15.07.2011 – 15.07.2011  21 °C

Another glorious day (gee we’ve been lucky with the weather these last few days—shorts and t-shirts most days) for our trip into Flam. The Flam railway runs from Merdyl (on the Bergen/ Oslo line) into Flam. It is known as one of the great railway rides and after travelling down the mountain I can understand why. The hour long trip starts at about 800m above sea level and descends down into the Fjord to the small town of Flam. The 20km trip has 20 tunnels and the most amazing vistas. At one point the train stops to show you the biggest most amazing waterfall that comes over the mountain and crashes down into the river that eventually flows to Flam. It’s really well setup because you can get off the train, they have traditional Norwegian music playing and this enormous, huge, wet waterfall spilling over the mountain top! Just awesome.

After arriving in Flam (after heaps of photos) we went hunting for our digs before starting a walk through the Flam valley to see another waterfall. The township of Flam itself is tourist heaven—more souvenir shops per square cm than most other areas, plenty of cafes, and of course tourist operators all waiting to steal your money for the chance to head out into the fjord itself. Considering the amount of “fjording” we have done on the Hurtigruten we decided to skip the fjord boat trip and just stay wandering around the shore line checking out the old town and the surrounding farms. The residents of Flam are pretty lucky.. the view of this fjord is pretty special. V steep sheer mountain sides and a sparkling fjord.. Just awesome.

Ended up the day buying some dinner and cooking a pork and vege dinner before finishing off with another game of cards. Back to Oslo tomorrow for the last couple of days of this part of the trip.