4th July 2023 (drizzle and cold) 0km

Oh say can you see

By the dawns early light

What so proudly we hailed
At the twilights last gleaming

Whose broad stripes and bright stars
Through the perilous fight
O'er the ramparts we watched
Were so gallantly streaming............

Good mooornin America
God damn that boy is funky
Y'all come back now, ya hear
Have a nice day

I think in the circumstances it was a good thing America did achieve Independence.  I can't see me with hand on heart pledging allegiance to the flag every morning at school, although interestingly, I can see myself with a semi automatic killing off certain sectors of society that I deem to be a waste of space.
I can most seriously see me having a gripe with parliament if they think about raising the age of retirement, before I get there in a years time.

Anyway. Happy Independence Day  Merricca.

We had met two other French cyclists  yesterday. He was the silent type, by that I mean a "miserable" prat and she looked as though she'd spent the day sucking lemons.

Fortunately they packed up today and headed to Nordkapp.  I believe there's an ice pack further north, that you may want to check out.
On the other side of the coin, were Antoine and Marion, who were quiet, but lovely.
They came and gave us two shower tokens that they won't be using as they are on the way back to the French Alps.
Vive Le Francais.

A morning ride to get breakfast was followed not too much later by another ride into the city for a look around.  Two massive cruise liners in, so plenty of English, (one was a P & O liner) unt da udder vast Fram da Farterland.  Temperature was cold this morning, but as we sit in our little home drinking coffee, the sun is coming out to play.
 

Spare inner tube or something you can eat?

Turns out it's some kind of sausage.  

You can keep your local cuisine!

Good afternoon. Its 3.20pm in Alesund, Norway and here is the weather forecast.
Ya...de rain dat vast clearing is not.
It cloudy in sky vit da rain could be to shower.

Julia hopefully arranging the towels to dry on the tent.

So...all in all a piss poor day mate...
Had showers middle of the day before the hordes of campers ( Hi de hi...Hi de Ho ) arrived.
I've got one that you don't have to insert your 5min token into and it's unlimited hot water, so I washed my clothes in there too.
Beautiful.......

Still saying the sun will come out at 5pm.  It didn't. 

We headed into Alesund around 4.30pm

It was freezing cold and beginning to rain.

It never amounted to more than drizzle, but it was that lingering threat the whole time we were out taking shots.

In 2014 the population of Alesund was forty five thousand. Even with a small increase over nine years, we're picking it would be fifty thou.

Obviously it's major income would be the cruise ships.There were people all over town that were off the ship.

Over one hundred come into the town every year.

That is quite a bit of coin coming through the local economy.

We went up the four hundred and eighteen steps to get the best shots of the town and met a nice German couple from Freiburg, who took our photo after we had offered to take theirs.

The town isn't very large, so it didn't take long, but it would have been more fun on a nicer day.

And as beautiful as Norway is in general, when you see and feel it on a miserable day, it's the same as anywhere else.

You're confined to quarters, in our case, very close quarters.

Facetimed Brody again and he was giving us the rundown on his workplace and colleagues and some of the clients he shot over the previous days.

It was late by the time we'd eaten so we only had about an hour in the lounge area writing, blogging and getting up to date ready for the next stage of our journey.