Fresh pastries
Monday, August 15th: Utladalen, Norway > Nordberg, Norway
We were celebrating a milestone and went into the small town of Ardal to Tya Bakery, Cafe and Bar. We had high expectations after reviewing photos on Google the night before of cupcakes, pastries, donuts, cakes and more. Surprisingly, they opened a bit late in the morning at 10 AM. We strategically arrived at 10:30 AM to ensure warm and freshly baked treats. We were surprised when we walked in and the display cases were more empty than full with only a few pastries and cakes to choose from. We took a walk to the other bakery across the street in hopes of something more promising. The cafe was in a small retail center and had an assortment of savory and sweet items, but they didn’t look abundantly fresh. Still enticing, we had a warm caramel apple cake with whipped cream and two macarons (caramel, vanilla). They were delicious, but we wanted more. We went back to the original bakery and suddenly they had more items out for sale, including the tray of fluffy croissants that she was pulling off the baking tray one by one. We ordered a croissant, pastry with custard and fruit, what we thought was a piece of chocolate cake and two coffees. Everything was delicious. The cake was like a carrot cake without carrots - a nice combo of autumn flavors, like warm cinnamon, and layered with sweet buttercream. Lesson learned: don’t go to Norwegian bakeries when they open… wait two hours until they have everything freshly baked and ready for customers.
We started making our way toward Geiranger, driving through Jotunheimen National Park. We stopped at a gallery / restaurant with unique architecture inside and simple, yet beautiful, paintings on display. Outside of the building was a steel bridge with no pylons. It was a welding marvel and we couldn’t quite grasp the engineering design or physics of it.
We stopped in Nordberg and booked a cabin at the Reinheimen Lodge to make arrangements for our trip home. The lodge had standard rooms, domes and cabins with a shared bathroom and restaurant in the main building. We walked along the lakefront where they had a wood burning hot tub and row boats for rent. We made dinner, met a couple from Israel (originally from New Jersey and South Africa) and FaceTimed with Oslo.
Accommodations: Reinheimen Lodge
