It is a long way between camping in a tent and staying in a luxury hotel like the old wooden historical places along the western coast of Norway. Tenting has its charm, but after a week at a cabin without electricity, without indoor water, I am in no doubt about what to chose.
Last year I bought a book about old wooden hotels in Norway, and since then it has become a passion to visit at least one of these places every summer.
Union hotell is a perfect place to live the good life. The owner, dressed in gold, and all his helpers spent all their time making sure that we had a good time, all we needed to concentrate on was to enjoy every minute of our stay. A simple task!
We ate a four course dinner based on lokal food, and afterwards spent a long night out in the garden with our coffee. I brought a book, Terje brought a paper, but it was so much easier to enjoy the snowcovered mountaintops embracing the hotel valley, accompagnied by steep waterfalls pregnant with melted ice water. Late, after the sun went to sleep, all the guests at the hotel gathered in the lounge. The owner had a basket filled with stories and anectdotes to tell, young Henrik played the piano, Mariann song old Norwegian songs. In the middle of the room was a coffee table filled with colourful books about the mountains and fjords of western Norway. We went to bed very late.
Union Hotel has a fasinating story, from the time, more than one hundred years ago when British and Continental adventures and royals came to explore the nature of Europe's outpost!
.....I hope to write an article about the hotel.......some day. Untill then, all you are given is this post :-) Hopefully it is a seedou can plant. Let it grown, and one day the plant might take you all the way to Norway. May be we meet next year, in one of the old wooden hotels?
