juvet landscape hotel

knowing how hard it would be to tear ourselves away from the lighthouse, the mister had hidden his ace up his sleeve. it was only after much cajoling, and telling me "the next place will be even better" did i reluctantly follow him to the car. and boy am i glad i did. because my oh my, i do think he outdid himself with the next place. little did i know that he'd seen this hotel, booked it before even booking our flight tickets, and proceeded to plan the roadtrip around it. strangely, i'd just read about it on my fb newsfeed and even earlier, a friend had blogged about it. so there was this strange deja vu moment when i stepped into our room. but in a good way! and i couldn't believe i was actually staying where i'd only dreamt of before.

the photo above is of the steam room before the steamer came on. had to crank up our core body temperature before swimming in the glacial meltwater haha. 

we bumped into yet another gorgeous norwegian man who was filming on location and he told us about the troll's way just down the road. that's the thing about norway. every one we'd the privilege of meeting had been nothing but welcoming and eager to share their country's bounty with us. intrigued, we ventured to the troll's way before dinner and caught the trail and platform in the setting sun. again, tour bus and almost tourist-free ;) 

dinner back at the hotel was a communal affair, one i'm not entirely used to but do enjoy on the odd occasion. reminded me of dinner in goa and it was a fascinating, international bunch. mostly couples (german, israeli, mexican, us) and an indonesian family from jakarta. the israeli gent was a tribal art collector who'd been to more places in south east asia than i (and the indonesians!), the mexican couple were a barrel of laughs, and the indonesian family good conversation, laughing at how corrupt indonesia is and how you just need to know which palms to grease to make any thing possible. not too sure how i take to that, coming from straight-laced, un-corrupt singapore (something i love and am proud of!) but it was just dinner banter. and no one meant any harm. it did get quite political at one point, when the indonesian and israeli started talking palestine (dun dun dunnnnn...) but someone diffused the situation (probably the mexican) and it was smiles all round when dessert came.

edit: if you'd like to read more about india, here's a guest post i did yonks ago!