
isn’t this colourful road delightful?
 
we spent an hour or so walking the thoroughly charming whitewashed streets of stavanger’s old town. i love all the flags and flowers!

 
it was kind of strange and kind of cool to see our huge boat at the end of the streets! we found two little playgrounds amidst the charm – jackpot!
 
 
 
then, we went on a little boat down into lysefjord. it was sooo windy and sooo beautiful.

sometimes you’ve got to just try to capture the tantrums … which are usually over very quickly and the boys are back to smiles 😉
 
the scenery got more and more dramatic as we continued down the fjord. it was so hard to capture with a camera!

see that little narrow rectangular platform of rock sticking out in this photo below? that is preikestolen, or pulpit rock, one of the most iconic spots in fjord norway. we hiked to preikestolen a week after we rode on a boat underneath it. really cool to get both perspectives of lysefjord!

our boat went right up next to this waterfall. one of the crew held out a bucket to catch some of the gush and we all got to drink a bit of fresh waterfall water! moses and i got a bit soaked standing at the very front of the boat. we felt alive!
 
ahhh these pictures do such a bad job capturing the grandeur! i had a moment on this boat ride when my soul just stopped, soaked it all in and thought, “wow, god is awesome.”

back to the old town and more troll statues…!

and then back on the boat overlooking the city!

 
and we were off to our next stop – which turned out to be my favourite spot in norway.
to be continued…!