We awaked with the sun peering through the window.  It was like a miracle since we hadn’t seen the sun once in the morning so far and today we were to go horseback riding and I was convinced we would be going in the rain.  At breakfast we packed ourselves a lunch, there were mainly lunch items anyway, so I guess it was the Norwegian way.  They provided bags and fresh baked bread.  Then we went down to the barn where I was expecting to see tacked horses.  No such thing they had to be gathered from the pasture, and we had to brush them and tack them ourselves.  The horses were run across the street to the muddy paddock next to the barn.

Horses crossing the street

At least the horses were fetched for us because I did not want to go into the paddock as I had no riding or protective equipment.  I got a brown horse with a white main called Imar and Hendrik got a beige horse with a white main named Ljøme.  They were so short I kept wanting to call them ponies.  We took them to the barn for breakfast and to groom them.  I helped Hendrik since he had never groomed a horse before and Ljøme was way muddier than Imar. We both needed help tacking the horse since Icelandic horses wear the saddle further back and not on top of their withers as I was used to.  They are also ridden with long stirrups with the knee barley bent so it felt weird to me and the taller people’s feet ended up below the horse’s stomach so it looked as if they could drag their feet through the ground.

Wading through the pond

Shortly after we had begun to ride we brought our horses into a tölt which is a gait somewhat like a trot but smoother and it is unique for Icelandic horses.  It was comfortable and smooth and apparently it doesn’t tire a horse out as much as a trot.  We even tried a canter which was pretty advanced since Hendrik had never sat on a horse before but he did very well but lost a stirrup but that is normal for beginners.  We waded our horses into a pond which Imar did not seem to like and at every opportunity tried to escape the water.  Near the end of the ride we climbed atop a small mountain overlooking the farm and the whole valley.  We were able to take some great pictures.  Then we had to go back and it was pretty steep coming up and for me going down something steep is harder on horseback then going up especially since Imar decided he knew a better route than following the trail at one point. I thought he know best since he was the one going down but that was not the case and at one point I was so vertical I thought I was going to fall off.  Afterward, I made sure he stayed on the path.  All in all it was a great and beautiful ride and sunny the whole time.

On top of the hill

After the ride, we ate our lunch which we had packed in the ranch and then set of for Kristiansund, from which the scenic and famous Atlantic Road began. Kristiansund is an island city and to get to it we had to cross over several expensive bridges only to come to a town that wasn’t worth our time.  We decided to spoil ourselves in a nice hotel, Rica.  We wanted to find something to eat and went on trip advisor and found a highly rated fish and chips place.  We decided that would be great since we were in a fishing town.  We arrived at the shop at 6:30 only to see that they close at 6:00.  Most everything else was closed as well.  We thought that was incredibly strange since in many places restaurants don’t even open until 6.  We were quite disappointed because our other options seemed less enticing and much more expensive.  We went into a wanna-be American family style pizzeria chain called Pepe’s Pizza. The service was less than subpar and after getting the menus ourselves and ordering at the bar we were forgotten about.  It wasn’t until the waitress’ friends had come and gone that she noticed us and realized she had forgotten about us for an hour.  She panicked a bit when she saw us and was apologetic but tried to blame the mistake on the server instead of her social life, but she did give us a free appetizer of our choice which was good since we could save some of the pizza for lunch and also gave us 20% off the total bill so all in all it only turned out to be semi-outrageously expensive with all the discounts. We went to use the sauna when we came back to the hotel but we could only use it for about 15 minutes since Pepe’s had drained all of our time and the sauna was turned off at 10.