Bergen - Thursday - Norway in a Nutshell

After our early adventure at the hotel, I was glad that we still made it on time to the main station for our big tour around Norway. The first leg of our journey was done by train and it took us to Myrdal.

The train ride took about two and a half hours. It was lovely to get a first glimpse of Norway through the train windows, there were lots of mountains and hills with cute little houses, there were rivers and lakes and in between in was mostly green and empty ;-)

In Myrdal we changed trains and got on the Flåm railway. Because the train has to cover a lot of altitude quite quickly there are helical tunnels, a bit like in Switzerland in Göschenen, so you got the same view again and again but from different points. The train even stopped at one time next to the Kjosfossen waterfall and everybody got out to take a few pictures. It was exciting to be so close to the masses of water, we got quite wet just from standing there. Suddenly a voice started singing and then we could make out a women clad in a red dress close to the water. I guess that was the famous Hulda who tried to lure us even closer. This was definitely one of my favourite moments of the day.

After about an hour we reached sea level and Flåm. It's situated at the end of a deep fjord and there are mostly shops and restaurants for the tourist who stop by but I liked the mood of the place anyway. Unfortunately we had to leave earlier than planned because the boat we'd planned to take seemed to have a technical problem (I know! I started to believe we were jinxed at that point...)

The next two and a half hours we glided through the fjord on bord of our Fjord Cruise ship. We saw a few little villages and a couple of people in kajaks but mostly it was just calm and blue and green.

In Gudvangen we left the water behind and took the bus to Voss. The change from one form of transport to the next was rather chaotic, I was surprised by how many problems we encountered during one single tour, a tour that must be done by hundreds of people every day. Anyway we got a seat right at the front which was fortunate because the roads we took were very winding, at one point the street had a 18% decline and it seemed almost impossible for the bus to make it down safely.

The last part between Voss and Bergen was on the train again. It was an intense day with a lot of impressions but I'd definitely do it again.