The first trip to our sail adventure!

This will not tell you about sailing. This will tell you how to plan and pack for sailing. We bought a new boat in November and was planning to go back to the boat for easter holiday. We used the time between Christmas and Easter to pack all of the things we wanted to bring to the boat. And I can tell you, the house has been like a mess for that periode!

We decided to drive from Norway to Greece. We could fly and send everything by other transport, but then we had the cost for tickets, we had to rent a car in Athens (and that would have cost almost the same as the whole trip with the car from Norway), and of course we had to pay for the transport for our stuff.

This is the car empty before we started packing.

and this is how it was after packing… Really good planned, without having a plan… Astor had packed all the technical stuff and I packed the rest… That was some food I will miss in Med, towels, bed linnen, and a lot of other things. The previous owner lives in New Zealand and could not come to the boat for the last two years because of covid, so we bought the boat included a lot of private stuff. But a lot of it we had to put in the garbage, so I am glad we had a lot of things in our car.

We had a beautiful weather when we start from Florø. Cold, but sunny. We started from Florø Friday after work.

We booked “Hallingstua” in Gol for the first night. It is an old house from 18th century. It was a really cosy place even if it was no water or toilet. We could use the toilet and showers on the camping at the other side of the road.

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It was a lot of old things in the house and we liked it. It was a bit cold (very cold outside too) so we tried to make a fire in the oven but it didn’t help that much… But anyway, it was late in the evening and we had to wake up early in the morning so we didn’t stay up that long.

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Saturday morning we continue our drive south. In 2016 a couple and family rented our house (we stayed in the boat) and we wanted to say hi to them while we were driving just some kilometres away from their house. It was just a short stop because we had a long way to go that day, and they were expecting kids and grandkids for dinner. Trine-Lise and Karl-Otto is an amazing couple and we hope to see you again!

After we crossed the Swedish border we had a stop at Sportshopen in Grebbestad. This is a huge shop with sports clothes, I could have walked there for hours, if I had money… We were here also in 2014 when we sailed to Tanumstrand which is just around the corner.

Astor wanted to have a stop in Fjellbacka, a little bit south of Grebbestad. What a beautiful place!

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Fjellbacka has under 1000 inhabitants but in the summertime it is thousands of tourists here, most of them coming by boat I think.

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We found some stairs going to Kungsklyftan. We walked up there. Unfortunately we didn`t had that much time so we had to stop there.

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Later I realized that Helsingborg could be a nice spot for the sunset…. And I was so right!!

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After Helsingborg we drove to Trelleborg in the south of Sweden to take the ferry over to Rostock in Germany. It was dark when the ferrytrip started (22.30 pm) and it was dark when we arrive in Rostock next morning at 06.00, so no photoes from that trip.

The shortest way to drive to Greece from Norway is through Germany – Czeck Republic – Slovakia – Hungary and Serbia, but because of the war between Russia and Ukraine we didn`t wanna go that far east. So we choose to go Germany – Austria – Italy and then ferry to Greece instead. Little bit longer to drive, but safer…

We had a short stop in Augsburg, because I saw a nice photo of a church there. But it was sooo cold that the stop ended really quick.

Feel free to sit down for a cold beer…

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Here is the church but the photo I saw was taken from another side

Our next stop was in Oberammergau, south in Germany. Oberammergau is most known for their Passion Play:

Taken from Wikipedia:

The Oberammergau Passion Play was first performed in 1634. According to local legend, the play is performed every ten years because of a vow made by the inhabitants of the village that if God spared them from the effects of the bubonic plague then sweeping the region, they would perform a passion play every ten years. A man traveling back to the town for Christmas allegedly brought the plague with him by accident. The man purportedly died from the plague and it began spreading throughout Oberammergau. After the vow was made, according to tradition, not another inhabitant of the town died from the plague. All of the town members that were still suffering from the plague are said to have recovered.

The play is now performed in years ending with a zero, as well as in 1934 which was the 300th anniversary and 1984 which was the 350th anniversary (though the 1920 performance was postponed to 1922 due to postwar economic conditions, and the 1940 performance was cancelled due to the onset of the Second World War in 1939). The 2020 play is being postponed to 2022 due to the outbreak of COVID-19. It involves over 2000 actors, singers, instrumentalists and technicians, all residents of the village.

So if we took this trip only some weeks later we could have seen it. It starts in mid May. But maybe another time? So why did we end up here? It was because of our friend Michael (the conductor for my choir, and also a sailor), he lived in this town before he came to Florø 1,5 year ago. He knew a woman on this hotel: The Posch hotel, so we ended up stay there.

They had a pool and a sauna

Oberammergau is an amazing town, have you ever seen beautiful paintings like this??

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More than one house was inspirated by an fairytale, like “Rødhette og Ulven”. It is most known from the Grimm brothers, but it is a lot more older from 1697 (the oldest known)

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It was cold in Oberammergau this weekend. The weather forcast says it would be over 20 degrees the next week…

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A little taste of Christmas…

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We had dinner at “Zur Rose”. We knew Germany is known by schnitzel and sausage so we had to try. But this will not be my favourite…

Monday we woke up early (as usual) and the weather was better than the day before. Because of the high mountains we had to wait for the sun, and we didn`t had time to do that.

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So we started on the ride through Austria, and when we came to Garmich Partenkirchen we saw the alps. The view in this area is spectacular, I could have stayed here for weeks.

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On the way over to Austria and Innsbruck we met the steapest road we ever have drove. It was 16 % slope. We had to drive really slove.

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We drove the Brenner Pass to Italy and down to Montesilvano on the westcoast of Italy. Sorry I have`nt more photos from this distance but it is not easy to take photos on the highway…

We had booked an apartment through airbnb right at the beach.

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Marias apartment wast beautiful decorated with an amazing view.

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We had a walk along the beach with the sunset. I can imagine the summer with a lot of people here. The temperature here was a lot better than in Oberammergau, but still only 13…

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We were looking for a place to eat, but everything along the beach was closed because of corona/winterseason. So we have to drive up to the center of this town, where we found a pizza place. This was really good. I ate only half of it and had the rest for lunch the next day.

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The next day we went down to Brindisi were we took the boat over to Igoumenitza. This first photo are from Brindisi on the way out from the harbour. (through the window)