Photographer's dilemma

Which is better, a detail of yet more waterfalls, with the texture of the rock and the moss, or a long shot of the water falling from the heights?

Or just post both?

Mountain farms

Some of the farms we passed as we sailed through the mountains.

The Seven Sisters from sea level

The waterfall I photographed earlier from Eagle Bend, a lot closer and looking up rather than down.

Leaving Geiranger

Five minutes before the engines started up and we left Geiranger, the sun came out.

On the one hand, it was almost a taunt -- imagine some of the magnificent views we could have seen if the weather had just cleared up a little sooner.

But if the sunlight was rationed -- and in this part of Norway it might actually be -- then maybe this was the best way to use it after all, when we were sailing through the length of the fjord on our way back to the sea.

Those funny scallop shapes in the water are the ship's wake. The waters in the fjord are so calm and so deep that this enormous ship leaves only a sedate line of small stylized waves behind, instead of the usual great crashing and thrashing and spewing and spraying I'm used to.

Another outlook

From a different, much lower, lookout point on the other side of the fjord, here's our cruise ship (the one on the right) awaiting our return, with the fjord snaking around between the mountains behind it.

For a sense of scale

The weather had cleared a little by the time we were heading back down the scary switchbacks to the Geiranger fjord, so we were able to stop at the lookout.

I wish the weather had been clearer so the mountains in the background could be seen better, but I wanted to post this picture -- of the Seven Sisters waterfall -- anyway, because the ship sailing through the fjord at the bottom gives you some sense of how tall these mountains are, and how high they loom overhead when you're down in the water.

The pictures I've taken from the water just don't have anything to give that sense of scale, so although they show how beautiful the landscape is, they can't really capture the drama.

Lost in the fog

As I suspected, the scheduled tour was modified because of the weather; the mountaintop farm had closed early for the season, and we were going to be learning all about making goat cheese at a lower elevation than originally planned.

The rest of the tour went as scheduled though, starting with a hair-raising ride up a series of switchbacks to the top of one of the mountains, and then down again on the other side.

This is Storfjorden, or the Big Fjord, the main fjord of which Geiranger is just one of the branches. I usually think of myself as having a good sense of direction, but the fjords turn me all around. I can't get a sense of how they relate to each other on a map.

And this weather doesn't help. I have no idea which way anything is from here, and it's disorienting.

Geiranger

Instead of heading back out to sea after Ålesund, we sailed inland, up a series of fjords to the very end, where a village called Geiranger sits at the tip of the fjord with the same name. It's supposed to be the most beautiful fjord in Norway, but as we went through most of it overnight we couldn't see anything.

And this morning it's pouring, pouring, pouring rain, so I'm not sure how much of it we'll be able to appreciate after all.

There are mists trailing down off the mountains towering over us all around, giving a nice romantic gloominess to the day, which would be wonderful if I were just going to sit on the ship and drink tea and daydream. But I'm supposed to be visiting a goat farm at the top of one of the mountains and I'm guessing the tour is going to be seriously scaled back.