Flåm
NORWAY
It's Not the Destination, It's the Journey...
By LYNDI
Monday, April 6, 2015
If you’ve read our other blogs, you know Aaron and I rarely travel in style. We have taken innumerable chicken buses, god-awful train rides and brutal taxi journeys throughout the world. The trip from Bergen to Oslo would make all those trips seem like a distant memory.
We traveled to Norway to experience some of the world’s best natural beauty. The great part about Norway is that as long as you leave a city, you are guaranteed to see beautiful forests, staggering cliffs, snowy vistas, northern lights, stormy seas or legendary fjords. The trip from Bergen to Oslo would fulfill nearly all of these sights, and we were thrilled when the morning clouds turned to willowy fog and completely dissipated by mid-morning, promising us a trip for the memory books.
We boarded a train in Bergen early on Monday morning. Hopped up on black coffee, our Voss-bound train was relatively quick and easy, and we were dropped off at a tourist trap – er, bus station. Just about everyone on our train was on the same Norway in a Nutshell tour as us, so we just followed the line of tourists to the buses to Gudvangen. And out of the five or so buses stationed at our stop, I’m pretty sure every single one was headed to Gudvangen. The bus ride started to wind along narrow highways and mountains were just beginning to peak through the layer of fog. The further we traveled towards the Aurlandsfjord, the more dramatic the scenery was becoming. Just to change things up, the bus dropped us off at another tourist trap where we waited for our boat that would take us along the fjord.
We boarded the boat with about two dozen Chinese tourists – now don’t get me wrong, I like Chinese people. I also like tourists. But it is rare that I like two dozen of anything on my boat with me, and the Chinese tourists were no exception.
As the boat pulled out of the harbor, we were nearly run over with people trying to get to the front of the boat for photos as we headed towards the fjord. Now just imagine the pandemonium when they realized that the boat had been backing up – and they had inadvertently pushed all those people out of the way to the back of the boat RIGHT WHERE THEY NEEDED TO BE!! The boat started it’s slow turn around and nearly capsized as the weight of an entire vessel shifted from back to front. But at least there were two levels and we were finally on our way.
The ride through the fjords was magnificent. The Aurlandsfjord narrows into the Nærøyfjord, one of the most narrow fjords in Europe. Norwegian villages hugged the riverbed, and the crystal clear skies revealed towering cliffs above. The boat was nearly overtaken by a flock of seagulls since every tourist on the second level seemed to be throwing bread crumbs overboard (the majority of which definitely landed in my hair), but the annoying birds were complemented by river dolphins chasing the boat below.
Our boat wound its way along the river, finally arriving in the small town of Flåm, where a train would take us to our next destination. Most of the tourists on our boat hopped right from the boat to the waiting train, but we had tickets for the later train, so spent a few hours in the small riverside town. Since we were early in the tourist season, most of the town’s attractions were closed (including the popular microwbrewery Aeger), but we split an overpriced meal at a nearby restaurant and then had a small overpriced beer at a nearby hotel lobby while we watched the water lap at the shore.
I think that for the majority of the tourist season, there is a lot of hiking, eating, drinking, etc. you can do nearby, which would make Flåm a great overnight stop on the Norway in a Nutshell tour – but I also think the town is overrun with cruise ships and tourists, so we were fine to just while away our time as the only customers in the quiet bar.
We boarded our afternoon train on the Flåm railway and headed out on what I think is the world’s steepest rail line. The trip is only 12 miles, but takes you up 2,800 feet and takes about an hour. The train moves pretty slow, but the conductor also stops a few times enroute to let tourists take pictures of the waterfalls and valleys below.
Since our ride was still covered in snow, it made for some dramatic photos, but the waterfalls were basically a frozen icicle. The train dropped us off at Myrdal – which in the arctic snow looked like a a frozen tundra with a small boxed room for a train station – where we caught our last train back to Oslo. The 300-mile train ride took us past snow-swept vistas, and Aaron and I gazed longingly at the many Norwegians that appeared to have skiied to their train stop out of nowhere. As the sun set on the barren snowfields, it cast spectacular colors across sky and land alike. We finally arrived back in Oslo where we headed straight back to our Comfort Hotel Xpress to get some rest before our final day in Norway.
With 24 hours left in Oslo, we hit some final tourist spots, including the Kon Tiki museum and the Viking Museum. Naturally, we filled up on strong, black coffee throughout the day and wandered through the massive Frogner Park where you can see the Vigeland Sculpture Park, where the sculptor Gustav Vigeland filled nearly 80 acres with lifelike sculptures that depict life events and stories. I spent a long time seeking out “Angry Baby” in particular, desperate to see a life-size grumpy baby statue. If you have to ask why, you’ll never understand…
And then finally, our trip to Norway – and our first attempt to get back abroad – had come to an end. Ten days is a disgraceful amount of time to be able to “see” Norway, and in retrospect we would not have spent a final day in Oslo, but rather taken a side trip to Lillehammer or somewhere else nearby, but we were grateful to see stunning natural scenery, meet countless friendly Norwegians, and pay shockingly high prices for very average beer.
