Norway: Trollstigen
Today we drove Trollstigen, also known as the Troll's Road. It has an incline of 10 percent and 11 hairpin turns. There is a beautiful visitors center and lookout point designed by Reiulf Ramstad Architects. I loved all the detailing, materials and the gorgeous site work that takes you down to the main lookout point. This lookout point protrudes from the side of the mountain and overlooks Trollstigen and Stiggfossen that falls from 2 separate points, and snakes through the road before meeting at the bottom.
After Trollstigen, we went to Trollveggen, also known as Troll Wall (sensing a theme here). Trollveggen is the highest vertical rock face in Europe at 1,100m from its base to its highest point. It was quite impressive, but I wish there was easy access to the base. I would have loved to stand at the base and look up. Unfortunately, there was a railroad between the rock face and the visitors center where we parked, so we could only marvel at it from a distance.
We went back to Trollstigen in the evening to try to catch the sunset. It was however, very very foggy. We walked out to the lookout point and were surrounded by clouds! It was pretty amazing and very scary. I actually had a panic attack when we drove down Trollstigen on the way out. We couldn't see more than a few meters ahead of us, and I was just overcome with a sense of dread. It was pretty bad, but nonetheless beautiful. We finished the night at a Thai restaurant, which got my spirits up after that experience!
