Todays blog courtesy of Bonnie
Breakfast was to be at 8 am. I was the first to arrive in the blue room. I had some time to sit there with my coffee and say thank you for my many blessings. I was also flooded with thoughts of Mom and Dad and wished that they could have made this trip. The rest of the family arrived and we enjoyed our buffet. My caviar was back on the table for my hard boiled egg, as well as my herring.
We ate leisurely, thinking we had time before our train, however our sweet server from Prague came to us and said, “There is going to be a train strike today. When are you planning on leaving?” We bolted! It was 9:20 am and they said we could catch the 9:45 am train and we made it!!
We traveled by rail from Myrdal to Flam…spectacular views of the mountains and waterfalls. The ladies from Oslo were right when they said this was the five star ride in Norway. The train stopped at a beautiful waterfall where there was music and ladies in red stood high in the mountain with arms in the air.
The train continued on to the sweet village of Flam where we had the afternoon to wait on our boat to Bergen. Flam sits in a green valley at the head of the Fjords.
We lunched on fish made outside in tents, (Maria purchased an $18 bowl of chowder….prices are high in Norway), we toured the little railroad museum and I shopped for trinkets.
Now we are on a high speed boat traveling to Bergen through the Sognefjord, the longest and deepest fjord. This is a five hour ride, but we have stopped at cities along the way for new passengers and to let others off. The ride has rolled some, but not too bad.
The trip we put together to get from Oslo to Bergen is called Sognefjord in a Nutshell. Train from Oslo to Myrdal, another train from Myrdal to Flam (we got off partway to stay overnight in Vatnalsan). Then an express boat from Flam to Bergen through the Sognefjord. See map below. You can go through a travel agency to book these tickets or you can just piece together the individual segments on your own. Norway offers great discounts (50%) for seniors so travelling with Bill’s siblings saved some bucks!
So we booked the following segments for this trip.
- Oslo to Myrdal/Vatnahalsen was booked through the Norwegian train company (nsb.no). However it is not easy to pay with American credit cards online. I had to call their customer service line and make the reservation over the phone.
- Vatnalhasen to Flam- nsb.no
- Flam to Bergen (norled.no) – made a reservation and paid online. Most of the Norway in a Nutshell tours have a more complicated route. They take a boat through the Fjords from Flam to Gudvangen where they catch a bus to Voss and then board a train from Voss to Bergen. I felt that this would be way too much schlepping of our luggage. All we gave up was seeing the famous narrow Naeroyfjord – but we saw lots of beautiful fjords on the trip and we don’t know what we missed!
We got a kick out of the hordes of Japanese who rushed out to open area on the stern climbing all over each other to take selfies of the views. They never stop taking pictures to actually enjoy the views with their eyes and they have to place themselves in every possible photo. Young and old women alike, posing for cheesecake photos everywhere we go.
The boat captain was flying through some narrow passages. We arrived in Bergen around 9pm and were able to find our guest house without too much trouble. Google maps showed us how to get there on foot, but it didnt say we had to schlep our bags uphill and up several flights of stairs that connected two streets.
Overall the crew agrees that Monday, part two of the Norway in Nutshell trip, was the bomb!