Indescribable Beauty

Apr 29/07

Happy Birthday Bridgette. We got up early to catch a train to Voss. On the train we met a couple of Canadian guys who were doing the same tour as us, but backwards. We spent the hour-long train trip talking to them about places to visit, and where we'd been.

In Voss, we took a bus through a long windy road through the fjords and arrived at G_______ where we transfered to a boat. Along the way, we saw huge waterfalls and cliffs towering above us. The boat took us through the narrowest fjord in Norway, only a few boat-lengths wide at somepoints, but over 800m high cliffs over us. It was a fantastic journey, and a beautiful, calm, relaxing trip. We arrived around 1:00 in Flam, where we got to our hostel. It was a cute little cabin with a view of the surrounding waterfalls, cliffs and the tip of the harbour. We made reservations at the restaurant that Olaf had recommended, the Fretheim Hotel. It was going to be a very expensive dinner, but definatly worth it.

The town is about 400 people and most of it was hidden from the harbour behind a hill. It was similar to Banff in a lot of ways, but still very quiet, as the high season hadn't really started yet. When the train arrived from Myrdal, people piled off and the town was really busy...for about 3 hours. The souvenir shops were only open between 11:00 and 3:00, becuase most people arrived on the morning train and left on the afternoon boat...or the other way. We met the 2 Canadians that we had talked to that morning on the train and spent an hour chatting with them again.

Then we went for supper....Ahhhhh, it was amazing. Bridgette had salmon and halibut, with a mussle sauce. I had the most tender, tasty roasted meat I've ever had. Now, I'm not going to tell you what it is, because I still need to wait for Doug to guess about it. But it was really good. It had mushroom sauce, and a puree of cowberries. It had a side of grilled vegetables, and roasted potatoes.  We finished off with a dessert of white chocolate in cream, with a fruit puree and other yummy stuff. All in all, it was incredible. Of course, it was also more expensive than any other meal I've ever eaten in my life. The bill for the two of us was higher than our hostel was for TWO nights. But oooh, was it good. I still remember how good it was.

Apr 30/07

This morning, we got up and took the train up toward Myrdal, where the Flam railway meets the Bergen, Oslo line. Olaf had told us about a hiking path walking down from the top. Unfortunately it was still very snowy at the very top, so we got off a bit more than halfway up and started our hike there. It was 13.7km. Luckly, the path was a bike path, because we spent most of the time looking around and not watching our feet. The hike took us about 4 hours and we took hundreds of photographs. The whole hike, we could hear nothing but running water from the hundreds of waterfalls and the river running towards the sea.

When we finally got down, we had a nice afternoon relaxing and watching the sheep in the field next to us (they had cute lambs). Dinner was cheap, and not nearly as good as last nights.

We went to bed after watching the moon rise and the stars come out.