We arrived in Lillehammer late in the afternoon, having taken the E6 over Lake Mjøsa and back again. The road was long and, as with much of the rest of the country, the laid-back speed limits seemed to make it stretch on forever.
You can’t visit Lillehammer without visiting the Olympic ski jump and we made our way up the mountain without so much as a glance at our accommodation for the night. The views across the lake were spectacular.
But I’m not sure you’d find me hurtling down the jump.
We made our way down the many steps with comments from people on their way up that we had chosen the easy option walking down, assuming we had taken the cable car to the top.
But no, we had left the car at the top and so, after stopping to admire the leap that the skiers made part way down, we turned around and made our way back up.
We returned to the car and headed back into Lillehammer where we checked into our accommodation for the night – the HI Lillehammer Station Hostel in the modern railway station building. Our room overlooked the tracks but any concerns of being kept awake at night were soon quelled as trains rolled by with barely a sound.
Already feeling stung by the high prices of eating in Norway a quick look on Tripadvisor found the Brooklyn Burger Joint a couple of minutes from the hostel with great reviews of the food and the prices. Bellies filled and satisfied that the joint lived up to its Tripadvisor rating we set off to look around Lillehammer.
The showers we had been dodging all day began to ease as we walked up the hill, taking in the combination of modern architecture and traditional Norwegian construction. One thing that struck us about Lillehammer was that it seemed incredibly quiet for a summer evening, as had Tonsberg had before it. In fact, most places we visited in Norway seemed quiet, until we got to the Viking Ship museum in Oslo which seemed to contain the population of a small country!
We wound through the streets until we found ourselves back at the Olympic Park, this time at the bottom of the ski jump. The park was still open and youth sports groups practiced on the pitches making the most of the late evening light.
Returning to the hostel we made some plans for the following day, and had a good night’s sleep ready for the next day’s adventures.
