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"Norway in a Nutshell" is hyped as the tour of Norway you want to take if you have only one day to spend touring in Norway. It's the (greatly) abridged version. Starting in Bergen, we took the train up the mountains in the interior to Myrdal. Although we'd flown over high glaciers the day before, this was the first time we saw actual snow on the ground in what threatened, as we climbed higher and higher, to become close proximity. At Myrdal, we crossed to the other side of the train platform to board the narrow-gauge railroad that descends steeply into the cute village of Flåm, stopping for a spray-soaked photo-op of a scenic waterfall. This, despite the fact that we'd taken 47 previous photos of waterfall before realizing that with the snowmelt in June, waterfalls were almost as common as trees. (Okay, I exaggerate, but only slightly!) |
After a 3 hour layover in Flåm (during which we attempted but failed a daring barefoot hike up to a waterfall--the barefoot part necessitated by the wearing of flipflop sandals that proved completely inadequate for hiking), we boarded a boat that sailed out the Aurlandsfjord and then down the Nærøyfjord, a UNESCO world-heritage site surrounded by mountains over 1-1/2 kilometers (over a mile) high.
We docked at Gudvangen and boarded a bus that snaked up the hairpin Stalheimskleiva, affording views of still more waterfalls.
At Voss, we boarded the train back to Bergen, arriving in bright daylight at 8:30 in the evening, exhausted but happy. Time for dinner!
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