We walked the 4km to Flåm on Monday. Happily, the walk was all downhill so it wasn’t hard even with our suitcases. Also, luckily it wasn’t raining. It was a walk that I’d have been happy to do if we could have just done it at bit a more leisurely pace and without suitcases.
The ferry ride through the Nærøfjord from Flåm to Gudvangen was two hours long. It was drizzling and very windy and chilly on the deck. However the interior of the boat was warm and comfortable. The ferry that we took is called Future of the Fjords and it is 100% electric so it was extremely quiet. The picture at left is taken from our ferry of another ferry of the same style — very modern and with large windows. You can also walk up the ramp to the top. Because of the wind, we just would go out every once and a while to take some pictures and then keep warm inside the rest of the time.
Over the course of the cruise we saw at least 25 waterfalls in two hours. At one point, Megan and I were out on deck and we could count 8 waterfalls all in view at once.
When we got off the ferry at Gudvangen, we transferred to an hour-long bus ride to the town of Voss. The first half-hour of the bus ride drove us past even more waterfalls. The sheer height and steepness of the cliffs that the waterfalls tumble over makes even the smaller waterfalls really interesting since you can see the course of the water as it sometimes has straight drops and then will trickle along a less steep part before another big drop. These pictures were taken by Megan from the bus. Part of the bus journey goes up to a village called Stalheim and then takes a road built in 1842-1845 called the Stalheimsklava where the steepest gradient is 20 per cent, making it one of the steepest stretches of road in Northern Europe. We had to wear seatbelts on the bus, but they were unneeded since the driver navigated the 13 hairpin bends impressively. (He said “Don’t worry it isn’t my first time … it’s my second.”)
The next step of the journey was an hour-long train ride to Bergen, our last destination of the trip. We got there at 3pm so we had a bit of time to explore the city that night, and today (Tuesday) we’ll spend the whole day. Bergen will be in the next blog post.
Balents Trip Blog 