We headed back to the downtown today to find a thrift store to donate some summer clothes we no longer want to pack around. Unfortunately the store we found will not open until tomorrow, so we went towards the lakefront. Previously we had looked for an iconic symbol of Lake Mjøsa, the Skibladner, “the world’s oldest paddle steamer in timetabled service”, but it was not at its mooring in Gjøvik at the time.

As we walked down a street towards the lake we passed this model in a window. I went inside to ask if I could take a picture, and it is the office of the company that manages the boat. On closer look, this is a LEGO Skibladner!

We continued to the lake past these beautiful flower boxes lining a street.

And there it was, docked and awaiting its next passengers.

Unfortunately the season for general passengers ended on August 18, it would need to be chartered for a private cruise until September when it is moored for the winter under a special glass-roofed boat house nearby!It’s a beautiful boat with wonderful symmetry, but much smaller than we expected!

We have passed this building almost every time we’ve gone downtown and I finally got a picture of it. It extends almost a full block behind this double cornered entrance. I just thought it is a beautiful building, very eclectic.

Weather-wise, a beautiful day is predicted so we planned a walk into town to meander on the lakefront and wherever our fancies took us. We passed through the Gjøvik Gård and across the river to the industrial building that I thought was the glassworks factory or a distillery. Turns out it had been a distillery but now housed the Science Museum of Gjøvik. In the entrance hall is an exhibit of the table glass that was produced in Gjøvik from 1807 to 1843.

A beautiful assortment of table glass, behind glass, so lots of reflection. The factory was known for its ‘potpourri jars’ and its cobalt blue glasswares.

Downtown was deserted, the mall was closed as were most businesses and restaurants, so we decided to hike the almost 2 miles uphill to the open-air museum overlooking town and Mjøsa lake. The museum, ‘Eiktunet‘, translates to ‘the oak grove’ in english and is pronounced ‘Ike-tuna’. It consists of 33 buildings gathered from all around the area representing a rural community of the 18th and 19th centuries. As we ascended from the downtown streets then past apartment buildings we passed Fjellhallen, Gjøvik’s Olympic Cavern Hall, unbeknownst to us due to construction blocking the entrance and detouring us around the buildings. It is the world’s largest underground public use arena built as the hockey venue for the 1994 Winter Olympics based in Lillehammer! We had no clue as to it’s size because it was built into the mountain above town! Hiking further up through the neighborhood of single family houses on the hillside, we passed a small ski slope with a chair lift. You can truly say you ski down to the ski lift from your house!

We walked up from the ski slope and looked back at an expansive view of the lake.

We reached Eiktunet museum and were eager to wander around all the old buildings, but we were surprised to find out that today it was closed to the general public for a special sold-out event.

The only building we saw, from outside the fence near the entrance!

Bummer! We found a nearby picnic bench and had our sandwiches we had brought along. But all our effort hiking up the hill was not lost, there is a huge public park crowning the hill, and it seems that is were everybody from town decided to come enjoy the day, just like us! There are trails crisscrossing the hill, through the woods, along streams, over open fields where people (and their dogs) were picking wild blueberries, and past areas with educational signs and exercise suggestions and equipment!

“Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood”

It was great seeing the families, groups of young kids, older couples, all walking or biking around the area, all respectful of each other and enjoying being outside!

Besides blueberries we saw a few people picking mushrooms which were everywhere! The top picture has a large mushroom at the base of a huge ant hill!

As we headed back down the hill, around the back of the ski slope, we had great views o the lake below us, but our pictures did not do it justice! We did see two impressive sites as we left the park and started walking through the residential areas.

The colors of autumn are becoming more apparent, and fishhooks are important to Gjøvik based on this huge sculpture of a fishhook! It turns out that Gjøvik is the original home of O. Mustad & Søn, a steel wire products manufacturer who specializes in fishooks. This sculpture, and one of the founder’s son Hans Mustad across the street, are in front of the companies manufacturing campus, now a diversified industrial park, but still corporate home of the company.

Another walk down to the waterfront, earlier today in order to hopefully avoid the predicted afternoon rain! We wandered through the big park near the ‘downtown’ area, along the Hunnselva river, the source of power to energize the Gjøvik Glassworks, established in 1807 by Caspar Kauffeldt, which spurred early growth and diversified the economy. The park, Gjøvik Gård, was Kauffeldt’s residence and ‘gentleman’s farm’.

The park around the residence.

The front of the main residence, built in 1810.

The glassworks (or maybe a distillery?) across the river from the park.

A mural highlighting the glassblowers who were the backbone of the glassworks.

The view looking down towards town and Mjøsa lake on our way back to the B&B.

Gjøvik, pronounced “Yur-vik”, with that Scandinavian intonation on the ‘Yur’ or ‘ur’ from the ø vowel used in Norwegian, Danish, Faroese, and Southern Sámi languages.

We took a walk early this afternoon, before the rain was predicted, down to the main shopping area near the train station. There is a nice park-like setting at the train/bus station with several fountains.

This fountain must be beautiful at night with the multicolors illuminating the water columns.

We named this fountain “How Much Water Can You Squeeze From a Fish”!

We did get rained on walking back to the Airbnb!

Today we’re going to Gjøvik, a town about 45 km (28 miles) from Lillehammer, on the opposite side of Mjøsa lake. Except that we have to travel 2 hours south to Oslo by train, then 2 hours back up to the shores of Mjøsa lake by bus, to get to Gjøvik! And it’s raining! So I will digress and write about yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday we took an afternoon walk, away from the hills and down to the shores of Mjøsa lake, Norway’s largest lake, formed as a long narrow Y-shaped lake as the glaciers of the last ice age receded.  Lillehammer sits at the north end of the lake, where the Gudbrandsdalslagen river flows in. We found a pedestrian bridge that crosses a narrow, about a half mile wide, section of the lake.

The Vingnesbrua, the ‘bridge to Vingnes’, the small village with a small marina at the foot of the bridge.

The view upstream from the Lillehammer side of the bridge.

The view back towards Lillehammer as the sun shone on the ski jump and ski slopes above town. You get a much better perspective of the ski jump from here!

The view from the top of the ski jump in winter, from a picture in our room.

Back to this morning now. Robert got up early and walked back to the bridge at 6:30am to fly the drone. It was the best part of the day weather-wise, with the sun shining on the little village of Vignes across the bridge!

The blue sky did not last long though. The clouds were thick by 10:45am when we boarded our train to Oslo!

Luckily we did not have to walk in the rain in Oslo to catch our bus! Here’s a brief glimpse of downtown Oslo in the rain!

Thankfully the rain held off in Gjøvik while we walked for 25 minutes to our Airbnb, the ground floor of this house, opening to a nice garden.

We weren’t so lucky when, after we unpacked a few things, we walked to the closest grocery store. It was a light drizzle and we were happy to get back, settle in and enjoy a quiet evening and an early bedtime!