Day 3 – Norway 2017. Flåm to Bergen

I am feeling a bit better, and actually spent most of the night asleep rather than choking. Furthermore, my luxurious room has a bath tub, so I treated myself to a bath before getting ready for breakfast. More than a breakfast the hotel prepared a luxurious smorgasbord, with smoked salmon, lamb salami, venison ham, and all kinds of cheeses. Yes, there was brown cheese as well; this peculiar type of cheese, the color of old wood, is a great source of pride to Norwegians, who invented the cheese slicer just so that they could shave themselves a slice at all hours of the day. It was pretty good, in a Scandinavian sort of way.

After overeating I rolled myself back to my room, grabbed my backpack, and headed for the port to take ferry that was going to take me along a portion of Aurlands Fjord all the way to the small town of Gudvangen. The day was glorious and the cruise down the fjord was absolutely mesmerizing, because in contrast to other fjords I have visited this one is fairly narrow and twisting, which makes for very nice viewing. Amazingly, here and there you find small hamlets hanging precariously to the steep walls of the glacial canyon. This fjord is an inland branch of the larger Sognefjord, a fjord estuary that extends nearly 200 km into the land.

Once in Gudvangen I transferred to the bus to Voss. Being smart I took the seat on the very front, planning to do some serious sightseeing. Unfortunately we were heading to the southwest, against the sun, and I got both blinded and cooked during a good portion of the one-hour trip. I have been a bit paranoid about being cold, but a fleece and a good hiking jacket have kept me more than warm so far. Once in Voss I took the train to Bergen, which afforded me one more opportunity to admire the snow-clad mountain landscapes of the Norwegian Alps.

Bergen is a handsome city built across two peninsulas and one island in the ria estuary of Osterfjord. We arrived around 3 pm, so I had plenty of light to walk the half hour I needed to reach my accommodations at the Magic Hotel. It is a pretty funky, modern hotel, with repetitive geometric patterns that are sure to cause epileptic fits if you have a tenuous grip in reality to begin with. After checking in I went and grabbed a chorizo and pepperoni pizza for dinner, and by the time I left the restaurant (around 5 pm) it was already pitch dark. I will have to leave very early tomorrow morning for my exploration of the city, to make sure I will have enough daylight to see it all! Turismus muss Weh tun.