Silver Map: Places, People, Impressions

The only wish I had there was to spend a week staring at the view outside of a cider house we were living in.
Little cabins, stone pieces of art that could be found every here and there were full of history about fishermen and kings and legends about trolls and mr. Northern wind. If I was curious to see a true Norwegian lifestyle and spirit, Balestrand was totally a right place to go to.
Beyond breathtaking scenery we've got an opportunity to see an ordinary day-to-day life of a Norwegian family, busy with taking care about their garden, picking up fruits and preparing for winter, visiting their own factory and running a family business of cider and juice production.
Balestrand is extremely small,so one must be really occupied  throughout a day not to feel an inevitable boredom of a little town.
Balestrand was referred to as a very inspiring place for the artists. And it's totally true. Fjords form a gigantic wall around the area, and watching rays of sun dancing on the top of the mountains while dark clouds above gather in a pattern is, indeed, an impressive scene that can deeply move and inspire artistic souls.
Hiking here is a must. if local Norwegians tell you it's going to be an easy hike (and you are not used to hiking almost at all), don't trust them. It's going to be harder. Far harder than "that's very easy". But it also is going to be worth it.
During our 5 hours hike we managed to enjoy wild blackberry, fall into the mud, fight the desire of quitting every step taken forward, get frustrated after every milestone we thought would be the end of our journey, but still having "just 30 minutes" to go...a couple of times. All of those little happenings were worth of what awaited us on the top.
Tiny us. Tired but happy. Enormous fjords, talking to us with their icy silence. Echo of the boat 900 meters down and our voices, relatively loud yet quiet.