Decided I wanted to cleanse my lungs after taking in far too much city air for a while now. And so, off to the fjords in Western Norway I go for 3 days of chilling out.
The Norwegians promote this trip concept called 'Norway in a Nutshell' quite heavily. Instead, I did a trip called 'Sognefjord in a Nutshell' with an additional tour that included the Dalsfjord & Gaularfjell mountains. It was bloody expensive (A$530) & not a group tour package either. You could spend whatever time you wanted taking the trip. The cost only provided tickets for the main travel routes, & didn't include accommodation along the way.
The trip started in Oslo with a train trip to Myrdal, a highland country town still covered with quite a bit of snow. Then I took the Flam Railway train with the steepest descent in the world down to Flam. From Flam, an express boat took us through the fjords to Balestrand, where I stopped for the night at a hostel. Balestrand is gorgeous. Quiet, with fresh mountain air & snow-capped mountains surrounding it.
The next day, I caught a bus over the high mountain pass through Fjaerland & Forde to Bygstad. Not many tourists do this route & it was was pristine with spectacular sights. At Bygstad, me & two other couples took a slow fjord boat to Rysjedalsvika, a town that seemed to be at the end of the earth. There we had to wait an hour & a half for an expressboat to Bergen & picked wildberries (raspberries, blueberries & red currants) to pass time & satisfy our hunger.
Finally, after weaving through the many islands on the west coast, we landed in Bergen at 8:40pm.
And the next day, I boarded another train to take me back to Oslo, which took nearly 7 hours but had wonderful scenery.
A lovely couple of days all up!
The Norwegians promote this trip concept called 'Norway in a Nutshell' quite heavily. Instead, I did a trip called 'Sognefjord in a Nutshell' with an additional tour that included the Dalsfjord & Gaularfjell mountains. It was bloody expensive (A$530) & not a group tour package either. You could spend whatever time you wanted taking the trip. The cost only provided tickets for the main travel routes, & didn't include accommodation along the way.
The trip started in Oslo with a train trip to Myrdal, a highland country town still covered with quite a bit of snow. Then I took the Flam Railway train with the steepest descent in the world down to Flam. From Flam, an express boat took us through the fjords to Balestrand, where I stopped for the night at a hostel. Balestrand is gorgeous. Quiet, with fresh mountain air & snow-capped mountains surrounding it.
The next day, I caught a bus over the high mountain pass through Fjaerland & Forde to Bygstad. Not many tourists do this route & it was was pristine with spectacular sights. At Bygstad, me & two other couples took a slow fjord boat to Rysjedalsvika, a town that seemed to be at the end of the earth. There we had to wait an hour & a half for an expressboat to Bergen & picked wildberries (raspberries, blueberries & red currants) to pass time & satisfy our hunger.
Finally, after weaving through the many islands on the west coast, we landed in Bergen at 8:40pm.
And the next day, I boarded another train to take me back to Oslo, which took nearly 7 hours but had wonderful scenery.
A lovely couple of days all up!
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