Norway in a Nutshell

I remember sitting in Dan and Kim's living room months ago discussing our itinerary. I believe it was Kim who found the Norway in a Nutshell tour. It was great but grueling; a real endurance test. We were up for it.

What a long strange trip it was. Up and out of our flat by 5:30 am and down the hill with bags full of damp clothes [my jacket didn't dry out till Bergen] to catch a tram to the train station for our long, long train ride

Railroad Museum

across the top of the fjords,

but we didn't really mind as we were thoroughly entertained by the alien landscape.

This is where we caught the Flam train [Myrdal].

Gello

Fjord top

We reached  Myrdal where we caught a train that zig-zagged down the fjord to the sea at Flam.

Bikes & glaciers

More bikes

Daniel tried to hire a bicycle to ride down,

but they were all spoken for, so we enjoyed our wild ride hugging the fjord all the way down,

View from the train

and at one waterfall we stopped and had a photo op with a singing water maiden perched near the fall with amplified music.

local color

Top of the World

rocks

train fall view

fjord bottom

Had to wait for hours for our 2 hour ferry tour

of the fjords which was breathtaking and worth the wait. We all had ‘eye burn’ from looking at hundreds of waterfalls. Yosemite [and I love Yosemite] is lame compared to the Norwegian fjord falls - they’re 3 times as high!

Have to go to a part two on this. Too many photos for some of my e-mails.