The Flam railway & our first Fjord

Another early start. At Oslo station for our 8:11am train. Today was going to be a long day of travel. It was to be a lot of travel but it was mainly so that we could do some sightseeing. It was all about taking in the scenic route to Bergen.

Our first leg was from Olso to Myrdal. On the way up there it started to snow very lightly. It itself was quite a scenic journey. There were such variations in scenery, lush tress all the way to snow capped mountains.

We got off the train at Myrdal to chnage to get a pivate train down to Flam. We had read a lot on this journey and it was supposed to be quite spectacular, so we were really looking forward to it. It was downright freezing waiting on the platform for the train to arrive. But it came right on time.

The Flam railway did not dissapoint as we presented with amazing views as we decended down the mountain to the Fjord port of Flam where we catch the Fjord ferry for our next leg. The train stopped about half way down, so we could get out and take some pictures of a large and powerful waterfall. The only disappointing aspect to the train was that there were a few tunnels on the way down which meant there were sections where there was no view. But I guess there was only so much they can do with modern engineering.

The boat ride was another scenic ride but it was damn cold...well thats an understatement....it was freezing. It was amazing to see the walls of cliffs just rise up so high straight out of the water. These norwegiens don't know how lucky they have it.

After a few hours on the feery we were picked up by a bus and went up a winding road to stop at Stalhem hotel to check out the gergous views of the town. It was a bit of a hairy ride up to the hotel as the road was steep and wound around 13 hairpin bends as it snaked its way up the hill. We all thought that the road must be one way as it was just wide enough to fit the bus, but the buss driver informed us that it was 2 ways once we had made it down.

The last leg was a train to Bergen. We pulled in at about 9pm and wandered the streets to find our hostel. Thankfully it we found Jacobs hostel and were there in about 30mins of the train arriving.

After a good recharging sleep in and some breakfast we headed out to the fishmarkets. They were supposed to be the largest in scandanavia. Perhaps we slept in to long but the Sydney fishmarkets are way bigger! That was quite surprising that there is so much fish product in Norway! Anyway The people there were really friendly abd we tasted a few types of fresh fish. Some whale and also some salmon which had been smoked in such a way that it keeps for a week out of the fridge. It was all yummy stuff!

It finally stopped raining after the fish market so we decidedto take the Funicular (like a cog train up a hill) up to the top of Mount Fløyen, which overlooks the town. It was quite cold up there but gave us a wonderful view of the city. We decided to walk down instead of taking the funicular and we