Flam — Jim Winslett

Woke up this morning in the fjord Aurlandsfjorden (I won’t try to type a pronunciation, just mimic the Swedish Chef from the Muppets and you’ll be close).

It was pretty.

When we anchored just offshore, this was the view from our cabin:

There was zero suckage in this view. It was tempting to just stay on the ship and enjoy it.

We were on the first tender boat to shore, where we loaded up on a bus and headed up some unbelievably narrow roads with sheer drop-offs. Eventually, we arrived at a lookout point already filled with tourists.

I did manage to get out to the end of it, which was a bit unnerving, as the end of the thing is plexiglass and nearly invisible…

The view from there was nice, though.

hen back down the switchbacks - it was crazy. I don’t know who thought that busses could get up and down those roads - there were only a few places where the roads were wide enough for two vehicles to pass and sometimes it would be awhile before you could move forward if there was traffic going the other way.

(and we heard from our Aussie friends who were on a later tour that they were delayed nearly 2 hours trying to get down that road in afternoon traffic).

At the bottom of the mountain was a little village named Aurland. It was nothing special, aside from a church built in 1202.

…and it had a nice waterfront.

Once back at the dock, we took a walk around the area, and quickly decided to avoid the waterfront area, as it was crammed full of tourists from another one of those 6000 passenger ships.

Again, the ship(s) completely overwhelmed the town. Nearly 7000 tourists in a town of 400. Yipes.

And they weren’t even classy tourists like Rob and I, either. (You’ll have to imagine our noses in the air while I type this).

Hell, even the birds had “man bun” hairstyles. So gauche!

Anyway, we ditched the town and headed up river to see if we could get a better look at Brekkefossen, a giant waterfall.

Along the road, we saw some goats

…and some idyllic countryside.

We got close enough to get this shot:

…but after heading back to ship and having lunch, I wanted to see if I could get closer, so I tendered back to shore and made the hike again.

Eventually, I see this sign:

Half a kilometre down a trail. No problem! I’d already walked nearly 3km to get here.

What the sign doesn’t tell you is that the trail doesn’t lead to the bottom of the falls. It’s half a km nearly straight up on stone steps. According to my watch, it was equivalent to 52 flights of stairs. I was pretty worn out when I got to the top, especially after climbing to the observation station in Ålesund yesterday, but WOW was it worth it.

I know that picture doesn’t show the scale of this thing very well at all… so here’s one I took from across the river at a distance - I put a red circle around two people standing where I was standing when I took the shot you just saw:

t’s just breathtaking to see it in person and feel so tiny compared to the gigantitude of the thing.

Yes, gigantitude. It’s a word if I say it is.

On the way down, I enjoyed the view of the river valley.

After the climb, I headed upriver a bit more to see some of the houses just outside of town.

Then back on ship, where we met up with our new Aussie friends for a bottle of champagne and lively conversation as we sailed back out of the fjord into the setting sun.

I’m not sure if it was the (FINALLY) blue skies and sunshine or the spectacular waterfall or the gorgeous scenery from our balcony today, but I’d say that Flåm is easily my favourite stop in Norway so far and it even rivals Iceland in its beauty.

We’re in Bergen tomorrow, which is the home port of Viking Cruise Lines. After a day in port, we end this cruise and pick up the next one… on the same ship, but in a different room. Viking have come through on that with flying colours, arranging it so that we won’t have to leave the ship at all (no disembarking and going through security check-in again). We just leave our bags outside the room at 8am, head to guest services to get our new key cards, then head to our room at 9am and watch a whole new shipload of cruise mates come on board. Easy peasy!

Just before turning in for the night, I got this nice shot off the back of the ship: