Flam...stunning no matter which direction you look!
From My Magical Mystery Tour of 2006 in Flam, Norway on May 10 '06
This entry is about:
Note: oops! some of the Flam photos ended up in the main travel journal (Magical Mystery Tour of 2006) so you can see them there. I need to move those photos, add more photos from Flam and Bergen, and add subtitles. Soon hopefully! As soon as I get some decent internet access. So check back soon for more Norway photos. And hopefully more journal entries too! where am i now? stay tuned... and now here's Flam!
After Oslo I hopped on the train and headed to Flam. The trainride was stunning, as it eventually got up really high and we were travelling through some snowy mountains. It was not unlike being at the Top of the World in the Swiss Alps in July where everyone was skiing. In fact, Norway reminded me most of Switzerland. Totally stunning. Eventually the train stopped in Finsk for pictures and I got out, only to sink into a snowbank...opps. I loved all of it! In Myrdal, I took the cog railway down to the town of Flam, which went past many gorgeous waterfalls and mountain and valley scenery. We even stopped and got out to take pictures of a big waterfall.
Flam...stunning no matter which direction you look!
So arriving in Flam, everywhere around was gorgeous! The whole town was surrounded by steep mountain sides, so even if I had done nothing but sit in the back yard of the hostel and stare up, it would have been cool. The hostel was really like a camping ground with a few dorm rooms, which meant the bathroom and water were in a different building (though we had a hot plate and refrigerator, go figure).
My roommates were so much fun! These two German women, Iva and Judith, who were working in Oslo had come for the weekend. They had a great sense of humor and we had fun joking a lot. Judith asked me "did you know David Hasslehoff was a HUGE pop star in Germany?" "You mean the guy with Kitt (whoosh whoosh), Knight Rider?" (I had forgotten about Baywatch since it wasn't a real show, but a showcase for women running in swimsuits). Yes, same guy! He had appeared on a German TV talk show saying "some of my friends don't believe me when i tell them I am a pop star in Germany" and so of course all the Germans were like "yeah, right..." hehehe little did they know it was true... he is like a Britney Spears, singing nonesensical be-bop songs, except that supposedly a lot of boys like him too. hmph! so poor David was the butt of our jokes for the weekend. :)
The first day I was going to take a bus to a nearby goat cheese town, but the schedule was not so convenient. So I ended up renting a bike for the day, which they let me keep for 2 days for the same price. I biked my butt over to the neighboring town, Aurland, and it was absolutely stunning the whole way. I was biking along a fjord, enjoying the view (crash! opps! must look at the path...hehehe). I biked out past the town and saw a farmer milking his goats and stopped to visit some cute baby horses and sheeps and goats. Ah, that's the life, biking along, enjoying the beauty....awwwww...cute baby goats hobbling over...awwww...they're eating my fingers, munch, munch, how cute..... it was so awesome an amazing it didn't even matter that we got short bursts of rain. I just kept biking and smiling.
The next morning a HUGE cruise ship, the Queen Mary 2, came into port. It's hard to imagine that these ships bigger than the town can fit through the fjords and into dock. The German girls had gotten up to see it arrive at 7am, but it turns out it arrived at 6am. oops! So I waited in line with all the cruisers to get a train ticket for the cog railway to go back to the top of the mountains with my bike. Unfortunately, they would only let me go halfway "not safe for bikes, snow!" "But I LOVE snow!" hmmm....probably some regulation about saving the tourists from themselves.... The girls had said I would be ok except for the first 10 minutes when I had to walk my bike, but oh well... (they had hiked it all the way down 21 km the previous day!)
Undeterred, when I got off the train, I pointed my bike uphill and went a ways to a beautiful valley where I had a picnic lunch. All the landscape is totally amazing, a river and steep sides, green and white mountains..ah, my descriptions just won't do it justice, and probably not even the photos. On the path I did not see one single person for a long time! But eventually I did turn my bike around and head back down, stopping too frequently to enjoy the view take pictures, as I eventually had to go into "cruise" mode and cruise quickly down to Flam to catch the 3pm ferry. The feeling of cruising down the mountain path on a bike, surrounded by all this gorgeous nature, was exhilirating! i loved every second.
hi everyone now where did I last leave you? ah yes, you were zooming down the mountains on your bicycle in the beautiful fjords of norway, trying to catch your 3pm ferry. of course you did make it...barely ;) i have to work on this cutting it close thing. the funniest part was after I stopped in the hostel to pick up my backpack and then ride a little ways to return the bike and catch the ferry (I didn't have time to walk the bike). I was riding my bike with a big backpack on my back and a small backpack on my front...quite a site. i definitely got some double-takes. ;)
the ferry ride from flam to gudvangen was really nice. but it was cold, because it was really windy. it felt like iceland again. the steep sides of the fjords were so gorgeous, rocks and green and snow, all in one. again, you'll have to check out the pictures as soon as I can post them....my descriptions won't do them justice. The fjord became especially beautiful when we got to the narrow part, naejorfjord or something like that with a funny character (haha). it's one of two fjords in Norway on the unesco list. it's amazing that big ships are able to sail through these fjords, but i guess that's part of their amazement...they are sooo deep. there are also waterfalls everywhere, which is really nice. just look up...there's a tall one...and another...and another... and the moss all over the rocks really makes it magical (LOTR is everywhere!) ;)
The funniest part of the boatride was when we first started cruising. the boat was surrounded by seagulls, flying alongside the boat. hmmmmm....a curiosity I had to investigate. I went to the top deck to see why they were cruising alongside us, and I couldn't stop laughing. The Japanese tourists were going absolutely crazy with the seagulls. They were holding their hands up, trying to feed them bread, and of course all trying to get their pictures taken with the birds. They thought the seagulls were the coolest and funniest thing they had ever seen! (an aussie told me they don't have seagulls in Japan). i had lots of fun taking pictures of the japanese tourists having fun trying to take cool pictures of them with the birds. ;)
So then we hopped on a big bus and took a trip to Voss via Stalheim, an old hotel high on a mountain. The road zigzaged back and forth, and being so treacherous is only open for buses during good weather. It was an amazing ride, being able to look out the bus window and look straight down into the valley. One of the riders remarked "oh, i think i liked it better on the main road" and we all laughed. i saw a few who wouldn't even look out the window. i loved the ride, and the view from the top at the gorgeous hotel. amazing. The narrow valley was stunning. And I love the snowfields on the tops of the mountains, above the treeline. I could just see my snowboarding friends drooling if they had been with me.
From Voss I hopped on a train to Bergen, my destination for the next few nights. Yes, that trainride was cool too, all alongside a fjord. The scenery the whole way was amazing. That's why so many tourists do it, and it even has a catchy name, "Norway in a Nutshell." The difference is that they do it all in one day (from Oslo to Bergen), but I stopped for 2 days in the middle, as I'm a lazy, relaxed kind of tourist, rather than a kamakazee sightseer. I spend more nights in a place so I don't have to rush around like a madwoman trying to see everything. So there you have it; a couple days of lazy relaxation as well as enjoying nature in Flam....all the way from Oslo to Bergen, as a matter of fact.
Where have you been lately?
Share your travels with friends & family
- Free Travel Blog
- Stunning maps
- Share experiences
- Automatic emails
- Unlimited photos
- Unlimited entries
Would you like to comment or ask a question?