Saturday, June 23, 2007

Railroads, Fiords and Hairpins

Yesterday we headed off by train to Myrdal. This was wonderful scenery past fiords, grass roofed houses and snow covered mountains. reaching the snowline, we boarded the famouos Flam railway for the incredible steep journey down to the fiord. Flam is a picturesque little village at the very end of the fiord. What a surprise for us to see the Queen Mary 2 docked next to the train station. We were miles inland and we think the captain would have to reverse it out.

We travelled on a much smaller craft through the magical fiord past hundreds of waterfalls and small villages some accessibke only by water. Finally we went up the narrowest fiord in Norway to Gudvangen. This time no luxury liner but a bus to take us up the incredible road with over 30 hairpin bends to Voss where we changed to a train for Bergen.

Wait till you see the photos!

Today we had a lazy start to the day taking in a midday concert at the old Kosskirken (church). The program featured Vivaldi, Bach and Buxtehude. The instruments were organ, harpsichord, cello and flute and it was just delightful.

Tomorrow we have a full day in Bergen and board the ship at 6 pm for our cruise to the most northerly point in Europe far beyond the Arctic Circle.

We will be back on 2 July and are not sure about Internet access till then.

3 comments:

theotherbear said...

Myrdal sounds like the name of a town out of Lord of the Rings.
Looking forward to the slideshow!

Miss Di said...

Have fun on the cruise. And if you hear anyone say "This ship, a miracle of modern engineering, is unsinkable" make sure you know where the life jackets and life boats are!

gailandrob said...

The coast is so close we could probably swim - but we would probably die of cold in the water.