Norway: Day 5: Flåm (Flam), then to Bergen

I took these pictures today; Di Yin took many more. The link goes to the first picture that she took this day in the album; the rest of the album is all from this day. If you're in slideshow mode and see a picture of a train station, you've cycled to the beginning of album (which was taken on the previous day).

We woke up in our hotel in Flam, looked outside, and decided the view was still amazing. We ate breakfast on our balcony, ran some errands, then left to take a hike.

The route we chose combined two hikes listed by the tourist office into one. First, we hiked along the river and up the local waterfall, Brekkefossen. Then we walked to a nice housing estate, Lunden, and hiked on the other side of the river back to Flam. The houses by Flam look very clean, freshly painted, and well kept up in general.

Although the waterfall wasn't particularly impressive, the hike was well worth it simply for the views. Di Yin kept saying "wow" and "Norway is awesome." Indeed. I believe the view of the fjord from the waterfall is awesome in the full meaning of the word. Di Yin said Flam and this area was like Yosemite only more awesome and with a smaller tourist town. The views were so good that, as someone we met on the slopes observed, if I looked at a picture (such as this one), not seeing the scene with my own eyes, I would think it was a created backdrop. Nothing could naturally be so beautiful.

Once back in Flam, we had a good buffet lunch on the harbor at Furukroa. I'll remember it especially for the many different (delicious) ways it presented salmon. I was also amused to notice the hostess didn't speak Norwegian. How unusual.

After lunch, we stopped by the tiny Flam Railway Museum. I learned that all but two of the line's twenty tunnels were excavated by hand. No wonder it took twenty years to complete. I also learned the project's sponsors paid per metre of track, with no deduction for expenses/equipment. It's a different financing system than we use in the states, and certainly an incentive to make the most efficient use of labor and capital as possible.

Picking up our baggage, we boarded a high speed ferry to Bergen. Although my album (already linked above) contains pictures from this journey and our first night in Bergen, Di Yin has a different album that contains her pictures. The link goes to the first picture in the album. When you a hit a picture with the caption "we went exploring the next morning" (picture #100), you're done with the pictures for the day. The remaining pictures are from the following days' activities; I'll link to them in the later posts.

The ferry took us out the short, narrow Aurlandsfjord and into the wider Sognefjord, where we spent the bulk of the trip, before dodging islands in the narrow sounds near Bergen. Whereas the fjords passed through steep, sweeping, forested terrain, the islands, especially the smaller ones, had a different character: rugged, low-rising, and often windswept. Incidentally, the larger islands we passed at the very end of the trip were more green.

I was excited that the sun came out as we left dock, but the boat moved quickly and we were soon under overcast skies again. Indeed, the boat traveled so fast that it was difficult to stand on the side because the wind pressure was so great. In Di Yin's pictures, you can look at my hair to see how windy it was. Though we spent some of the journey outside on the boat's side squatting under the height of the railing--it blocked some of the wind--, we spent more of it outside in the back of the boat where the boat's bulk protected us from the wind. (The views from inside didn't look as good, so we only spent time there after having gotten our fill.) During the last segment of the trip, the boat had to seriously slow down at times because the passages were narrow, sometimes not more than two boat widths.

Once in the pretty town of Bergen, we trotted to our hotel, had a small snack for dinner (given our lunch, we weren't hungry), and called it a night. (Recall that I already summarized my impressions of Bergen.)