Monday, October 29, 2007

Friday, October 26th, 2007 - - Oslo-Myrdal-Flåm-Gudvangen-Voss-Bergen

We got up at 6:30am and were out the door by 7am. Overall, the hostel was nice. Wasn't the cleanest place, but was nice to have a toilet and shower in the room. There was even a kitchen, but we didn't use it. Went right next door to the Anker Best Western Hotel to eat a 75NOK (Norwegian krona) frukost (breakfast). As Eugenia now knows, we killed two birds with one stone because we took lots of food for lunch so we didn't have to pay even more! The NOK is extremely pricey compared to SEK. Same prices as in Sweden, but with a worse exchange rate.

Hurried out of the hotel, caught tram 11 and eventually arrived at the train station. Now begins our very busy day.

Boarded the train and we were out of Oslo, on our 4.5 hour ride west to Myrdal. The scenery was absolutely breathtaking that I can't even begin to try and explain it. The early part of the trip was extremely foggy and cold out and there was frost all over the fields and trees. Everything was white. Slowly the sun decided to shine, which of course, made everything more beautiful. Once in Myrdal, we switched trains to the Flåmbana, a very famous railway in Flåm that goes through the fjords. Got to the fjords and by the Flåmbana we were going in and out of tunnels through the mountains and even stopped in areas where we could get out and take pictures.

Next stop was 50 minutes later in Flåm where we had an hour break to look around the city of 450 people. Wasn't much going on, but was amazing to be eating lunch with all of these cliffs surrounding you. By now it was early afternoon and the sun was already disappearing behind the fjords, so it was getting rather chilly.

Now we changed forms of transportation. We boarded a boat to Gudvangen. We had moments when it wasn't too cold to go on top to get pictures, otherwise with the wind it was very cold. Cold enough that ice was forming on the water and snow on the hills! However, the views were amazing and truthfully, it sort of reminded me of our Yangtze River boat tour through the gorges.

Arriving 2 hours later in Gudvangen and we jumped right onto a bus to take us back down some of the 1,000+ meters to Voss. It was now getting dark out (about 6pm) and we had an hour wait for our next train in Voss.

Eugenia and I decided to hang out and get something to eat in the train station because any part of Voss that looked interesting while driving through, was pretty far to walk to. Got hot dogs to eat and stayed warm til the train. About an hour later, we arrived in Bergen.

Found our hostel, Marken Gjestehus, and after a little confusion on where the actual place was, we found our room. The reception desk closes early and opens late, so we really didn't know what we were supposed to do as far as paying goes. Made our beds, once again, and decided to check out the night life.

Bergen is known as a city where it rains all the time and it didn't change for us either. We walked along Bryggen and found a castle tower called Rosenkrantz Tower. It was built by the governor of Bergen Castle (Bergenhus). Bryggen is a series of Hanseatic commercial buildings lining the eastern side of the fjord coming into Bergen. We also walked along Haakon's Hall, which was built in the 1200's.

Continued walking along the wharf and found a bar to grab a beer and chat. Talked and talked til midnight when we left to go back to the hostel. After showers, were in bed by 1am with alarm set for 7am. Today was a fantastic and tiring day. We met 3 students studying in Copenhagen. Two are from the United States and one from Australia. Jeremy is from California and goes to USC and Mark is from Boston and believe it or not, he goes to school in Madison! UW-Madison to be exact! Small world! All 3 are on the same tour as we are, so we saw them all day and will continue to see them!

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