This day we had booked a tour of the most scenic bits of fjordland near Bergen.
This is the best Google maps can do: the train route from Bergen to Flåm. Click "more options" to open the map in a new window. Zoom in at the end of it and you can follow the description below of the boat ride up Aurlandsfjorden and down Naeroyfjorden to Gudvangen, and road back to Voss.
The weather was overcast, with occasional sun-gleams, and no rain fell until evening. The trip began by catching a train at Bergen central station for Myrdal, departing 6:50am. This starts with a run through the Ulriken tunnel, 5 miles long. From the end of the tunnel, the run to Myrdal offered some nice scenery. Here are two of the six pics we kept from this leg. (For more, see the Gallery, starting about page 5 of thumbnails.)
At Myrdal, we and a whole lot of other tourists transferred to the world-famous Flåmbana, which descends 864 meters in 20 kilometers, for an average grade of 5% (for a train, that is very steep).
The scenery on this one-hour ride is really spectacular. Here are a couple of highlights.
View out between the uprights of a snow-shed.
Village with waterfall.
See above about the gallery, for more from this leg. About half-way down, the train stops so everyone can admire the Kjosfossen waterfall. According to Wikipedia, the Kjossfossen drives a powerhouse that supplies electricity for the Flåmbana. Did not know that at the time.
Soon, loud eerie music begins to play and a mysterious dancer in red appears among the ruins and leaps about artistically. We learn later that she's a Norwegian ballet dancer representing Huldra, a seductive mountain figure of Norwegian folklore.
At the bottom is a complex of train station, hotel, outlet mall, and port. Three huge cruise ships were in.
Not everyone is happy with Flåm's popularity.
Here we transferred to a "RIB-boat", a small high-powered boat, for a run along two fjords.
A boat similar to ours.
They made us gear up in survival suits, gloves, goggles. You can tell this is Marian by the pink-soled sneakers.
Once out of the little port, the boat accelerated hard to about 45mph and headed out into yet more spectacular scenery.
We were in the front row, conveniently for photos.
The ride of about 90 minutes took us up Aurlandsfjorden and down Naeroyfjorden (narrow fjord), both arms of the longer Sognefjord. There was lots of awesome scenery. Here are a couple of highlights.
Click through to see the kayakers at the bottom.
The ride ended at Gudvangen, another tourist village (but smaller, apparently not offering a deep-water dock for cruise ships). Here our tour completed with a minibus ride up to the train station in Voss. However, there had been a landslide Saturday, which damaged the main road, so northbound traffic was rerouted onto what the driver called "the old road." This was a break for us, going where we'd never have gone otherwise.
Serious clutch-the-seat stuff.
Through the side(!) window, note hairpin turns ahead.
At the station in Voss, the rain started. We arrived exactly at the time the Bergen train should have departed, and were looking at an hour wait for the next in a rather dreary waiting room. However, the train was still visible on the opposite track. It had been delayed "waiting for assistance from the police" due to an unruly passenger. So we got on and were back in Bergen an hour ahead of schedule.
Unexpected, nice events continued: by chance we took a different street back from the station, which proved to be an interesting shopping district, where we found first, a hat store where David bought a not-terribly-expensive hat to replace the one lost last week (google.no had not turned up any hat retailers in Bergen or anywhere in Norway, but here one was); and second, a knitting store where Marian found an attractive sweater pattern. After determining that translation of knitting instructions from Norwegian to English was feasible, bought pattern and terribly-expensive gorgeous alpaca yarn to make sweater. Neither shop would have been open, had the train in Voss not been delayed.
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